How can you attract buyers, not browsers?
Working on the assumption that you’ve covered the basics, what are the five additional things you can do to really optimise your online store? What can you do to get online tills ringing louder than you dared imagine?
By Suzie Larcombe
In this article you’ll find out how you can go the extra mile to make sure that you really maximise your sales and conversion opportunities. In particular, we’ll focus on:
- Making sure you attract the right buyers.
- Optimising your landing page so visitors stick.
- Making your checkout process slick and hassle-free.
- Why customer service is even more important at a distance.
- Why giving your customers a voice is a great promotional tool.
When it comes to optimising your etail, or ecommerce store, here’s what we believe to be the 5 key areas to focus on:
1. Making sure you attract the right traffic.
Many ecommerce site owners think traffic is traffic; traffic is good. But in actual fact, tracking down and attracting the right traffic is essential if you’re planning to close the sale.
If your product appeals to 21-35 year olds, it’s important that your promotional activities; online and off appeal to this age group. There’s little point in celebrating any hike in traffic unless you know it’s the right sort of traffic.
Irrespective of whether you use soclal media, Google adwords or natural search results to promote your site, you need to make sure that your styling and voice speak to the right audience to encourage them to click through and buy.
2. Creating a magnetic landing page.
Your landing page is quite simply your shop window and needs to tell your story to the max and encourage visitors to dig deeper. Make sure your key messages appear above the fold (the upper half of the screen) and without scrolling.
Bear in mind that a huge percentage of your site visitors are likely to be working on a laptop or tablet, so make allowances for the smaller real estate you have to deal with here. Include special offers and calls to action to convince any doubting visitors that they’re in the right place to find what they’re looking for.
3. Checking out securely and with a smile.
Security is a big issue for online shoppers and badges and symbols that prove and reinforce that you take security seriously will help induce confidence in your consumers.
Once they are confident that their card details will be dealt with in the most secure manner, make their checkout experience as stress and hassle-free as possible. Clever ecommerce owners watch their customer behaviour like a hawk and make sure that potential buyers aren’t filling up their baskets and changing their minds at the checkout.
One of the commonest reasons for abandoned baskets online is a frustrating checkout procedure. This is business madness. You’ve worked hard to get your visitor, even harder to convert them and then you lose them at the last hurdle. If your traffic analysis is suggesting you have a problem at the checkout, today’s the day to get it sorted.
4. Recognising that the customer is King.
Without customers, no matter where you trade, you’re nothing. When you see your customer face-to-face, you can judge how they might want to be dealt with. Might they enjoy some light conversation pleasantries?
Do they want to be left alone to browse? Or do they seriously need support in their decision-making process? Body language and social interaction will soon help you pick up these signs if you are face-to-face with your customer. Unfortunately, these signs are completely absent online, so you need to do some research and make some assumptions.
Research will tell you theoretically what people want, but there will always be some trial and error in your customer care strategy before you get it right. That said, having human beings that are experienced and knowledgeable on the end of a phone or on a live chat function on your website is certainly a step in the right direction.
5. Letting buyers have their say.
A great way to gain crowd support is to enable your buyers to review their purchases and share those reviews on the social media. Either let your customers review their purchases with free text or with ratings, it’s up to you, but if your product is good, there’s no better person to promote it than your buyer.
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