There’s a big difference between hits and sales on your site. You need both to be a successful merchant, but the latter — sales—is especially important. If you find your site’s stats have been visitor-heavy but they’re not making purchases, then you need to improve your website conversion right away. Luckily, RepricerExpress has 7 tips to help improve hits-versus-buys percentage.
Tell Your Buyers Who You Are
One of the biggest fears people have about online shopping is that they’ll get ripped off. It’s not like shopping at a brick-and-mortar store where you can manually inspect the item for flaws; at an online store, you’re trusting the seller to be honest and forthright and have a good returns policy in place.
In other words, you need to build trust with your buyers. And one of the best ways of doing this is to be transparent about who you are. Have a detailed ‘About Us’ section, include reviews or press coverage, and post contact details like email, address and phone number. It will go a long way to erasing people’s concerns about shopping from you online.
Spend a Few Minutes Editing Your Photos
Any magazine or newspaper you’ve ever picked up rarely features photos that look like they’ve been taken with a primitive camera phone. Why? They’re selling a product—news and information—and have to make it as appealing as possible.
You’re employing the same concept and your photos are one of the first things a person will notice about your site. Nobody’s telling you to go out and splurge on a fancy camera, but there’s software available (e.g. Photoshop, iPhoto, Gimp, etc.) where you can edit your photos to a new level. Invest in a white background, shoot on a sunny day (instead of using flash), and take the time to smooth out rough edges during the editing process.
Be Precise About Shipping Times and Costs
The other day, I ordered a package online and the seller offered two shipping options: expedited, for a handful of change, and express, for about three times more. Because my package wasn’t that expensive and I didn’t need immediately, I opted for the former. It was scheduled to arrive about nine days after I placed the order, but you can imagine my delight when it arrived three days early.
When dealing with your own shoppers, give them a fairly accurate idea of when their item will arrive. And if you can get it out faster than that, do so using any means possible. It will be an awesome little treat that will endear buyers to you forever (or almost forever).
Streamline Your Site So It Reads Easily
Mobile shopping, depending on what stats you read, comprises roughly half of online shopping. People want to be able to buy products on whatever device they’re using, wherever they are. And with timed sales going on, they don’t — or can’t — wait until they’re in front of a desktop computer to purchase the item.
But you could be losing more conversions than you think by not optimising your site for mobile viewing. If consumers have to pinch and zoom to take in all the information instead of just having it available for them, the chances of them actually buying that product drop dramatically. And really, enabling mobile view is so easy, you have no reason to not be doing it.
Refine Your Product Descriptions
Writing is both a gift and a skill, but you don’t have to be an expert wordsmith to have solid product descriptions. Get all the relevant information down with the most important first (and then decreasing in importance), avoid untruths, don’t dress up your language if it’ll obscure the meaning, and tell your buyers what the product can do (instead of listing the specs and hoping they’ll get the idea themselves).
Use a Call to Action
It may sound ridiculously simple, but are you actually telling your shoppers what you want them to do? Sure, it may be implied that you want them to purchase what they’ve been looking at, but sometimes you need to be a little more overt than that. Insert a little call to action on product pages so buyers are expressly told what you want of them.
Make Checking Out Easy
How many times have you shopped at a brick-and-mortar store and found yourself in the checkout line, wanting to scream in frustration because the process was far more complicated than it needed to be? Whether it’s the scanner working incorrectly, the card terminal not reading your Visa or the cashier unsure if the right price tag is on the product, it seems like factors are slowing things down unnecessarily.
When you’re at a brick-and-mortar store, it’s pretty difficult to leave the line without your product because the payment process is so messy. That’s not nearly the case in the online world, as buyers will not hesitate to leave a full shopping cart in search of easier times elsewhere. Help improve your website conversion by de-cluttering the checkout process and making it as fast and painless as possible.
