There’s a lot of competition out there in the ecommerce world. A major factor in controlling your e-business is setting up your website and catering to your buyers’ needs. Every minute detail matters. Here are some tips might help you in creating, redesigning and running your website successfully.
1. Keep it Simple
Try to look at your website from the point of view of a customer. Don’t make the website too chaotic. Keep it simple. That’s the key to high conversion rates. Avoid clutter. It can be distracting. Design the home page in such a way that the customer’s eyes don’t wander away from the key message.
Make sure your visitors can clearly view the products you’re selling or the CTA button. You can hire ecommerce website developers to help you build a website according to your requirements.
A lot of websites do not have a call to action button on their websites. If you incorporate one on your website, it can give you an edge over your competitors. The CTA should be easy to spot, preferably within the first few seconds when someone visits. It helps to attract the customer’s attention and pushes them towards purchasing. Add a search bar and additional filters and sorting options.
Sometimes when your selling thousands of products the customers might get confused. The filters help them in narrowing down the range of options. Tag your products correctly to display accurate results for the buyer’s parameters.
2. Categorize
Categorizing your products keeps things structured and your customers can easily find what they are looking for. Keeping too many menus can make things complex. Sort your products under broad categories. You can keep sub-categories for some specific items. For example, if you’re selling Kurtis, sarees, lehengas, jeans, dresses, and tops, it can be divided and sub-divided in this way:
1. Indian Ethnic
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- Kurtis & salwar suits
- Sarees & blouses
- Lehenga cholis
2. Western wear
- Jeans & capris (types of pants)
- Dresses and jumpsuits
- Tops, shirts & t-shirts
There are many ecommerce website design services which will help you design your e-commerce site to appeal to customers.
3. Invest in a Premium Web Hosting Plan
Speed is a very important factor in case of an e-commerce website. If your page does not load fast enough, it can drive away your customers. People do not have much patience for slow speed and it can be really frustrating. You get only one chance to make a good impression. Every page that opens after your customers clicks on something, needs to load instantly.
Go for a good web hosting service. It’s a solid investment as it will help you in the long run. Research has shown that even one seconds delays in loading results in a 16% decrease in customer satisfaction and a 7% loss in conversions. Site crashes, error reports, and glitches on your website can impart a fatal blow to your business.
4. Easier Checkout
Cut down on the steps for the checkout process. Once the customer has selected an item, the checking out process should be super-efficient and quick. According to surveys around 28% of customers have stated that they abandoned a transaction due to the lengthy checkout process. Take only requisite information from the customer.
Don’t make things unnecessarily tedious or complicated. Remember, fewer click, taps, and swipes – means increased customer satisfaction. You can also add a ‘buy now’ button on the page of a product that will directly take the customer to checkout, without requiring them to add it to the cart.
This will be useful in cases where a customer wants to shop for only one item. Accept all kinds of payment methods. You can provide a personalized experience by default setting the most frequently used payment method of your customer.
5. Acquiring Potential Loyal Customers
Some websites don’t allow customers to purchase an item unless they sign up. Don’t do that. Forcing your customers to create a profile just to buy an item might not work in your favor all the time. Instead, keep multiple options open. This way new customers can purchase anything through a guest checkout option and old customers can avail the perks of being a member.
The key to acquiring loyal customers is giving certain incentives to your customers. Keep these options visible to all customers, but only accessible for members. This way you will be subtly encouraging your customers to create a profile to avail the benefits, but not pressurizing them into anything.
6. Email Subscriber List
During the checkout process, the customers enter the email id, which is mainly to receive constant updates about their product shipment. Create a subscriber list using these email ids. Send your customers promotional emails regarding seasonal sales, special discounts, and festival offers.
It is one of the best ways to drive traffic to your website. Based on the types of products customers buy, you can send them personalized emails informing them about offers on similar products they might be interested in.
7. Reminders about Abandoned Carts:
Sometimes customers abandon their purchase in the middle of a transaction, or just abandon their carts, be it due to the long checkout process or some other reason. You can send them notifications reminding about their abandoned carts and incomplete transactions.
If they have signed up as a member, you already have their email id so you can send them emails to notify them. Observe that your customer was interested enough in your product to add it to their cart. Your reminder may be the final push they need in sealing the purchase.
