Rolando HerreraCreating an eCommerce website is much more than designing an aesthetically pleasing online store. It involves developing an 
executable blueprint that transitions a visitor into a customer through simple navigation. Even before this you need to acquire that visitor using various SEO strategies in order to position yourself to the limitless success that online selling can bring.
Your website needs to be visible to the search engine, then move its way to the top of the search engine, be clicked on, and then through an eye-grabbing design with easy navigation convert its visitor into a customer.
Since conversion rates on an Ecommerce site, at an average, are 2.5% as can be seen on Wordstream it is important to use various portions of the website design to navigate the flow of traffic in order to attain the highest conversion rate possible.
There is a lot you can do to improve your site’s conversion rate by making it simpler to shop online. Here are a few tips:
Simplify Navigation
Your visitors come to your site to get the required information and to make a purchase. Make it extremely easy for them to do so. Let them browse through your web pages and select different products with just a click. Some of the main features and factors that contribute to easier navigation on an Ecommerce site include the following:
- Large Drop Down Menus
- Intuitive Links and Buttons
- HTML Sitemap
- No Redundancy
- Low Reaction Time
When you make it easy for your visitors to find the required information, you are moving them through the sales funnel. This article on LinkedIn, by the founder of eCommerce Think Tank, provides an elaborate guide on how to improve your online store’s navigation interface. These are the most important strategies for improving your Ecommerce site’s conversion rates.
The goal behind putting up an online store is to increase your sales through both new and recurring transactions. While implementing these strategies it is important to keep your site clutter-free and avoid any deviations. A product description and image can provide all the required info, but other elements like widgets can give indications and don’t clutter your website pages with too much information. Deliver the right information, take your online buyers through the sales funnel in a swift and intuitive manner, and you’ll achieve online sales success.
Make the Search Bar Easy to Find
Include the search bar on all of the website pages and make it easy to find. Search bars are used more often on an Ecommerce website than on any other sites. In fact, many webmasters don’t realize how often it is used in their online stores, but your visitors are more likely to use a search bar when they are unable to locate a product or know what they’re looking for.
A search bar is a must-have feature on any online shopping cart, and can give your customer the most direct way of making their purchase.
Use High Quality & Original Images
If you already have an Ecommerce site, check all the products and ensure that all the images are high quality. Images are the way you display the product to your buyers so make sure they clearly depict your products, services, and brand. Besides uploading high-resolution photos, it is recommended to use the original pictures of products.
Whether the products are displayed through tiled thumbnails or as a slide show, high quality and original images will help create a stronger impact. Unclear and low-resolution images are more likely to put your customers away. Here is a complete guide from Smashing Magazine on how to use stunning product photos to compel your visitors.
Use Widgets & Plugins
Use widgets like related products, products you may like, and the recently viewed products. This is not only going to help visitors with better decision making, but it will also improve your site’s navigation. There could be many similar products on your site and this feature will help your customers find more related options.
Include Quality Product Descriptions
Your product descriptions play two important roles:
- They help improve your product page’s search rankings.
- They provide the required product information to your potential buyers.
Good product descriptions also serve the following purposes:
- Help build an emotional connection.
- Help your potential buyers/visitors take action.
- Help improve conversion rate and revenues.
Your product description works as your “sales assistant”. It tells your visitors everything they need to know about your product. It will take up the job of your sales staff and provide a compelling argument as to why people should buy your product.
Make sure that the description provides detailed specs about the product. Weight and dimensions are a necessary for certain products, and should be included in all product descriptions. You may have the best product to offer, but it is less likely to sell if you don’t describe its benefits and features well.
Take advantage of every part of your website to make it effective for the consumer and visible for the search engine.
Include Product Reviews & Ratings
Product reviews and ratings can prove to be the most powerful elements in improving your conversion rates. According to this report on Social Media Today, 63% of users are more likely to purchase a product from an eCommerce store if it provides product reviews and ratings.
When a customer writes a review and rates your product, he or she is vouching for you. Having your customers tell others about your product is the best way to have your products promoted.
Reviews can also help turn your casual visitors into buyers. They are considered to be extremely valuable when it comes to convincing and converting. The same report by Social Media Today also claims that over 70% of users will check reviews before making a purchase.
There are many ways you can increase the number of reviews received for your products:
- Reward your reviewers to encourage buyers to submit a review.
- Optimize your store and increase the number of purchases.
- Automate the review and rating system.
- Offer high quality support.
In addition to this, Product Reviews and Ratings can help your product be found and clicked on by using Google’s Structured Data Markup. The Structured Data Markup allows your content to be indexed more intelligently and displays content in the best way possible for your product to be seen, understood, and found online.
Label Products In Stock/Out of Stock
Many times buyers will come to know about an out of stock product only when they checkout. There is hardly anything else that could be more aggravating to your buyers. There is a good chance that they are not only going to leave the shopping cart, most of them are not even going to return to your site.
Make sure to clearly label all the out of stock inventory in bright and bold colors. Make sure that there is an option for buyers to enter their email address to receive a notification when the product is again available. Collecting email addresses is a tested strategy to help reduce your lost-sale count.
Display Shipping & Delivery Charges Upfront
Many online stores will display the shipping charges only at the time of checkout. As a simple rule, don’t do that. Display the shipping and delivery charges upfront by allowing the user to enter his or her city. Ecommerce sites that don’t initially display delivery charges suffer from high rate of abandoned shopping cart. Don’t surprise your customers and help them understand what charges are to be expected on the website.
Ease out the Checkout Process
There are still so many Online Shopping Cart Sites that take their customers through several pages during the checkout process. The longer the checkout process, the smaller the chance that your customers will complete it. Making it complicated and longer is more likely to annoy your shoppers and have them leave.
Create a single step checkout page. Make it as easy as possible for your visitors to provide the required information and make the payment. This will help improve the chances of bringing them back to your site again.
Responsive Web Design
It is important to keep in mind that your visitors and potential customers can come through different types of devices. You can read more about Responsive Web Design in this article. With the steady growth of online sales coming through mobile devices your website has to be easy to use on mobile devices. When you create a site you’re not just creating it for a desktop visitor but for a potential small cellular device, and for this reason you have to see your website through different lenses. You can see some clear percentages of Mobile Traffic here. Responsive Web Design now has many different benefits such as making it easier for someone to place a purchase on the site, to showing the search engine that your website is mobile and as a result getting a growth increase in sites rankings. RWD might be one of the most important factors to consider when building an Ecommerce website.
In Conclusion
These are just some basic tips on creating an Online Shopping Cart that can work for you instead of you working for your site. One of the main purposes of an Ecommerce website is to create a site thats simple and has your product go from the business to the consumer in the most quick and efficient way possible. So the most important thing is that the delivery method of your product is as simple and visible to different types of customers as possible. Don’t complicate but simplify the customer acquisition process so that the customer leaves happy and comes back. Online Shopping Carts can give you limitless opportunities, so take advantage of them and of these tips.
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