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Your social media is buzzing with likes, shares, and comments. Your retail website looks like it’s all dressed up to party. Your brand’s Instagram story is such a treat. Your online store is finally ready for the holidays! But hey, what about sales? Do you usually face issues like awesome traffic but plummeting sales or zero conversions? What your website needs is a boost. Pause, breathe and spruce up your website with this checklist:
1. Optimize Your Images And Don’t Miss Placing Them On Crucial Pages
It may sound simple and you might think your website team is already doing this. But it’s time to look into it again. Make sure your website has only high quality images, which look great when zoomed into (Knock knock, your customer will be looking at them on a mobile, she can pinch and zoom into what’s going on in there!) Make sure you have images on pages that have a search bar, on the final checkout page and on pages that have huge chunks of content. Name your images correctly, add alt tags. Keep the images light, less than 200 kb (‘Saving for the web’ from adobe works best)
2. Add Product Videos, As Many As Possible
Users are 85% more likely to buy the product after watching the product’s video. Now, fashion products don’t really need a product video unless your brand is selling quirky silhouettes that come along with an instruction manual. However, products like electronics, health supplements, home decor, paper products, toys etc. can need videos. Videos answer questions and hence, aid decision making. That’s conversion. Period.
3. Create A Sense Of Urgency
Don’t let your product just sit there while you wait for your customers to take their time and come back to purchase it. Entice them into adding the product to their cart and buying it now. How can you do that? Offer some limited time promotions, free delivery on certain products, happy hours with special discounts or keep a stock meter and add the popular ‘Limited Pieces’ tag to the last few items. Make the customer believe that right now is a great time to shop. You can learn from Zara here. Zara, the world over, refreshes its offering every week. No new stock is really added but the items are shuffled and the store looks new. So when a customer walks in the second time and notices the change, she feels like grabbing on to what she likes, coz she get’s the feeling this might not be there the next time. So yes, update your website every week. Surprise them each time they visit.
4. Reviews Matter, Go And Get Them
A recent survey suggests that 60% of the shoppers consult reviews before shopping for something online. And making reviews available can help increase conversion by 10%. The correct good to bad ratio here is 9 is to 1. However, good or bad, reviews are important. Make sure you fetch reviews from your customers post the sale/transaction. Crisp and strategized email marketing works wonders here.
5. Trust Seals Actually Validate
Badges and seals on your website are important to help the customer trust you. It’s easier to part with money when you know it’s going to someone who has the vote or endorsement of many. These sealing authorities vary from industry to industry but generally an e-commerce site should have PayPal, McAfee and VeriSign trust seals.
6. Offer Clear Contact Information, Don’t Hesitate
We’ve often noticed clients suggesting us to not share their physical address or phone number on the website because they don’t want unnecessary phone calls. However, as an e-commerce brand, they need to equip themselves enough to be able to handle those queries. Including a clear mailing address, office address and contact number boost’s the site’s credibility and in turn, conversion.
7. How Does Your Checkout Page Look?
This is probably the most important point I’m making in this blog. Once a customer has come this far, losing a sale will be very costly to an e-business. We should try our best to make this step as user-friendly and encouraging as can be. Don’t force people to register or fill fields that are unnecessary. Don’t do anything that can put them off. Sharing a progress bar to show how far they’ve reached, giving the option to save for later and finally offering an order summary before checking out, these are some must-dos for a converting checkout page.
8. Keep It Quick And Customized
If your business offers products in different countries, give each user the option of selecting their currency. Keep any fill-up forms as short as possible. Remember your customer is impatient and a long form can totally tick them off.
9. A Friendly Search Bar
Your developer might say, he’s got a beautiful menu that shows everything, but the truth is that almost 50% of users, use the search bar to navigate the site and totally skip the menu. Your search bar should thus, have an auto-suggest option, drop down menu of textual results and have filters to sort the search results.
10. Keep The Site Fast Paced, You Have Just 2 Seconds
No kidding! Most users expect a site to load in 1 second. One more second and poof they’re gone. In fact, a U.S. based survey on fashion websites actually says that a delay of 1 second is equal to a loss of 7 sales! So make sure your online store is all merry and magical, and at the same time, as fast as Santa.
11. Live Chat Helps, Sometimes
Live chat can make or break an online store. Let’s imagine a user plugged into your shoe store’s website and figuring out how those heels will work with her party dress, and then pop, a live chat window says ‘ Can I help you?’ . Close window. Move to another store. Customer lost. But at the same time, what if it’s a pet supplements website and a pet parent is wondering if this medicine will have any side-effects? Live chat can help convert the sale there and then.
12. Free Shipping Always Attracts
Shipping is expensive and the double-digit dollar figure that is added in the end to the cart is very disappointing. Free shipping can help you get more customers in. Of course, you have to ensure your costs are covered, and you’re still making profits. You can’t really be Santa. But here’s what will amaze you. Amazon was able to get 64% more customers on board by offering free shipping! There, costs taken care of.
13. Keep A Separate Sale Section On Your Menu
60% of the customers are looking for discounts. Pull out your old stock or shuffle up your product offering, but try to keep a sales section on your website. This will help you push conversions and get new customers on board.
That’s about it. Quite strangely my list has ended at 13. So you have 13 tweaks to make to your online store and have it ready to convert your traffic into sales. We are assuming that your social media and SEO are optimized too. If you need any help with that or any fresh and cool ideas to grow your brand, just head to our greenhouse. We always have chocolates. 🙂