The one thing that I think sets a great website apart is a thorough understanding of customer behavior. Now, you may have tons of traffic being directed to your website each day. This is only useful if you are able to generate sales or revenue. I don’t mean to say that you have to spend a lot of money on ensuring that you get conversions. Working with small-scale businesses and start-ups has helped me realize that conversions are possible even on a budget. Sometimes, you do not even have to spend a penny.
Make the Images Interactive
Whenever I design a website, the only question in my mind is, “What will make the user come back to this website?” The answer is quite clear. It is all about the content. And today, most of the content is driven by the images. What the customer sees on your website is very important. Good quality images are most likely to attract a customer to a product. In addition to providing high quality images, it is also useful if you can provide multiple images of a single product. To make the experience better for the user I suggest adding features like pinching the image, zooming in and zooming out and sliding the image works very well to communicate the features of a product to the customer.
Product Descriptions are Very Important
When I make a purchase online, I want to know exactly what I am investing in. This is true for any potential customer. Therefore, adding a great product description is essential in improving conversions. These product descriptions must be very easy to read and understand. Imagine that you are selling it to the customer one-on-one at a regular store. So, make sure that the content is tweaked to provide a conversational tone as opposed to simply copying and pasting the content provided by the manufacturer.
Utilize Cart Abandonment Software
How many times have you dropped products into a shopping cart and just forgotten about it? I do this all the time. What really pushes me to make the final purchase is a cart abandonment notification. Adding this feature to your website can work wonders for your conversions. This software sends a notification to the user immediately after the cart is left with purchased items. The benefit of this is that the customer is reminded of the purchase if he or she was genuinely distracted in the process of buying. They are likely to come back and complete the purchase.
Provide Free Shipping
Do you know what has made Amazon one of the best e-commerce portals? Free shipping. Remember one thing about any customer. They love perks. Now, it is understandable that shipping comes at a cost to the e-commerce merchant and this cost must be recovered. What I have observed with many successful e-commerce portals is that they provide free shipping when a customer purchases items worth a certain amount. You can apply this strategy too. This will not pinch your pocket but will, at the same, time ensure better conversion rates.
Provide Coupon Codes
Like I said before, give your customers as many perks as possible. The best way to do this is with coupon codes. The best way to make sure that you do not incur a loss is to provide coupons to customers who make purchases worth a certain amount. It can also be applied to products where you have the margin to provide a discount. One trend that I have observed recently is providing coupons on online payments. That way, you can be assured that the customer not only chooses the products that he or she wants but also makes the full payment right then to avail the discount that you are providing.
Make the Call To Action Button More Significant
Drive sales with a very significant call to action button. There are so many things that you can do to make this button more obvious. I suggest using a different color or adding a pop up when the customer chooses the size or other product dimensions can drive them to actually buy the product. I have also noticed a small notification with the Call to Action button such as “buy now and unlock added discounts” in several portals. This will also urge the customer to buy the product immediately and create a sense of urgency to improve the rate of conversion.
Make Checkout Easier
If there is one thing that just makes me lose my interest in any purchase, it is a lengthy check out process. I think that too many forms or steps give customers the chance to change their mind. Incorporate features like auto-feed that saves the user the effort of manually keying in details. For instance, filling in the city and state details upon entering the pin code makes it a lot easier for the customers. It is also a good idea to implement the relevant coupon codes automatically during the checkout process. Providing a safe and secure option for the customer to save card details or other online payment details is also useful. Of course, providing multiple payment options is also a great way to drive conversions.
Always Provide Contact Details
If an e-commerce portal does not give me some point of contact, it makes me doubt the authenticity and quality of the product. You should make it very easy for the customer to call you or contact you in case of any queries. What I personally am not too fond of is a query form that seems impersonal for the customer. The easier it is to access the contact details are, the more reliable the e-commerce website will seem. This gives the customer the assurance that should a purchase go wrong, he or she will actually be able to talk to someone to have the issue resolved. I also recommend that you provide multiple channels to contact customer support for best results.