8. Refined SEO
Studies show that 46% of online customers first search about the product they intend to buy on a search engine, like Google for example. Your website has to show up among the top search results when the customers search for a certain product that you are selling, otherwise, they will buy from other retail sites i.e. your rivals. Get a professional SEO agency service to help you out in this matter.
They will help you with improved accessibility and usability, sitemaps, link building, content optimization, robot.txt implementation, keyword research, and optimization, etc. it will be best for your business if you are able to reach the top ranks of google rankings. Top-selling websites will entice more customers and increases sales.
9. Product Descriptions, Images and Videos
Make sure that you have an engaging and informative product description for all the items that you’re selling. This will help customers in making a better decision. Mention the USP of the products. Don’t use long sentences and flowery language. Keep it short, comprehensible and factual. Use bullet points. They are easy to read through.
Your customers will not actually be able to see or feel the products they are buying. They will judge it based on the images you’ve provided. Make sure you upload high-quality images of your products taken from multiple angles. Include zoomed-in shots of the key highlights of a product.
Get a professional product photographer to do that job. Online visual merchandising is very important, at the same time it is comparatively difficult than in-store VM. If you’re selling electronics, it will be beneficial if you can put a short demo video providing a glimpse at the product and explaining how it works.
10. Provide an Ad-Free Experience
Do not use your website as a medium for the advertisement of other brands. It may bring in some extra bucks at the moment, but it will prove harmful for you in the long run. Most customers view pop-ups as spam. Ads can be annoying and disrupt your customer’s shopping experience. People may even stop visiting your website in fear of being redirected to an insecure site or getting their device infected with some virus.
11. Pleasant Customer Service
Set up a customer service for your customers. Your customers might face difficulties regarding different issues. Customer service should be easily accessible at all times. Keep various options for your customers to contact you viz through phone, emails or live chat. You can also use chatbots to provide a personalized one-on-one experience in solving problems.
If you’re hiring staff, make sure they are well trained and competent enough to deal with customers and solve their issues their queries effectually. Don’t keep your customers waiting. A friendly and efficient customer service leads to better customer satisfaction and customer satisfaction goes a long way in an e-commerce business.
12. Testing and Analytics
Run A/B tests regularly. This will help you figure out how to maximize conversions for your e-commerce website. Try to think from the point of view of the customer and not the seller. It will help you understand things better and make the necessary changes. Don’t shy away from investing in tests and analytics. Change and readjust things according to the derived results to increase your sales and success rate. You can get help from woocommerce development agency to improve your website.
13. Extend onto Mobile Platforms
Nowadays most people like to do their online shopping on their smartphone devices. The numbers have risen over the past few years and are still increasing. For this reason, you need to optimize your website so that it can run smoothly on all mobile devices.
Mobile shoppers form a large part of the customer base. You can come up with an app to up your game in the race for competition. Customers are looking for personalized experiences and an app provides them just that. It will boost sales and prove beneficial to your business.
14. Collaborate with Influencers
Use social media to your advantage. Instagram and Pinterest are the two most functional platforms to drive traffic to your website. You can post images of your products on Pinterest directing customers to your website through links. You can collaborate with social media influencers to endorse your website or products. Social media influencers are people with a huge fan following.
They can give you a shout out on their social media page for a certain amount of money, or some free products. It’s a smart way to convert website visitors to customers, as people look up to these influencers and trust what they say.
You can also collaborate with some celebrity to endorse your brand name. Just make sure the person you’ve hired is somehow or the other related to the item or brand they are endorsing. Credibility is a major factor in running a successful business.
15. Customer Reviews and Criticism
Studies have shown that about 90% of customers rely on reviews for purchasing an item. After a customer buys something from your website, send them a follow-up email after a few days asking them to rate the product and share their reviews if they have any. Feature the reviews of customers on the particular product page. Don’ display only positive remarks. Zero negative comments will make your customers think your site is unreliable. Accept constructive criticism. This will help you improve your products and in turn sales.
Conclusion
The market scenario is constantly changing. So is the customer’s mindset and shopping habits. Make sure you stay constantly updated and well-informed about the trends and technologies. Know your customer and work on providing them with a wholesome experience, so that they keep coming back. With the above tips, you can run a successful ecommerce site in no time.
