An eCommerce website should always be a work in progress. So, whilst you may have an online store which is already selling, there are quite a few things you can do to make it convert better. In this post, we’ll look at a range of things you can easily implement to make your ecommerce site drive even more sales.
- Harness the power of Google Analytics
There’s a reason we keep harping on about Google Analytics: it’s because it gives you incredibly powerful insights into the performance of your website. The data it produces helps you discover what works and what doesn’t work. For example, if there’s a page on your website that constantly puts visitors off clicking the buy button, then Google Analytics will show you what it is.
Google Analytics informs you about many different metrics, including customer demographics, knowing what time of day people visit and the devices they use. You can find out how they discovered your site, where they land, how long they stay on each page and what path they follow from entering to leaving. You can even set up your own goals or monitor your conversion funnels.
What’s more, Google Analytics is free. And with many of your competitors using it to their advantage, you’re losing out by not using it.
Also Read : How to Set Up and Use Google Analytics for Your Website - Benefit from A/B split testing
Whilst Google Analytics can inform you where changes need to be made, once you have made those changes you’ll want to see how well they are working. The best way to do this is through A/B split testing, which helps you to compare how two different versions of your website are performing.
Split testing software enables you to create two different versions of a page. It serves one version to one half of your visitors and the other version to the other half. This means, if you tweak the wording, images, layout or colours on your sales page, you can easily see whether the changes are having the desired effect.
Why is this important? Well, something as simple as changing the colour of a call to action button can have a dramatic effect on the number of people who click on it. According to HubSpot, changing it from green to red can improve click-throughs by 21%. How much would a 21% increase in click-throughs be worth to you?
Also Read : A/B Split Testing The Ultimate Way to Rocket Your Sales. - Improve your product images
Badly taken product images have two negative effects. They don’t do a good job at selling the product and they give a poor impression of your website. In an age when customers are used to seeing professionally photographed products on HD and 4K screens, a badly taken image with poor pixel density isn’t going to do you any favours. And the better the technology people use to view your images, the worse they will look.
To take good quality product photographs, all you need is a decent camera, a tripod, a cheap lightbox (essential) and access to some basic editing software. You don’t need to spend a fortune but you can get big returns from a little investment into the right equipment. - Get your product descriptions right
Hand in hand with your product images are the descriptions that go with them. The most important factor here is to have unique product descriptions. If you simply use ones provided by the manufacturer, you’ll have the same content as everyone else and this can lower the ranking of that page on Google.
Unique product descriptions also let you write in more detail about the product and this can be used to show your customers that you have expertise in the niche in which you are selling. Customers are often more willing to pay higher prices to an expert than they would do to a general retailer as they expect you to be able to offer better customer service.
One of the key elements to writing great product descriptions is to discuss they benefits of buying the products. To do this, you need to know your customers and what they are looking for. For example, if you were an ecommerce site targeting off-road mountain bikers, rather than simply mentioning that a bike had a specific type of suspension, you should add that this would make it safer and more comfortable for rugged terrains. - Feature your reviews
Visitors can feel uneasy about purchasing from a business they have never shopped with before and will often leave the site if they aren’t 100% confident – even if it offers a better deal. One way to convince them to go through with the purchase is to give them third-party feedback in the guise of reviews and testimonials.
As reviews and testimonials are written by other customers, new customers see them as trustworthy and this makes them highly persuasive. To boost your chance of converting, ask customers to give you testimonials to use on your site and sign up for review sites, such as Trustpilot, whose reviews you can show on your site.
In addition to getting reviews about your company, you can also ask your existing customers to leave reviews about the products you sell. This shows an openness and honesty about your business and also gives great feedback: if something is getting a lot of bad reviews, you can stop selling it. - Make it easy to buy
The easier it is to buy a product, the more likely you will sell it. That’s why leading online retailers, like Amazon, now have a one-click buying option.
To discover how easy it is for your customers to buy, answer the following questions:- How easy is it to find a product on your website? Do you have a search facility or just browsing? Can customers filter their searches (by price, customer reviews, popularity, colour, size, etc.)?
- When buying, how many pages does a customer have to visit from entering the site to confirming the sale? How many times do they have to click on a link?
- How much information does a customer have to input in order to make a purchase?
- Do you force customers to register and fill in forms to buy from you?
- Do you make customers sign up for emails in order to buy from you?
- Do you add lots of upselling pages to your checkout process?Using the answers to these questions, you’ll understand all the hurdles your customers need to jump on your site. As there will be people who exit your site at each stage, it makes sense to make this process as short and as simple as possible.
- Boost your security
As Google now warns users whether a site is secure, it is vital for customer confidence that you put security measures in place on your ecommerce site. One essential element is having an SSL certificate. This ensures that personal information, such as credit card details, are encrypted and cannot by stolen when a customer inputs them on your site.
In addition, you should also consider using email authentication to ensure that emails you send cannot be intercepted and tampered with and that your customers know they are genuine.
With the increase in cybercrime affecting how people make online purchases, the more confident you make your customers, the better chance you have of making a sale.
Conclusion
Hopefully, these seven tips will have given you an insight into the ways that you can make your ecommerce website better geared to increasing conversions. Analysis, A/B testing, better product images and descriptions, customer reviews, simplified pathways and confidence boosting security can all help your website perform better and increase sales.
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