Just because your website is pretty doesn’t mean people are going to buy from you. (In fact, sometimes making a site pretty makes it less likely to sell!)
Each and every element of your store needs to be strategically presented to help your store convert better. Nothing should be there that isn’t necessary and anything that is necessary had better be there. There are a couple different ways to talk about eCommerce conversion: what you need, why you need it, and where you need to put it. The header is a perfect place for many of the elements I’m going to talk about; your nav bar and side banner, if you have one, are also excellent places to look for under-utilized space.
Now you know the "where" of most conversion techniques. Let's get to the how. I’m going to dive right into the key elements I use on my websites to increase conversion.
Contact Methods
We’ll start with the utter basics – contact methods. Customers want to know that you’re available. They want to know that if something goes wrong or if they have a question they can easily get in contact with you or your company. You need to have a "contact us" form and a phone number prominently displayed on your site. You may be thinking, “Duh, of course”, but you wouldn't believe how many sites I still see without them.
Even if you’re just a one-person business, get yourself an 800 number! You’ll be amazed by the effect it will have on your conversion. And when I say "contact us" form I mean use a form not just a linked email address. It looks more professional and gives the customer direction, which benefits both of you.
Right along with this ease of contact idea goes "live chat." Setup is easy and it allows customers who are phone shy to get instant answers to help make their buying decision. I’ve tried several different programs and they were all simple enough for even my not-so-tech-savvy employees to use. There are free solutions out there but I think live chat is an important enough element that it warrants more than a “whatever is cheapest” mindset. It will be money well spent.
Safety Logos
Now let’s talk about safety logos. You need them. People may tune them out because they see them so much, but they notice when they are not there. How prominently you need to display them is based on your customer base. Those who are comfortable shopping online don’t need to see them at the top of every page, but the less computer literate crowd does!
As with all of these elements, testing is the only way to determine what works the best for your site. HackerSafe is probably the most common seal but there are many out there to choose from. Your store or shopping cart provider might have some you can use or they might even have a partnership with one of the major companies to get you a discount. This is an important addition for your site.
Opt-In Forms
You also need to have an opt-in that allows you to follow up with your customers with regular newsletter mailings. Newsletters offer you the ability to actively sell to people who are already familiar with your site and liked it enough to sign up for your list.
Give them good content as well as special deals and they’ll stay on your list and continue to buy from you. A great tactic for getting more subscribers is offering an incentive like a discount - just for signing up. Retaining people whom you can then market to is a great way to increase your overall conversion.
Site Design
That covers the main third party items you need to have, now let’s move onto site design and discuss the elements that are built into your store platform. I feel that in order to have complete control over your site you need to know how it is going to look to everyone. Testing it in other browsers is a smart thing to do. I concentrate on Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera, and Safari. Browsershots.com offers a great, free way to do this. Sometimes a tiny bit of code can work fine in one browser but not work at all in another, take the time to check it out as it's likely that a simple fix is all that is needed.
Along those same lines, I like using a fixed width for my site. It’s very hard to control your layout when the width of your store varies by the size of your visitor’s browser. To make your site convert to its highest potential you need to be precise with your layout and you just can’t do that effectively with a varying width site.
No matter what page of your site you’re building, you want as much of the information as possible divided into easy to digest, bite-size chunks. Remember - a human’s focal point is pretty small and their attention span rather short so if you want to make the most of the eyes that hit your page you need to cater to them. Segment and categorize everything on your site. You want a quick glance to be enough to let someone know what he or she is looking at, they can then decide if it’s something they want to dig further into. You want your visitors to have to work as little as possible to find what they’re interested in.
Use more pictures and less text – in other words, show don’t tell. Make it visually clear what your store sells by using product images on the homepage. Feature your most popular or bestselling items. Put up pictures of your most visually interesting or unique products to make your site stand out. Use images that include people’s faces to draw attention to them. People like looking at people, I use images like this to make my live chat and money back guarantee pop out; it works.
Using in-context images mixed in with your regular product images is a great way to make your site more unique and stand out from the competition. These images allow you to create a visual representation of the ownership experience. These work very well for me; I have a large one on the homepage of the tapestry store and one on each of the main category pages. Seeing how the products will look in context of their 'natural setting' can help customers visualize and get more excited about purchasing. The easier you make it for them, the more you will sell. You can ask your dropshipper or manufacturer if they have any images or create them yourself by taking photos and using an image editor like PhotoShop.
USPs! What's your unique selling proposition? What makes you different? Why should a customer buy from you rather than your competition?
