Mike McDonald at WebProNews recently spoke with Khalid Saleh of Invesp Consulting who discusses some things eCommerce site owners should keep in mind when looking to improve their conversions. This is a video that all eCommerce site owners should watch.
They also discuss some common mistakes that eCommerce site owners often make. Among them are:
1. Neglecting to understand what the customer is looking for
2. Shopping carts and shipping costs aren’t clear
3. Assuming customers are “committed” to a shopping transaction
4. Failing to include security seals
5. Insist shoppers complete forms before shopping process begins
"Conversion optimization is where the money is," says Saleh. "It's important to drive traffic. It's even more important to convert that traffic."
He also notes that over the last year, brick and mortar sales have been down, and eCommerce sales have increased "tremendously."
I'd like to refer you to some SmallBusinessNewz articles from the past year or so that deal with getting customers to convert on your eCommerce site. Read them for additional tips.
Remember, You Don't Have Only One Homepage
Customers Leaving Your Site Too Early?
Why Are Customers Abandoning the Shopping Cart?
Catch Customers Before They Leave Your Site
Customers Want Reviews, Free Shipping
Are You Making These Web Analytics Mistakes?
What, You're Not Paying Attention to Your Site's Stats?t
Get Your Product Categorization Right
5 Key Ingredients to Surviving in Online BusinessKeep Your Online Business Alive in 2008Ways Online Forum Participation Can Benefit Your BusinessUpcoming Small Business Events for 2009Are You Using Your Business Cards to Socialize?Often Overlooked Places To Leave Your Stamp Online7 Steps to Earning Customer Trust OnlineWays RSS Feeds Can Benefit Your BusinessWake Up Call - People Use the Internet to ShopUpcoming Small Business Event Roundup | |||
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Comments
Great!
This was such a great article I used it to help another website owner figure out some of the mistakes in the website.
The biggest thing is bounce rates, if they are high then many things are incorrect and if the website owner has been promoting the site and it's not selling.. it's worth it to seek professional help and it does not have to be expensive :)
One can really do well using a oscommerce or ecommerce website template. Many, many clients are very successful with just a $120 setup and can even do it themselves.
You have 15 sec's or less to get that attention.. make sure your not distracting them, site is not loading too slow cause of image sizes, products are visible on the home page at least 6 or more, prices are easy to see, specials, sales just like walking into the store your website has to be your online store.
Yes, I've seen a massive increase this year in clients upgrading, opening and starting online versions of their stores. Once they come to us it's a total mess and normally just replace with a kit. But, sometimes just a few tweaks.
Good luck in 2009 everyone :)
I'm a shopper too...
As a web site owner of safety and security products, I naturally want conversions. It helps pay my bills but more importantly, my products save lives so I want my visitors to have what they need to stay safe.
When thinking about my visitors browsing experience on my site, I've tried to think about the times when I was a shopper instead of a web site owner and it really helped me include some of the things that I found helped me make that final decision to buy.
Thanks, Chris, for helping with this important topic.
stopping shopping before it starts
Nice points, especially agree with "5. Insist shoppers complete forms before shopping process begins." My website has an online legal forms system: http://www.medlawplus.com/legalforms/ . You can show the user samples but really they want to see the exact form they shall be purchasing with all their data in it before punching in the credit card number. We offer a free trial for that purpose. No payment, just create the form in non-printable format, and the user can decide whether or not they want to buy.
Excellent Advice
As an online marketing company, we constantly experience these same problems with e-commerce stores.
Your list provides some of the great advice we offer and its a tried & tested bulletproof list to help increase the success of the an e-commerce store.
Excellent topic and perfect advice.
Optimizing osCommerce Sites
Good list but I don't understand -
Assuming customers are “committed” to a shopping transaction
What do you mean by that?
I would suggest having it
I would suggest having it setup so the shipping costs is easily displayed whenever they add a product to their shopping cart. Many consumers use this cost as a deciding factor and if they must checkout and enter a lot of customer information to simply find out what the shippig cost will be, most will abandon their cart.
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