Shopping through online stores has become commonplace in the last few years, and so many companies have started transferring their business online. The competition among online stores is still increasing daily. In the course of your new business, you will undoubtedly find yourself in a situation where you feel a significant drop in traffic in your newly opened e-commerce store.
But you can mitigate that decline a lot if you start certain activities and use your time wisely to improve your business. Turn to your customers, encourage them to make purchases, increase traffic, and keep them in your store for as long as possible. Here is a checklist you need to do.
1. Design your eCommerce strategy
Like any business and company, you need to devise a strategy and stick to it to sell effectively. Part of the strategy is deciding whether to sell only online or have a physical store, which ranges of products to sell in the webshop, which marketing activities to use to increase brand awareness and increase sales, and so on.
2. Have a Responsive Webshop
Whether your customers are on a computer, tablet, or mobile phone, the webshop must be customized and easy to use. Let your webshop provide a superior experience regardless of the device through which the customer visits the webshop and thus ensure that customers return to you.
3. Describe the product and display high-quality product images
If you have ever listened to at least one hour of marketing class, you have heard that people buy your products because of the benefits they offer. It is irrelevant to them if the product description of the vast LED television receiver says that it has a diagonal of 102 cm. Most do not even know what 102cm is actually. On the other hand, if you state that with such a TV it is possible to watch a football match from the kitchen, there is a much higher chance that you will then sell it.
Also, make sure that the images of the products are clear, in high resolution, and attractive to the customer. Write as much helpful information as possible in the product description. Do not let a customer create an image of your shop as frivolous where even you do not know what you are selling. There must be no empty fields under the product.
4. Have affordable customer support
A common factor of all successful companies and webshops is providing quality service and good support when needed. It means that your customers’ needs should come first, and in any case, a potential customer should be able to contact you and get answers to their questions.
5. Ensure a good delivery experience with your products
Delivery is the main reason why potential customers give up buying a product online. With preferred delivery methods and prices, the purchase percentage will increase, and satisfied customers will return. Shipping should be affordable, and many web shops also provide free shipping for purchases above a certain amount. It is also essential that you use credible services for delivering that handle the products properly to not arrive at the customer’s address in poor condition.
6. Use internet marketing to make customers buy for the first time but also to buy again
For your webshop to be successful, you need to bring potential customers from a level that they have never heard of you to a level that they visit your webshop, then shop and shop again. Many companies that sell online focus only on the first purchase and forget to motivate existing customers to buy again, even if it is easier.
To motivate customers to buy again, it is best to use email marketing and remarketing methods on the Google AdWords advertising network and Facebook. In contrast, for the first purchases, Google AdWords and Facebook advertising are helpful to new potential customers.
7. Build a reliable brand
Online shoppers do not trust and buy from companies or webshops that do not operate reliably and credibly. You need to actively build trust among your potential customers because trust is hard to produce and easy to lose. For your webshop to be credible and earn customers’ trust, publish user testimonials and product reviews on your webshop, keep your promises and keep all the information you post accurately.
8. Use upsell and cross-sell techniques
Upsell and cross-sell techniques are used for better sales in web stores and a better customer experience. For the user to be as satisfied as possible with such an offer, it would be good to start by knowing what the customer is like. With this knowledge, you can avoid a situation where you overwhelm the user with unwanted offers and thus disrupt the excellent user experience in your web store.
An upselling technique is the persuasion of a customer to buy a better, more complex, more expensive version of a product than the one he has selected or reviewed. It is a tactic that results in better and more profitable sales than the initial selection. Cross-sell displays products that meet additional complementary needs that can complete the selected order. Such an offer drops the requirement that they would probably buy in the coming period anyway. The web store offers them by cross-selling at the right time and ensures their sale at the same point of purchase.
9. Collect emails by offering gifts, special offers, promotions, and discounts
Encourage customers to spend more by offering them a gift certificate when they spend a certain amount. Limit the usability of that voucher during the next few months. It will be an opportunity for customers to buy the desired item at a discounted price. Also, it can be a great time to collect new email addresses through which you can send special offers, promotions, and discounts.
Most merchants should strive to collect email addresses with every purchase. It would also be good to consider managing them in physical stores to offer customers a symbolic discount when entering an email address on a promotional flyer. All the contacts collected open up numerous opportunities for marketing activities in the next period.
10. Facilitate the payment process to the maximum
There are three ways to pay when ordering products from an online store:
- Cash on delivery – payment upon receipt of the shipment – Sometimes, this is a problem due to the high value of the goods or the buyer’s ability to cancel the order upon delivery which leads the seller to a loss.
- On offer – payment to the seller’s account before sending the shipment – Buyers mostly do not like this option, so it should be kept as an option, but not as a primary type of payment.
- Card payment – This option requires certain financial expenses because a payment gateway service provider is needed. But it’s a great investment because this type of payment provides great simplicity and security. And this is related to the number of transactions.
Make it easier for them to buy by offering them as many options as possible, working with as many banks as possible, and ultimately avoiding the need for permanent abandoned cart recovery.
Final Thoughts
And in the end, never stop optimizing! Do not look at your webshop as a done deal once you launch it because there are always things you can improve, be it product descriptions, buy and pay, design, or something else. Technologies change regularly, and you need to be up to date with them and upgrade your webshop in line with modern times. Find the part of the web business that works the least well and improve it.
You may have noticed that many people put the product in the cart and leave the webshop without making a purchase. Such things need to be figured out and optimized. If you are not satisfied with your current webshop’s functionality and design, consider creating a new webshop that will provide your customers with an excellent experience that’ll urge them to return time and time again.