7 Ways To Convert E-Commerce Browsers Into Buyers

Fortunately for budding digital retailers, it has never been easier to put together all the necessary ingredients for a functional and attractive free e-commerce website. However, even when you bring together social media promotion, targeted SEO and great products, you might find that your operation is inexplicably less than the sum of its parts. If this is the case, it’s time to take a long, hard look at your approach to e-commerce. Chances are that there are some changes you can make to improve the flow of your brand journey and remove the obstacles that are holding back your sales figures. Are you struggling to bring your conversion rate in line with page views? Try some of these e-commerce tips to revitalize your storefront and turn your audience’s interest into action. Even subtle changes can nudge potential customers back on track and create a loyal audience that will help you become a successful entrepreneur.

1. Put The Spotlight On Your E-commerce Products

Any successful retailer understands that a great store is not just an array of products on sale; it’s an experience that engages and inspires customers. However, sometimes by trying to bring this dynamic to life online, we don’t quite know how to arrange our e-commerce store to make our inventory sing. Attractive, high-quality media like videos and photos are an obvious way to attract audiences. So is great written copy powered by e-commerce SEO. But don’t make the mistake of just relegating these elements to your product pages. By implementing images into your category pages and menus, you can get a head start on your audience’s attention and build up their expectations earlier in the e-commerce brand journey. After all, these are the parts of your site that the majority of audiences will navigate before they get an opportunity to make a purchase. Imagine you’re selling women's wear and you have large, bright shots of beautiful dresses on your category page: a woman looking for a dress is automatically going to start picturing herself owning the dress much sooner. This is how you nurture the emotional connections that can be the difference between a purchase and a bounce, and help amplify your products throughout your e-commerce sitemap.

2. Keep Your E-Commerce Discounts In Plain Sight

Many of us have been there: you’ve registered a new e-commerce account or signed up to a mailing list with the promise of an exclusive introductory discount. However, you find out it’s buried at the very last pages of the checkout process, leaving you confused and inconvenienced. This tarnishes the value of the discount, and also makes your e-commerce platform look as if it lacks transparency. The discount could well have been one of the primary factors behind an e-commerce customer positively responding to your call to action. Snatching it away from them diminishes their feelings of empowerment, which we know to be crucial in making customers comfortable enough to make a purchase. So, make sure your discount takes effect towards the beginning of the e-commerce process, such as on the “Your Basket” page or even on the product page itself.

3. Put The Choice In Your Customers’ Hands

Adding a mini-cart function should be a no-brainer if you’re trying to make the best e-commerce platform you possibly can. Research has shown that e-commerce customers don’t put everything in their cart with the intention of buying it. Rather, they use it as a space to compare different products and assess their respective merits before settling on the items they ultimately intend to purchase. Unfortunately, many online retailers don’t allow easy access to this kind of service, and customers can only belatedly edit their carts at the final stages of checkout. This e-commerce software muddles what should be a process dedicated to finalizing a purchase, not rejecting items from the cart. Offering a dedicated e-commerce checkout page gives customers room to come to an unhurried decision about making a purchase. This way, you’ll allow them to proceed directly to completing checkout without the need to second guess their choices.

4. Make Adding and Removing Items Simple

As we’ve discussed, customers frequently use their carts to organize the products they are interested in before coming to a decision. Now, obviously, we as e-commerce retailers obviously don’t relish the idea of shoppers putting our products back on the shelf. However, trying to frustrate customer choice is the last thing we should be doing to grow our business. That’s why you need to make it as easy as possible for customers to be in control of their e-commerce experience. Letting them easily edit their baskets and alter the quantity of purchase with zero hassle can help your e-commerce store in the long run. Although it might feel like you’re letting an e-commerce conversion get away from you, you’re really helping them stay focused on pursuing the products they really desire and are ultimately more likely to buy.

5. Allow Customers To Maintain Their Anonymity

Marketing is a powerful tool in the crowded arena of eCommerce, which is why customer data is so valuable. Naturally, we want to know more about our potential audiences, hence why mailing lists and registration promotions are such popular e-commerce tools. That said, some customers value their privacy more than others, and may be cagey about sharing their data with an e-commerce company in perpetuity. Someone may simply want to pay for their product and go, rather than agreeing to a lifetime of special offers in their inbox. And that’s perfectly fine. Using your e-commerce website builder to offer guests quick checkout and the use of intermediary payment services like PayPal can make a purchase more attractive to casual customers. Especially those who are on the fence about buying and see registration as that extra piece of effort that they’re unwilling to go through. A guest checkout still allows you to retain useful e-commerce marketing details such as email addresses. But it also offers customers a relaxed and undemanding shopping experience.

6. Clarify Shipping Costs

No one wants to feel they’ve landed an e-commerce bargain only to find out that they’re about to pay through the nose to cover shipping costs. Studies have found it to be a major cause of customers bouncing from a checkout page and abandoning a purchase altogether. Even if you need to finalize shipping costs according to particular weight and location, it will still buy you a lot of goodwill if you can offer an estimate at an early stage of the e-commerce purchasing process. Another added bonus is that if you happen to offer free shipping, customers will be able to see that straight away, which should further improve the value proposition of your e-commerce business ideas on offer.

7. Keep Your Shoppers’ Concentration

A smooth, unobtrusive e-commerce process that flows from one stage to the next can do wonders for the overall health of your business. But you can only achieve this by keeping your customers’ attention focused on the things they’re realistically going to buy to give your e-commerce meaning. Don’t weigh down your e-commerce pages with a surplus of offers that bear no relation to the items they’ve got in their cart. This will throw up more questions than answers, and could end up derailing what should have been a quick and simple e-commerce purchase to begin with. Also, never, ever ask for the same piece of information from a customer more than once, especially if they happen to be registered. Pre-existing shipping details and other information you’re storing should fill out forms automatically to help create a smooth, well-lubricated purchasing process. This is the essence of good e-commerce website design, and ought to inform as many aspects of your site’s functionality as possible.

Conclusion: Effective E-Commerce Keeps Customers In The Driving Seat

Whether you’re wondering how to start an e-commerce business, or want to improve your existing service, these tips come with zero downsides and can benefit any business. You can’t offer your customers a great online retail experience if you’re not putting yourself in their shoes. Think about what keeps you coming back to your favourite storefront, and how you could implement this in your own e-commerce business. It could be a great user interface. Or maybe it’s a sitemap that efficiently connects you with the products you want. Whatever it is, chances are it’s something that makes your life easier as a customer. You’re not going to win a conversion from every visitor that lands on your pages, but offering an attractive and intuitive e-commerce experience gives your products their best chance to sell. These e-commerce tips are universal, no matter the product or market. Give your customers the benefit of the doubt and help empower them whatever their choices, and you may well be surprised at how willing they’ll be to repay your trust. Are there any tricks or strategies that you’ve used to complete difficult e-commerce jobs above and beyond customers’ expectations? Feel free to share them with us in the comments section below.

About the Author:

Emily Moore is an English and programming teacher with a passion for space and blogging. She believes that current exploration should be focused on preserving our planet’s resources. With satellites circling the orbit, it is easier to get relevant data on any environmental changes. This, in turn, should help people quickly address any challenges.