So, you’ve had your website for a while – or just got one up and running – and sales are ticking over? Good. But could your business be great? eCommerce is swelling and booming in many sectors, particularly technology, electronics, and fashion. The current climate of reduced high-street access due to things like a global pandemic has encouraged people to shop online. But are you riding the wave of surging business? Or sitting on the beach looking confused about why you keep falling off your surfboard?
You may have a large budget and want to hire a professional web design company to make changes for you and if you are based in Manchester, check out these web designers from Manchester. However, many people prefer making improvements themselves and you too could ride that cash-cow shaped wave if you optimize your site by following a few simple steps:
1. Optimize your load speeds
Some websites are notoriously slow. It’s much easier to click off that slow-loading the site and go elsewhere. People’s attention spans are getting shorter as a result of a tech-filled, fast-paced world where information comes quick and thick. Customers want to buy something and they want to buy it now. If your website is slow, you could be losing a large proportion of your site traffic.
But don’t fret; there are free online tools available that allow you to check your website’s loading speed. If it turns out that you’re one of the slow ones, you can speed up your loading speed by minimizing your photo file sizes, particularly if your eCommerce store is image-heavy (without compromising on quality). You should also limit your pop-up and video ads.
2. Improve mobile access
Since 2016, mobile phones have been the most popular way to browse the internet. If your website isn’t catering to a mobile size screen, it will put off a large section of the market, particularly young people. It’s easy to rectify this – check the mobile screen view settings on your website builder and ensure your pages look beautiful in the mobile version.
3. Create a landing page
The best way to drive sales through your website is, instead of having an ordinary homepage, to create a landing page which is essentially a springboard towards sales of your top product. Prioritize the call to action button (which directs users to buy your product) by enlarging it and creating white space around it to make it stand out.
Personalize the call to action message by ensuring it is as specific as possible. Good examples include, “Enjoy learning about space travel? Subscribe now!”, “Click here to get 25% off our luxury bedding range”, and “Turn your drab clothes into a wedding dress. Buy our Drab-2-Dreams Machine today and get 60% off.” Every element of your landing page should be concentrated on converting the browser into a customer.
4. Provide customer support
Having round-the-clock customer support is an appealing feature to potential customers. You may think that this would involve a great expense, employing someone to chat to customers all day. Not so – chatbots now make this level of customer support an easy reality. Having a pre-programmed chatbot as a feature on your website increases the availability of customer service, whilst directing only unusual questions that can’t be answered by a robot, towards your living employees.
5. Target existing customers
Remarketing is proven to be both easier and cheaper than obtaining new customers. Having a feature on your website that allows customers to subscribe to emails when they purchase something, provides you with an opportunity to send promotions, offers, and reminders about the great service/ products you provide straight to their inbox. You could also use remarketing ads (offered by certain well-known web browsers) that target users that have already visited your site. Anything to remind those customers how great your products are!
6. Be transparent
Research shows that having hidden costs is one of the biggest factors that put customers off completing their online purchase and results in full trolleys being abandoned in the virtual gutter. Hidden costs, such as shipping, sprung upon shoppers at the last minute is an unpleasant surprise. It is better to be transparent and up-front about these costs from the start and customers are a lot more likely to go through with their purchase.
7. Display trust seals
The reliability and authenticity of a company are harder to prove in an online setting. There’s no physical location to which customers can return if they’re not happy. You need to do all you can to show your trustworthiness and dependability. A good way of demonstrating this is by using trust seals.
Trust seals, also known as secure site seals, are badges you can place on your website if you have been vetted by an authority such as WebTrust, Trustico, Norton Secured, or BBB Accredited Business. Obtaining and displaying these badges will increase the confidence of new visitors and improve the likelihood that they will choose to shop with your company.
8. Optimize the check-out process
Ensure the online shopping experience is smooth, efficient, and hassle-free for your shoppers. A minimal number of completion steps and an easy check-out process will satisfy consumer demands for speed.
9. Feature customer reviews
Customer reviews and testimonials are a sure-fire way of improving your sales success, especially if they’re good ones. Including a section on your website dedicated to testimonials or integrating them into product pages is an effective way of building the trust of potential purchasers. Including a photo (with the individual’s permission) next to the review is also shown to improve its perceived credibility.
10. Optimize your search engine rankings
Search engine optimization is a huge topic. It’s a critical area to investigate if you want to improve the content and quality of traffic coming to your site. SEO is a way of scoring high in the search results without having to pay. Digital marketing Brisbane can help you to optimize the content and website for search engines to improve quality traffic.
In fact, most users ignore paid listings. Instead, ensure that your title tags correspond to what users are actually searching for. One way of doing this is to look at Google’s autofill suggestions.
For example, if you own a hotel in Manchester, you could type in “Manchester hotel” and see that autofill suggests “open”, “deals”, “with pool”, “cheap”, and “with parking”. These are keywords and phrases you can use within your site and title tags to increase your traffic. Your website will then be appealing to customers’ needs and answering the questions that people are asking.
Now, stop sulking and get back on that surfboard. Put these steps into practice and remember, good sales beget more sales. Go on, grab that board, and get surfing the glorious wave of eCommerce success.
