There’s a lot to consider when it comes to e-commerce. New research and statistics are being published every day and the competition is rife with innovators, game-changers and movers and shakers.
One way to stay on top of things is to trust the experts—and read what they have to say about it. The gurus of marketing over at Kissmetrics have put together a massive guide on ecommerce, including all the problems you might run into and how you can solve them to better your business.
This is part two of a blog post on some of the best aspects of that guide, in which the important stuff is broken down and the complicated stuff made simple.
Dealing with shopping cart abandonment
Customers abandon their shopping carts all the time. You’ve done it—it’s as easy as changing your mind or finding a better deal on another website. When you’re running a website, this can be a serious problem for your business. Analysing the abandonment rate of a list of popular e-commerce websites, Baymard institute found that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.93%.
In another post, Kissmetrics point to these four reasons as the main drives behind leaving your items at the checkout:
- Shipping and handling costs
- Not ready to purchase the product
- Wanted to compare prices on other sites
- Item was priced too high
To get your shoppers following through with their purchases, show delivery and payment options at the beginning of the checkout process. This upfront honesty helps customers make decisions and encourages trust. Offer free shipping if you can (or reduced costs), don’t force your customers to register and always provide options to save the cart.
Assigning value to your website
Assigning values is all about making sure every aspect of your e-commerce website is an important part of the process, from getting customers interested to getting them through the checkout with a purchased item.
Think about what will add to the product you’re trying to sell. Will it help to add customer reviews or official product reviews? Would the customer be interested in sharing this with their friends? If so, add sharing buttons. Including seasonal deals with entertaining ad copy, provide discounts and entice your customers to spend more and ensure they never have any trouble navigating your website.
There shouldn’t be a single aspect of your site which is overlooked. Its design is important to communicate the ethos of your company. The copy communicates information. The checkout process dictates the customer’s experience buying items. Are you making sure it’s all as useful as it could be?
CTAs
A CTA is designed to increase conversion, by calling the customer to do something, rather than just passively absorb information.
To experiment with the effectiveness of CTAs, read this Quora post on ‘fake button testing’, which includes a test run by Asana on getting users to sign up by clicking a fake button. It shows ways you can ensure whether or not your CTAs are getting clicks, which has to do with the customers overall experience browsing your website.
These tips are all about improving the customer’s experience shopping on your website to increase conversion and boosts sales. More and more people are shopping online every day, and it’s the websites with the best inbound experience who will beat out the competition.
