When visitors arrive at your e-commerce website this is of course good news but it is not such good news if they leave again without spending any money. It is therefore vital to turn these clicks into firm sales. No one would deny that for any ecommerce site, creating traffic is really important but if you are not significantly turning these clicks into sales, then it this could be a huge problem for your online business.
If this is the case with your business you need to set about improving your e-commerce site right now. Every visitor that leaves without spending is going to probably buy from a competitor’s site. So how can you fix this problem and start seeing a better cash flow?
Make sure that you have a reliable e-commerce web hosting plan so that your site has a minimal amount of downtime and is fast to load. A slow site will automatically lose you heaps of potential customers. Frustrated visitors will never help your business but relaxed and confident visitors can easily turn into definite customers who will be the very people who can help make your ecommerce site achieve its goals.
How else then can you help your site become ultra successful? Well for a start customers always want you to be specific. For instance, if you offer free shipping for orders, then your customers expect that their purchases will be shipped to them for free wherever they may be located. if your free shipping features are limited to selected locations you will need to say just that, otherwise your customers will feel that you are ripping them off. Customers always want to get what they have been offered and expect from a reliable e-commerce site. If you fail to give them what they want, then they will feel let down and definitely leave, never to return!
Another important point to bear in mind is that your visitors’ time is precious to them, so the last thing you want to do is waste their time getting excited about a product that is no longer available or out of stock for several months. When a customer sees a product on your site, they expect it to be available there and then.
Nothing can be more frustrating or disappointing for a customer than to be told that the item is not available, just when it has already been dropped into the shopping cart. The golden rule is to ensure that your site always informs the customer beforehand if the product is unavailable. Not to do this is sloppy business practice, a waste of your customer’s time and the first dropped bricks that pave the way to ruin.
To give your customers a better shopping experience at your e-commerce site, you may want to allow them to back-order a product once it is available. Zen Cart e-commerce software comes with a back-order feature so you might want to take advantage of that. If, however, you are unable to provide this feature, then get your customer’s contact info, at the very least. This way, you can make preparations for a potential sale in the future.
Remember that customers don’t really like too many distractions when shopping online. You could offer cross-selling to your customers in your e-commerce site, in which you give recommendations or suggestions on related products but only cross-sell items that relate to what your customers pick. Suggesting irrelevant items can be very annoying for your customers as well and strictly speaking is an improper selling technique.
Cross-selling should also stop once your customer checks out from the shopping cart. At this point your customer just wants is to complete the sale, so avoid directing them to unrelated links. There is a distinct danger that pushing unwanted links may change your customer’s mind about purchasing what is already in the shopping cart. This rule should also apply to window-shoppers on your website. Also avoid unnecessary pop-ups or advertisements like the plague they are enough to make people leave your site instantly and never come back.
A customer’s attention span always tends to be shorter when shopping online rather than just browsing for entertainment. In just a split second, they can decide whether or not your e-commerce site can give them what they are looking for so leave no opportunity unexplored to encourage visitors to turn into customers.
Moreover, you will need to convince your visitors that shopping on your site is easy and friendly. Make sure everything customers need is just a click away. If they have to click around your site too many times to get to what they are really looking for, then they are more likely to leave and shop elsewhere.
In addition visitors can get really annoyed and impatient with broken links and pages that load so slowly they appear to freeze. Watch out for that problem at the check out. This is where a superior hosting plan comes into its own as everything can be loaded so much quicker.
Finally your e-commerce site should provide your customers a safe and secure environment for giving out sensitive information. Only ask for information that is needed to close the sale, asking too many questions will make your customers uncomfortable or even suspicious. At all times you must look as if you are there to serve the customer – rather like in an old fashioned high street shop. Follow this basic advice and you can’t fail to succeed.
