Get more people to buy from your e-commerce store with these tips

Getting more people to buy from your e-commerce store is tough. With these tips you should be able to get up to a 35% increase in conversions from a visitor to a purchaser on your e-commerce website.

You’ve set up your store. It looks great, the branding is good, your copy is fantastic and the traffic is starting to build. You just need more people to make a purchase. Each person who comes to your site is a potential customer. So we need systems in place to nurture them and make the path to purchasing as easy as possible.

So how do we do that?

Install Google Analytics before you do anything. Without know where people drop out of your ‘sales funnel’ on the way to the checkout we don’t know where to improve.

First get them to the checkout

Make sure your site is fast loading

83% of user expect your site to load in less than 3 seconds. A 1 second increase in load speed can result in 7% more conversions.

If you are using Shopify, make sure you have a good theme that loads quickly. The same goes for WooCommerce websites. However for WooCommerce you will need good web hosting too.

Make sure it has a SSL Cert.

An SSL cert ensures your website’s traffic is encrypted and that secures any personal details being transmitted from your visitors browser to your website. People are becoming aware of the need for online privacy and an unsecured site will turn users away.

Easy to navigate

If visitors find it hard to find the product they want, click the buy button and then go through the checkout, you have an obvious problem. Clear menus, large buttons and an easy to use checkout increase sales.

Enable reviews on your website

Having positive reviews on your site increases visitors trust in your site and products. Don’t worry if you get the odd bad review. Make sure you rectify the problem. In fact people’s trust starts to go down when a product has a perfect 5 star review. As a bonus, reviews come up in Google Search results.

Related products / Upsells and Cross sells

You may have seen Up-sells and cross-sells on other e-commerce sites. Up-sells usually appear on individual product pages. They are similar products but might be better, more expensive or just variations of the product being viewed. This encourages website visitors to maybe purchase a more expensive product.

Cross-sells are usually found in the checkout process and are often something to compliment the purchase. For example an accessory that goes with the main product. Like a bag for your laptop or lipstick to go with an eyeliner.

Then make sure they buy

Getting website visitors to the checkout is half the story. Once there the amount of people who leave the checkout without buying is high. The industry average is 70%. So out of the people who put items in their shopping cart 7 out of 10 will leave without paying.

Fortunately there are a few things we can do about this too. If we look at the reasons why people leave we can get a better idea of how to improve conversions.

First we will go over the ‘on site’ things you can do to get more sales.

First make sure your checkout is easy to use

A complicated checkout process will result in people leaving your site. Try to make the checkout as easy to use as possible. This includes cutting down the number of steps to payment and having less forms to fill out. A lot of this will be down to the theme that you use on your e-commerce store.

Make sure you have payment gateways to suit your customers

Have a few options for payment. Some people don’t like using their credit card and would rather use a bank transfer. Some payment options that take visitors off site, like PayPal, are dis-trusted by some people. And if you store is international having the option to use a local payment gateway is a good idea.

Enable guest checkout so they don’t have to create an account

This is a proven conversion killer. If people are in a hurry they don’t want to enter a username and password. They just want to pay.

Consider free shipping

This can be tough to do and it’s not for every type of product or store. But Amazon does it. At the very least consider having a local area where shipping is free.

Order Tracking

People want to know where their order is at. Having notification emails sent out at every step of the order and shipping process builds trust. Shopify can even send SMS text messages to the customers phone.

Another great idea is sending the package tracking number or link to the customer so they can see when to expect delivery.

Now let’s take a look at the ‘off site’ things we can do to entice people back to your site to complete their purchase.

Retargeting with ads Facebook and Google display network

If you have every looked at an e-commerce store online, decided not to buy, but then been followed around the internet by adverts from the same store you have been retargeted.

By using tracking script on your website we can see who visited your site and didn’t make a purchase and send highly targeted ads to them. It’s slightly creepy, but effective.

Cart abandonment recovery.

A more advanced version of this is cart abandonment recovery. Cart abandonment recovery systems get peoples email addresses from half completed checkout forms and then email them reminding them they have left their cart behind without paying. The more advanced systems can send the site visitor a link to their actual cart, complete with the product in inside. This used with a gentle email reminder or even a small discount can get them back to complete the purchase.

Even more advanced systems can use Facebook Messenger to contact the site visitor. If they are a Facebook user they can be sent a message with a link to their cart. Facebook Messenger can also be used to send information about promotions and special deals too.

Every bit counts

Baymard, an ecommerce research company, discovered that using a combination of better checkout design, payment and retargeting increased conversions by up to 35.25%

https://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate

Don’t don’t waste your website’s traffic. Make sure your store is fully optimised to get as many visitors converting to customers as possible.

 

FREE VIDEO TRAININGHow to increase sales and profit for your WooCommerce store

FREE VIDEO TRAINING How to increase sales and profit for your WooCommerce store

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