New Year, New You. It’s that time again. No matter what area of your life you look at, there is room for at least some improvement. Perhaps your goal is to add weights into your workout routine, or you’ve promised yourself that you’re going organize the spare room.
Never neglect an opportunity for improvement.
– Sir William Jones
Maybe you’re going to finally get around to updating your online store! Sales are good… but they could be a lot better. Take an honest look at your eCommerce website and chances are there is some room for improvement.
We’ve put together 7 different ways to help improve your site and take it to a whole other level.
Video Content
For the past couple of years video has slowing been creeping its way into many eCommerce stores. This is largely due to the fact that video can help keep visitors engaged and tell better stories. This results in–you guessed it–more sales revenue!
According to
Marketing Sherpa, viewers spend 100% more time on pages with video on them. To further drive home the point, Internet Retailer states that
85% of people are more likely to purchase a product after watching a video.
Boosted Boards, touted by Paul Graham (founder of Y Combinator) as the coolest start up of 2015, uses a large video right on their homepage. There are testimonials that flash across the screen, all the while a video plays in the background of people using their awesome electric skateboard.
Full disclosure: Boosted Boards is a LemonStand customer. And we love skateboards at LemonStand.
Another example is
Asos, which uses video on almost all of their products. Along with multiple images of each product, there is a video. Video is especially good for clothing as you get to see how the clothing shifts and moves as you walk and also little details that may have been overlooked in a photo.
Checkout Process
Shopping cart abandonment is still extremely high and still the number one annoyance of eCommerce merchants. The good news is that there’s probably some strategies that would help you generate more sales revenue if implemented. You may think you’ve “done it all” but chances are you probably haven’t.
Due to misconceptions, many have been led to believe that the checkout should ALWAYS be a one one page process, despite the fact many stores have actually converted better with a multiple page checkout. What works for one company may not work for another company, which means you need to test your checkout process. Software like
Optimizely and
VWO allows you to A/B test your checkout so that you know what works and what doesn’t.
Of course there are
best practices to consider when setting up your checkout, such as allowing customers to checkout as a guest or estimating shipping fees before a customer starts the checkout process.
Your eCommerce platform should allow you to optimize the checkout process so you can squeeze out the best conversion rate possible. It is the most crucial part on your eCommerce site but the most overlooked.
With shopping cart abandonment so high,
Baymard states 68% of carts are abandoned, you cannot afford to overlook your checkout.
Retargeting
There are many reasons why people abandon their shopping cart. Sometimes it’s your checkout process, sometimes they just need a bit more time to think about their purchase.
According to
Business Insider, 55% of people who abandon their carts are simply not ready to make a purchase and they want to save that purchase for later. This is your chance to turn that abandoned cart into a sale.
If the customer wasn’t interested to begin with, why would they bother adding the products to their cart? Most people are interested, but they need a bit of a nudge. This is where retargeting comes in handy.
Many retargeting software programs will send out 3 emails to a customer when a cart is abandoned. One to remind a customer that they left an item behind. The second one offering a small discount such as 10% and a third and final email offering 20%. This is exactly what
Smiley Cookie did, and they were able to recover about 29% of their abandoned carts.
With the amount of shopping cart abandonment companies out there, such as
Rejoiner, you will be upping your conversion in no time.
Content
If you want to stand out you have to tell your story. What do I mean by this? Storytelling is a key factor in differentiating yourself. Sure, you could use the same lingo everyone else is using but then you’re not really standing out.
Creating your own unique voice allows people to determine who you are and whether they want to buy from you. It also gives you a chance to really sell your product.
Sites like Patagonia sell you on the idea of becoming an adventurer and the life that surrounds their products. They show you where their materials come from and why their avid on sustainability.
If you are using a manufacturer descriptions on your product page, make 2015 the year you stop! It’s of course important to show the specs of your product but you should also be helping your customers imagine what their life would be like if they owned that product. There is nothing worse than going to a store, asking someone a question and they read you the specs off the back of the box. Why would you want your website to do that?
The Dollar Shave Club does an excellent job of showing you the specs on the right but also selling you on the product on the left.
Live Chat
According to
Netop, studies have shown that 77% of people shopping online would like to make speak with an actual person before making a purchase, and over 50% say that the lack of interaction has caused them not to purchase. Ouch.
Live chat is really easy to set up. Plug in a live chat tool and put it on the bottom right corner of your pages, offering help if needed. Live chat provides fast support for your customers and they don’t have to call or email you, breaking down a potential roadblock.
Live chat also provides a way for your customers to give you feedback regarding your website, offerings and what could be improved. If you implement that feedback on a regular basis, you’re eCommerce business will take off like a rocket in no time!
SEO
Your website is like a billboard floating around in space. Just because you know it’s there, doesn’t mean the rest of the world does.
More often than not SEO is completely neglected or merchants have been sadly misinformed about search engine optimization. SEO is not some mystery that can’t be solved. There are many ways to get your site to show up on search engine, a lot of which you can implement yourself. Things like using proper title text, allowing product reviews and writing
unique product descriptions are simple and can go a long way.
SEO is a marathon not a sprint and can seem extremely overwhelming if you try to do everything at once. If you’re not sure where to start,
these guys have some great tips for you. We also have an
eCommerce SEO Strategy for Beginners that you may find helpful.
Mobile Friendly
It pains me to even have to include this for 2015 because by now, every single eCommerce store should be mobile friendly. Yet I still see stores launching that are not responsive. Why, for the love of all that’s good is this still happening?
Do people shop from their phones? YES! Do people shop from their tablets? YES! Do people shop from their desktop? YES! This means your site needs to perform well on all of these different devices and screens.
The experience needs to be seamless across all, since people move fluidly across their many different internet connected devices in this day and age.
That said, many eCommerce sites are now responsive. It’s likely that some or many of your competitors have launched a
responsive eCommerce website. Are they leaving you in the dust?
Because mobile eCommerce sales have grown so much the past few years, we’ve noticed an interesting problem develop: the focus has been put on creating a great mobile experience so heavily, the desktop experience has actually been neglected for many. Desktop still accounts for a huge portion of traffic and also the largest average order size.
eConsultancy knew that 18% of their traffic was coming from either a mobile or tablet but where was the rest of their traffic coming from? The results, based on google analytics, were as follows:
- 65%+ of our visitors use screens at least 1,280 px wide.
- 33%+ of our visitors use screens at least 1,680 px wide.
- 20%+ of our visitors use screens at least 1,920 px wide.
The numbers reveal they have more visitors who use 1,920 x 1,080 monitors than they have smartphone visitors. Another thing they noticed was that bigger screens seems to equal higher spending. The 1,920 x 1,080 set account for 14% of visits, but contribute more than 20% of revenue.
Lush, a natural cosmetics and skincare company that promotes no animal testing, is an amazing example of a store that looks amazing no matter how big or how small your device may be.
2015 Is Going To Rock
What are your growth plans for 2015? Leave us a comment below and let us know how you plan to grow your eCommerce store this year.
Publisher: Scriptable Solutions
Source: http://www.scriptablesolutions.com/article.cfm?ArticleNumber=157
Hegedorns Market, located in Webster, New York, has just signed with Scriptable Solutions for a brand new website - of the fresh and fancy kind! In the next few weeks, our jazzy designers are going to craft up a layout that will have visitors running for their recycled canvas shopping bags! Departments, coupons, cooking tips, and so much more are going to be front and center - some would say "top shelf on Aisle 1" - on Hegedorns soon-to-be new website. Don't worry...we'll keep you posted!
