Getting Shoppers To Order It On The Web
As more and more people turn to the internet to do their daily shopping, websites are scrambling to make their sites more attractive, easier to use and most importantly one that streamlines the conversion or sales process. A conversion is when a website visitor turns into a new lead or a new client.
Making conversions happen is not an easy task. Conversions will take time and patience to make sure that all of the elements your visitors will be looking for are in place. Part of the pre-sales process is making sure that the web visitor is at ease with their ability to make returns and exchanges in case there are any issues with their order. A site that doesn’t clearly state its return policy is not satisfying a very basic need for a shopper.
The same way you will see a clearly marked section of a local retail store called customer service or returns, is the same way that you should find it on a web site. Before a visitor will be satisfied enough with your site to part with their money, a few questions need to be answered to assure them that they are making a great decision when shopping on your site. You have to make them comfortable enough to know that they have assistance and a course of action if they need help.
Setting up a frequently asked questions section on your website is a great start. Taking steps to be proactive and giving your website visitors self help or self serve tools, will not only make your website a smarter place to shop, but you will actually reduce the amount of assistance requested to your representatives, directly freeing up resources and saving you man hours.
Visitors want to know that they can safely exchange or return a product for a refund if there are any issues, and that there will be service available online and offline to help them. Having the pleasure of working on many different websites, I’ve had the chance to see firsthand how following a few simple rules of the game can greatly increase your conversion rates.
1. Trust Factors
Shoppers want to feel comfortable with shopping on a website. Displaying various trust factors on your site can help shoppers make a decision. Shoppers want to be sure that shopping on your site is secure.
2. Professional Design
Having a well designed webpage with a proper balance of graphics and content is important to your website’s professional image. The number of people that will convert from visitor to satisfied shopper is directly affected by your website’s image. There is no substitute for a great first impression.
3. Customer Service
The provision of service to customers before, during and after a purchase as define by Wikipedia. Providing customer service can be in the form of service provided by a person, or in a more automated fashion called self-service. Shoppers want the control of helping themselves
4. Interactive Shopping Tools
Customers want useful tools to compare and keep track of products. Shopping tools should be easy to use, while educating the shopper about a product and encouraging purchases.
5. Landing Pages
Landing pages are designed for visitors to land on after coming from a search engine or clicking on an advertisement or banner. Landing pages give you the ability to directly communicate your service, ideas or product directly to the website visitor. This is called a reference landing page. For most e-commerce sites, you will be building a transactional landing page, where the measurement of success will be determined in actual conversions.
6. A/B Testing
A/B Testing is the process of comparing different versions of your content and its effectiveness at referring conversions. By using techniques to display different versions of your content, you can determine which method drives you the most conversions and make improvements to the site as a whole. To do this, many websites will rotate their landing pages based on the keywords a visitor searched for, or switch landing pages based on the number of visitors and times of the day.
Conclusion
It’s time to take a good hard look at your site. If you are not converting at least 3 to 5% of your traffic, it’s time for a site overhaul. Go back and reread these 6 website recommendation again and think about how you can start applying these conversion techniques to your web sites. Remember, every time you double your conversion ratio, you double your income. And who doesn’t want a pay raise like that?
Ok, thats it for now… I hope I’ve opened your eyes to some important considerations in e-commerce. Internet retail can be a rewarding and exciting venture. Be sure not to lose focus, and always make sure that you view your site in the eyes of your customer, the most important point of view.