Starting an ecommerce business is very easy!
A sentence we have heard a million times. Is that really true?
To some extent, you can say yes. But, creating an ecommerce website is not everything. The ultimate objective is getting customers and sales. There is a gut-wrenching process of getting customers to come to your website. And, getting traffic to your ecommerce website is the first step of getting to conversions. One might say what is a conversion?
Conversion is the activity you want a customer to perform once he lands on your ecommerce website. These activities can be a subscription or adding a product to favorites but the most important conversion is making a purchase.
An ecommerce vendor goes through a lot of ordeal of SEO and marketing to get a customer on his website. It’s a common understanding that the higher number of customers visiting your website means higher chances of conversion. But if you are unable to get the results as far as conversions are concerned that is an alarming situation. Let’s face it traffic does not pay bills, conversions do.
Moreover, if a customer bounces back after landing on your website it is very bad for the ranking of your website. Google takes bounce rate of a website very serious while ranking it. If your ranking goes down people won’t be able to see you on the web. So conversions are not only important for your revenue but for your ranking as well.
So the question that we face now is how can we convert a potential customer or a visitor to a customer. Let’s discuss some tips that can help you make these conversions.
Visualization
Time is of the essence and no one knows it better than modern ecommerce customers. They don’t have enough time to read along and thorough description of the products. That is why visualization is very important. It is also very important for the branding of your company and its products. Branding helps customers in trusting the product that leads to making a purchase of the product. Try to add different images of the same product from different angles. Product photography is a very important factor in an ecommerce conversion. A product with a precise description and attractive photography is more likely to attract a visitor to buy that product. Adding photographs of products with attractive models trigger the human nature of impulsive decision making that is a very important factor taken into consideration by titans of the ecommerce business.
Adding videos of the products is an even better option. People are more likely to watch the video of a product rather than reading its description and looking at its pictures. It is also proven through studies that websites with good images and videos will have a much higher rate of ecommerce conversion rate than others.
No Shipping Cost
Shipping cost is one of the main factors of ecommerce that cause the customer to leave without making a purchase. Due to large organizations like Amazon that offer free shipping customers now expect every ecommerce brand to offer free shipping. The issue of shipping prices should be added in every ecommerce pricing strategy if you want to keep your current customers and turn visitors to customers as well. If you could you must drop shipping charges and if not at least bring them to the least. It is in the best interest of your company.
Some companies that can’t drop the shipping charges increase the price of the product and compensate the shipping charges in this way.
Another mistake that ecommerce vendors make is that they hide the shipping charges and add them at the checkout process. Checkout is the most sensitive point in an ecommerce business. This is where you make or break a customer. Stats show that 47% of customers will possibly abandon a shopping cart due to a sudden addition of shipping charges. Shipping cost is becoming the number one factor for customers in deciding whether to buy or leave a product. To meet these shipping needs ecommerce industry has developed another shipping method that has met the market with great acceptance i.e. Buy Online Pick In-Store (BOPIS). In this way, a customer will buy a product online and will collect that product from their physical store. People like this method because of no shipping charges.
Cart Abandonment
Cart abandonment is one of the biggest problems for ecommerce vendors today. They go through a lot of ordeals to get a customer to the checkout process and they leave the cart without making a purchase. There is nothing more discouraging and painful for an ecommerce vendor as far as business is concerned. The conversion rate in ecommerce is just around 2% and the cart abandonment is over 70%. Many factors play their part in cart abandonment like hidden shipping charges, complex checkouts, missing security badges, etc.
There are many methods to reduce cart abandonment starting will letting the visitors purchase as a guest because people don’t have enough time to fill a long form just to buy a product. Then comes the form itself try to make it as simple as possible. With the increase in online customer, online frauds are also rising to reduce the trust of visitors. Displaying security badges will encourage customers to give their personal and credential information. Try to add as many payment gateways as possible. Another very helpful method is using a cart abandonment email. Good ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce offer cart abandonment email that have over 15% return rate. If you try to add all of these features to your ecommerce you will surely be able to reduce cart abandonment if not eradicate it.
Customer Service and Reviews
Customer service is the scale that customers nowadays use to measure the credibility of a brand. If you are providing good customer care to your visitors by providing them with the necessary description and support if needed, you have very bright chances to convert that visitor into a customer. New customers like to read reviews of a product before they make a purchase. Reviews influence the purchasing decision of young buyers, so don’t be shy to brag your success by displaying your testimonials and reviews. Add those in the product video if you make one.
