Practical Guide On How To Optimize Your eCommerce Site For More Sales

Welcome to Kiran Gutha’s Blog. Practical Guide On How To Optimize Your eCommerce Site For More Sales. This practical guide helps you to boost your eCommerce site’s appearance, visibility, and always put the customer first. Let’s dive into the practical guide on how to optimize your eCommerce site.

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The Global e-Commerce Market Growth

E-commerce is booming across the world. The global e-commerce analytics market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 6.11% to reach US$22.412 billion by 2025, from US$15.699 billion in 2019. In addition, the e-commerce sales estimated to have increased by an astounding 16.28% from the third quarter of 2018.

For entrepreneurs considering an e-business, or even for those who already have sites up and running, it never hurts to pick up a few tips to boost your visibility and sales.

An effective, efficient way to increase sales begins with the appearance of your website. Make sure it is appealing and welcoming in order to grab the attention of curious Internet users and the demographic groups you are targeting.

Invest some time and money to make your web page attractive and easy to navigate from the user’s initial visit through the purchase process.

Online customers are more likely to make a credit card purchase on a web page they trust. A well-designed website with appealing hues, fonts, borders, and product displays is likely to engender more trust than one showing less attention to detail.

How To Optimize Your eCommerce Site

In this blog post, we outlined several e-commerce best practices to increase online sales.

1. Make yourself more visible to Google

The list of best practices focused on improving online sales. For the sake of the do-it-yourselfer, marketing, and search engine marketing for the purpose of search engine optimization are unnecessary strategies at the beginning stage. But there are improvements you can make, such as search engine visibility, that make it easier for people to find you, O’Byrne wrote.

Answer buyers’ potential questions&nbsp – People search for advice related to buying occasions. As an example, we spotlighted Dust and Things, an online store that sells, among other things, wedding decorations and gifts. To try to reach its target audience, Dust and Things attempted to answer some of the millions of questions it received about how to plan a wedding. It creates original and useful blog posts that answer questions related to planning a wedding.

Informative product descriptions – Don’t ever use the manufacturer’s product description. They usually are not as interesting as one you could write, and won’t help distinguish your business from others. Unique, informative, and interesting product descriptions boost SEO and keep people on your site longer.

Descriptive URLs – Use short, descriptive URLs. They should be short for ease of sharing, and descriptive so that they stand out in search results. Google puts keywords that are present in URLs in boldface type.

Appealing page titles and meta descriptions – Boost click-through with appealing page titles and meta descriptions. Other elements that will help boost your site’s click-through rate (CTR) are a descriptive page title, an appealing description, and extra information such as price.

Unavailable items – We suggest keeping the product pages online for items that you no longer sell or are out of stock. Otherwise, you could be missing the traffic. Set up your pages so that the item is clearly marked “sold” or “unavailable.” Show product recommendations beneath the item’s image or description so that the visitor is able to find other items on your site related to their search.

Alt text for images – Make sure your images have alt text. Image alt text is used by screen readers for visually impaired users, but alt text also allows Google to index your images so they can be searched.

Speed up your site – Increasing your site speed will help your rankings because Google wants the user’s experience of searching the Internet to be as quick as possible. There are several ways to achieve this. Go to Google’s search console tools selecting Other Resources in the navigation. Another list of selections will display. Select PageSpeed Insights and follow Google’s suggestions.

2. Make a better first impression

You have a new visitor. How do you make the right first impression?

Improve your copy – Say what you are about. Be imaginative. Use “you” more than “we.” Explain why you are different. Include a strong call to action. Combine with powerful photography or video for maximum effect.

Page bounce – Which pages are people bouncing on? A bounce is when somebody visits your page and then presses the back button. A bounce is an indication that the page has not met their needs. Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to a page that bounce off it. Pages with a high bounce rate are a problem because you are losing visitors. Google moves pages with high bounce rates down in its rankings because people aren’t finding what they were looking for there.

Mobile consideration – How well does your site work on mobile? More than 50% of e-commerce traffic is now mobile. If your site still doesn’t work well on mobile, you need to make a change. People search more on mobile devices than desktops, so you need to make sure your website works well on both tablets and phones.

Guarantee offer – A guarantee shows confidence in your product. It’s a tremendous way to reduce a potential customer’s reservations about your product, especially if they are buying it online and will only see it on delivery. The increased sales from having a guarantee and generous return policy should outweigh the cost. The best way to see is to test it out and measure the difference in your like-for-like sales.

