By Jim Clanin
Online retailers are constantly looking for new ways to increase ecommerce conversion rates and make shopping on their sites easier for online customers. Sadly, many initiatives like social log-in or completely changing the on-site experience can be costly of money, time or both. There are some quicker and less costly ways to quickly increase ecommerce conversion rates in weeks or months as opposed to a year. Here are eight tips provided by the DoubleDome ecommerce team to increase ecommerce conversion rates.
1) Provide chat with video or text. These days, offering a 1-800 number is a requirement, but less and fewer customers want to call and talk to someone, they would rather have their questions answered immediat
ely and on the spot. Many online shoppers prefer to visit the FAQ or HELP page for an answer over calling someone, often because they fear they will be on hold, or they won’t be able to understand the person on the phone. Like a brick and mortar store has sales people available for questions throughout the store, having chat available for quick questions and answers throughout an ecommerce store can have a direct result on the customer having an immediate decision to purchase. Having a chat box or chat video opportunity also eliminates the need for a customer to email the company and wait for a response, which can often come delayed or take too much time to respond resulting in the loss of a sale.
2) Use social media to engage with your customers. Everyone has an opinion about something, especially when it comes to customer service or product experience. With social media, everyone has an audience that they can share their experience with, positive or negative. Unfortunately, more people share their negative experiences than positive ones. The good news is that by listening to your customers with a social media listening tool, you can engage with them directly and respond to any concerns they have, and provide them with an incentive to come back to your ecommerce store to try it again. You can also thank happy customers for spending their time to mention you ecommerce store or product in a positive post. Use social media to actively listen and engage with happy and unhappy ecommerce customers.
3) Make billing and shipping address forms easier by combining them. When you’re purchasing something online, and you’re at the checkout, it’s a pain when you have to enter your billing and shipping address twice. By combining the addresses and auto filling the shipping address with the billing address after a customer enters it, you’re saving your customer time at checkout. You can provide the option to ship to a different address if required. By making this part of the checkout easier and less cumbersome, it makes the checkout process is less of a commitment, especially when on a mobile device.
4) Consider the one-page checkout. For a successful ecommerce store, you want to make your customers shopping experience as painless and easy as possible. The checkout is one of the easiest places on your site to lose a customer if it is cumbersome or seems like it will take too much effort to pay. Providing a one-page checkout, which allows customers to place orders quickly where they are already registered. The one-page checkout works well for ecommerce stores with a lot of repeat customers.
5) Make your prices obvious, fair and competitive. Unlike a brick and mortar store where a customer can feel less motivated to look online and cost compare items and more likely to make an impulse purchase, ecommerce retailers have to be aware of how their competitors are pricing items. Make sure your prices are obvious and very visible and clear. Avoid hidden fees at checkout. Otherwise, you may lose the purchase when a consumer finds that it costs them more than they anticipated. Also, if you are price competitive with your competitors, feel free to brag about it by showing the cost comparison of your competitors.
6) Use original product descriptions. Just like in non-ecommerce sites, content is king. Don’t be lazy with item descriptions – sure the manufacturer’s description is likely written well, and it would be so easy to copy and paste it to describe your item, but be warned. Google and other search engines don’t like duplicate content or content found on other sites. And the more compelling and creative your item descriptions are, the more likely your shoppers will purchase. Hiring a copywriter to write new item descriptions can make a difference between making a sale, and losing a sale.
7) Explain products visually. When consumers are buying something online, they want to know as much about the product they are buying as possible. So give it to them! If you’re selling home décor items, include three or four pictures of the items at different angles. Also, show an image of the product in a real-life setting. For example, you’re selling a lamp, show a picture of the lamp on a table in a room so the buyer can see what it looks like proportionately with other items.
8) Use responsive website design. Responsive web design is the theme of websites this year, and it’s not going away. It’s especially important for ecommerce sites. One way to quickly lose a customer or sale is if your ecommerce store is not easy to use on mobile devices like a tablet or cell phone. Consumers buy things everywhere on their devices, while boarding a plane, waiting in line, or walking somewhere. Make sure your site is compatible and responsive so that when your customers decide to buy, wherever and whatever device they are on, they can do so easily.
While there are several other ways to increase conversion rates on your ecommerce store, these are just some of the top tips that the designers at DoubleDome Digital Marketing tell our clients. If you’re looking to increase your ecommerce conversion rates, or are looking for ecommerce website design, call or email my team for a no-obligation chat about visit our website www.doubledome.com or call 888-799-6067.
