Lockdown has forced many retailers to improve their online shopping facilities very rapidly. E-commerce is a competitive world and you can’t rely on customers who were loyal to your bricks-and-mortar retail site to stay loyal to your online shop. This goes double if your online store is difficult to use.
A great online store can reduce your admin burden, which is a benefit if you’ve got fewer staff available because of sickness and caring duties or because you’ve been forced to furlough them.
An online store allows you to reach a wider market, too, which could help you during a difficult time for businesses. When you offer an online shop, you can serve customers twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Follow our tips to give yourself an edge over the competition, improve your business and save yourself time and effort with a really excellent online shop.
Tweaks to save time and effort in your online store
Reduce choice
If you pride yourself on a wide-ranging, comprehensive stock then offering fewer choices seems counter-intuitive. However, it can increase sales and it can also reduce your admin burden. It cuts down customer indecision, so they have to put less effort into making a purchase; and they are less likely to contact you with questions, too.
Still not convinced that you should reduce your range? That’s okay. You can, with a bit of web design magic, create the illusion of fewer choices. Narrow categories will help your customers find exactly what they are looking for and compare the options quickly and easily.
Give helpful information
Honest, well-written sales copy will answer all your customers’ questions so they can decide quickly and easily without calling you with queries.
The same goes for product images. Use good quality pictures, taken from several angles to help customers see exactly what they are buying. The manufacturer may, if they are helpful, provide these. It is possible to take good snaps on a mobile phone – but do consider investing in a professional product photographer. They have the experience to do the job faster and more consistently than you can, and they will know how to provide images that will genuinely help your customers.
Boost trust in your online shop
Customers need to trust your online shop before they’ll commit time, effort, and money to the purchase. So have a think about your trust signals. Do you display reviews and testimonials? What’s your guarantee like? How easy is it to return a product? Answer these questions on your website, and your visitors will quickly become customers.
Get more sales by managing cart abandonment
If you’ve got a decent e-commerce module, it should give you data about abandoned shopping carts – that is, where a website user fills a shopping bag but does not go ahead and buy. Businesses typically find that almost 70% of shopping carts are abandoned. Here’s a handy round-up of cart abandonment stats from Baymard Institute.
So, your cart abandonment rate is much higher than 70%. What can you do about that?
The first step is to try your website out as a customer. Essentially you should make dummy purchases on a variety of different devices (desktop, tablet, mobile phone) to see what customer experience you are offering. Look out for the following problems:
- complicated check-out processes
- requests for strange data (do you really need to know your customer’s mother’s maiden name?)
- many pop-ups and redirections that do not explain themselves
- surprise postage and packing charges or unexpected booking fees
- poor optimisation for screens of varying sizes
- slow page load rates.
All these things will make your potential customers wonder if they are putting their payment details into safe hands.
The other thing you can do is to offer a choice of payment options. Read up about all the different ways people pay for things online, even ones that you would not use yourself, and ensure that your e-commerce module will let your customers use as many of them as possible.
In essence, make it easy for people to give you money!
How can I make my online store do more for my business?
The team at Eonic, a web design company in Kent, know all there is to know about e-commerce and will happily talk you through some ideas to optimise your online presence. We’ve got all the experts you need: from digital marketers to designers to copywriters. So, call Eonic today for a chat.