These are your unique selling propositions. If you offer free shipping - you need to make it known. If you offer a price match guarantee you need to flaunt it. A nice little graphic in your header or side banner is a good way to get it across. There is always someone else selling the same thing you are and there comes a point when lowering your price either isn’t possible or isn’t your best option. Come up with reasons that make buying from you a safer bet or a better experience then lay out those reasons for all your customers to see.
Back to categorization; one of the biggest problems I see on eCommerce sites is the nav bar. I see so many that are just one long list of category links with no breaks. This is very hard on your customer’s eyes and many will glance at the top few and the bottom few only and never see what you’ve listed in the middle. Only the determined few will hunt through every link to see if you have what they want. You need to create sections within your nav bar to break up the links so your visitors can easily see all you have to offer.
Most store platforms have "automatic category navigation" by default ...and most ecCommerce store owners don’t know how to change it. It’s actually pretty easy and I’m going to tell you how. So now you have no excuse, my friends.
Go to your site on the web, view your page source, and copy the code for your nav. It should be pretty easy to find, just look for your category names. Then in your backend find your "nav template" – if you don’t already know what it is start with your main template and follow the calls back to the category template.
When you find it, replace the category loop code with the code you copied from your site. Publish and you now have a static nav. All changes to it will have to be done by hand but I think that’s a fair trade for complete control. Now you can go back in and group your categories together and break the column with section headings.
Now let’s talk about product pages for a bit. The two most important elements on a product page are the product image and the "Add to Cart" button. Both should be above the fold and large enough to catch the customer’s eye. You can use a “Click to Enlarge” image but the image on the page shouldn’t be so small that a customer is forced to click it. Again, people like pictures and don’t like having to click more than is necessary. What you ultimately want is for your customers to get to your product page, see the big image then see the "Add to Cart" button...and click it!
I like to keep my product descriptions as simple as possible while still including all the pertinent information. Don’t write more than you need to and use bullet points and multiple short paragraphs to group the info across in easy to read chunks. Use feature / benefit statements to impart relevance and ownership experience to readers. With a little practice you’ll get good at writing succinctly about your products.
You should also always cross-sell and offer option upgrades on your product pages to try to get more out of each conversion. A lot of eCommerce platforms do cross-selling in the shopping cart which is fine but I like to list recommended / related products on my product pages as well. Depending on your platform this is something you might need to think outside the box about or hire an outside programmer to create. But it’s a great way to get more of your products seen and it adds a nice, professional element to your product pages many of your competitors won’t have.
Option upgrades are similar to cross-sells but are listed right before your "Add to Cart" button. The best way to describe them is through example, so here we go: Say you are selling a flashlight. Your product option upgrades are batteries and/or a belt holster. Instead of offering these extra products as on page or in cart cross-sells, you can create a product option that includes them with the flashlight so all the customer has to do is select from a dropdown box.
It’s easy; the customer doesn’t have to even look around the page for the upgrades! You can even go one step further and discount those add on items to entice the customer into placing a bigger order.
Lastly, let's talk about checkout. No matter what, it has to be smooth. One page is best but multiple pages work fine when you make all the instructions crystal clear. Each of your checkout pages should include a step number, name, and brief instructions where necessary.
For instance, at the top of the first page of my checkout process might be: Step 1 "Shipping and Billing Information – Enter your shipping and billing address and payment information below then press continue." Doing that makes the page look more organized and gives clear instructions about what the customer has to do.
Keep in mind that these are all general eCommerce tactics and your customers are ultimately going to be the ones who let you know what works for your site. Make sure you have analytics set up and remember to test everything; it’s the only way to know if you’re making the most out of your store.
Checklist:
- Feature your phone number and a contact form prominently on your site.
- Sign up for a live chat service, a newsletter service, and get a security seal for your store.
- Create graphics that advertise your unique selling propositions. This makes it clear to customers why it’s better to buy from you.
- Use a fixed width for your website and test any changes you make in various browsers to make sure your code is being translated properly.
- Divide your images and text into small chunks and/or bullet points to make them easy to take in with a glance.
- Use text sparingly, the more pictures the better.
- Use in-context images to show your products in their everyday setting.
- Create a static nav that you can break up into sections.
- Center your product pages around your main product image and the "Add to Cart "button.
- Keep your product descriptions simple and use feature / benefit statements wherever possible.
- Use cross-selling and product option upgrades to get more out of each sale.
- Use headings and instructions on your checkout pages to help customers get through the checkout process smoothly.
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