The retail industry has improved greatly as a result of the growth of the eCommerce market. The rise of eCommerce websites has also increased competition in the markets. Today, consumers can access multiple products with a few clicks on their smartphones or computer. Although businesses with differentiated brands can stand out, some struggle with declining eCommerce sales. Making a few changes to their marketing strategy can help increase conversions and improve the overall performance.
Ecommerce site optimization is the key to success in the world of eCommerce. While your business will not achieve perfection, it will get closer to that as much as possible. This article presents 7 tips to increase your online store’s organic traffic and boost sales.
Why is it Important to Optimize an Ecommerce Site?
Ecommerce site optimization is essential because it improves your business’s website conversion rate. It involves creating a detailed approach that drives traffic to the website and encourages more people to buy products displayed on it. Optimizing your store’s site expands your audience and boosts your revenues.
Some online business owners don’t know what to focus on, change or how to optimize their site. The good thing is that they understand that doing wrong things can cause their sales to drop further.
The following tips can help your online store stand out from the competition and boost your eCommerce sales. The goal is to reach an ideal audience, present your product to potential buyers more appealingly and keep your customers coming back. Let’s jump in.
7 eCommerce Site Optimization Tips to Boost Your Sales
Optimize Your Site
Some online sellers opt to reach their target audience through Amazon-type sites, distributor stores, or other channels. But using your website to reach potential buyers is a better option because it gives you direct contact. It also allows you to get their valuable information which you can use to personalize your content or for inbound marketing.
Customers interact better with a well-designed and optimized site. Because of that, your site should not have cumbersome product pages that take a long time to load. Your audience land first on the landing pages, so you should fully optimize them.
You can include the following items on your website to improve the product and landing pages.
Special offers: It’s vital to display them because they can attract customers and generate their interest.
High-quality images: It’s important to display your products using high-quality pictures and show them from different angles. This allows potential buyers to zoom in to get more details and make an informed purchase.
Best-selling products: You should showcase your best sellers on your product and landing pages. Such products can attract more buyers to your site and entice them to look at your other products.
Product Reviews: Including reviews on your site can improve your sales because people tend to trust other people’s opinions before making purchases. Therefore you’re likely to see improved revenues when your target audience reads previous buyers’ comments about your products.
A/B testing: Use various A/B testing plugins to evaluate and determine which versions of your on-page elements convert the most.
Use Intrusive Pop up in a Smart Way
Pop-ups can be annoying. However, a good eCommerce site optimization strategy can help you serve your customers with pop-ups immediately after they arrive. Some pop-ups, such as privacy compliance, age verification, or cookie use notifications, are necessary, while others are promotional.
There are some basic common sense principles that you can apply to make pop-ups work well for your site. They include:
- Avoid prompting visitors to download a native mobile app for shopping the minute they land on your site. Give them some time to first interact with your best sellers or content before this pops up.
- Provide your visitors an incentive before collecting an opt-in email. This should give them near-instant gratification upon making the purchase.
- Ask your visitors to take a survey only after they complete a purchase or allow them to leave without doing that.
- Avoid difficult-to-dismiss or spammy intrusive ads, because they diminish your visitor’s experience.
Improve Your Page Load Time
Your store’s success depends on how fast your eCommerce site loads. The bounce rate increases as your website load speed reduce. So even if your site is engaging, your visitors will leave if it takes longer to load. The following ways ensure your website loads within a shorter time.
Avoid shared web hosting: Host your eCommerce store site in fast, scalable hosting. Avoid shared web hosting options because sharing resources affects your site’s performance.
Use Fast WordPress themes: Your preferred themes can affect your website’s performance. Fast WordPress themes can improve your store’s performance and increase conversion rate.
Provide Personalized Shopping Experience
Every modern shopper expects you to offer them the “red carpet treatment” because if you don’t, your competitor will. You will lose sales if you don’t personalize your content based on buyer personas.
Here are the steps that you can help in your eCommerce site optimization
Offer product recommendations: Imitate Amazon in offering recommendations and related products to your customers because it boosts purchases.
Use Geotargeting: Offer regional and same currency recommendations if your products are available in different regions or globally.
Customize Your Products Based On Device Type: Customize your target audience’s shopping experience based on the type of device they use to access your store.
Optimize the Checkout Process
The process from when the customer places an order to when they check out should be simple. You can also improve this by offering more options, such as guest checkout, because it enhances the cart abandonment rate.
You must be doing something wrong if your eCommerce site has substantial inbound traffic, but the majority bounces off without making a purchase. While some don’t want to buy your products, the number of those leaving your site without doing something should be much lower.
Here are 8 best practices that can help you streamline your checkout experience to improve your cart abandonment rate, conversion rate, and revenue generation.
- Offer a guest checkout option on your site.
- Add a summary section that shows your customers the list of items on the checkout page.
- Give your customers an option to preview their order and change it if they see it.
- Provide a trust badge because it instills trust in your customer and helps those on the fence to proceed with their order.
- Include a progress bar to help your customers see how far they are from checking out.
- Use a basic one-page checkout because it prompts customers to order quickly.
- Maintain cost transparency at your checkout page by providing all details, including the shipping cost and others.
- Ensure your website loads very fast.
Simplify Your Purchase Process
One of the major benefits of the growth of the eCommerce market is the ability to get what you want with a few clicks. Because of that, buyers avoid online stores with a long or complicated purchasing process. The following tips will help you in your eCommerce site optimization strategy.
Provide adequate information in each step: This helps your buyers to complete the purchase process in a few clicks, thus boosting your revenues.
Offer different payment methods: Buyers have their own preferences, and providing several payment methods can improve the cart abandonment rate, conversion rates, and sales. Some popular options include PayPal, credit cards, cash on delivery, and more.
Avoid extra changes: Buyers are likely to abandon their cart and move to your competitor when they discover that your site has hidden charges that you didn’t disclose from the beginning.
Offer free shipping: Your online store should provide free shipping whenever possible.
Offer Upsells
Many companies offer upsells and cross-sell, so you should also apply this strategy to your own online store. You can have it on your product pages, checkout pages, or after checkout. It’s vital to offer upsells because it gives your customers more value and enables you to charge them a higher fee for that.
Conclusion
There are many strategic actions you can take in your eCommerce site optimization approach to increase your sales. However, the starting point is analysing your site’s weaknesses before applying one or all of these tips. Your goal is to expand your audience, maximize the conversion rate and grow your revenues.