Make your page more interesting – Smaller businesses stand to gain the most from a good “about” page. They usually can be more honest and transparent than corporate brands. To get the most benefit from your about page, be yourself. Include a photograph of your team and your premises. Show any awards you have won, mention any interesting facts, and tell your story. It’s also worth including frequently asked questions (FAQ) and a “Why shop with us” section.

Customer reviews – They are one of the most persuasive ways of demonstrating your product’s quality.

Show off your following – Showing that you have a following on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram is a good way to build credibility with your audience.

Product categories – Choose sensible product categories.

3. Help customers find what they are looking for

What are people searching for? – You can use information from your site searches to see what people are looking for when they come to your site. Consider rearranging your categories to make it easier to find these items. You may find a new opportunity if you notice searches for items or product ranges that you don’t stock.

Does the search work well? – Search for those popular terms yourself and see what is returned. Is it what you were expecting? Some systems will let you configure which products should appear higher in search results. Adding a suggestive search is a good way to make the search process faster for customers.

Recommended related products – Helping the visitor discover your range by displaying relevant products makes for a better, faster shopping experience. Directed Edge and Nosto are shopping recommendation apps that suggest related items while a customer is shopping. O’Byrne suggests adding upsell items on the cart page as a way to increase order values.

Offer gift card – If a customer is shopping for a gift for a loved one and has found a brand they think they’ll love, they may run up against the problem of which item to choose, especially if the partner is picky or the item is a tricky one to pick. That’s where gift cards can make for a thoughtful purchase. Offer gift cards if you sell items that often are used as gifts.

4. Reduce customer abandonment

Your customer has added items to the cart, but how do you make sure the order isn’t abandoned?

Show all prices upfront with no surprises – The most common reason for people not finishing a purchase is that unexpected costs appear after they have made the decision to buy. If you do have to charge for shipping or just want to ensure your prices are understood, include a box near the ”buy” button that explains your pricing. If you offer any type of free shipping, show this in the site header. If you offer international shipping, it should appear there too.

Shipping – If you can’t offer free domestic shipping for all orders, a good way to increase sales is to offer free shipping over a certain cart value.

Automatic cart recovery – These are apps that automatically send an email to users who abandon their carts before completing their purchase. Shopify offers cart recovery emails on all plans except Basic. Nosto also provides cart recovery emails that will include personalized recommendations unique to each potential customer. Cart recovery emails have a very high conversion rate so are worth setting up.

Shoestring cart recovery – If you don’t want to pay for an automatic solution, Shopify has a way to do this manually. Go to the “Customers” menu item and click the “Prospects” tab. This is the list of customers that started a purchase and didn’t complete it. Email each asking why they didn’t complete and you will gather valuable feedback and perhaps even get the sale.

Look for exit pages – In Google Analytics you also can view which pages have the highest exit rate. This means the page was the last one viewed before a visitor left your site. If the page is the end of the process, such as your checkout completion page, this isn’t a problem. In all other cases, though, it is. For quick wins, look for pages that have a high exit rate and make improvements to the design and content.

Consider online chat – Answering questions on online chat is a good way to stop customers who would otherwise leave. It’s also a way to gain feedback on what information your website is missing.

Out of stock reminders – Shopify offers apps with which customers can leave an email address to be notified when an out-of-stock item is back in stock. It’s an almost effortless way to gain sales.

Minimal clicks – Reduce the number of clicks for users. Make sure it doesn’t take too long to check out on your site. Adding an item to the cart should take a maximum of three clicks from anywhere on the site. Ideally, your checkout should also be a maximum of three steps.

5. Encourage Repeat Purchases

Repeat customers typically are the most likely to make a purchase.

Get first purchase right – Getting the first purchase right is where customer service really pays off. If you can make the delivery of items quickly and the items themselves beyond expectation, not only will you encourage repeat business, you will also gain word of mouth promotion.

Email offers – Offer emails are still by far the most effective emails in e-commerce. You also should use them to let customers know about new products.

Set up a loyalty scheme. – LoyaltyLion recently entered Shopify’s app store. It helps create a loyalty scheme that will increase repeat purchases and referrals. If you’re on a budget, a shoestring loyalty scheme is a good way to create a DIY loyalty scheme that rewards your best customers.

If you are using Shopify, go to “Customers” on the sidebar, and sort by “amount spent” or a total number of orders. Then choose “export” from the top right and download the CSV file. Open it with Excel and copy the email column. We advise you to send “thank you” emails to customers on this list.

The email should include a bonus such as a voucher code or exclusive access to a limited edition product.

We hope that you enjoy reading this practical guide on How To Optimize Your eCommerce Site For More Sales. If anything to discuss please drop your comment in the below comments box. Happy eCommerce.