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5 Great tips to increasing your online ecommerce sales

5 Great tips to increasing your online ecommerce sales.

1. Keeping your website simple.

Too many websites all over the internet complicate their websites. The key to allowing your visitors to do what you want on your website comes down to the simplicity. Is it simple to navigate to other pages? Is it easy to find your products, find more information about your products and is it easy to purchase online. Successful ecommerce websites simplify the checkout process and display clear pricing and shipping information.

Note: Don’t make people register to see your shipping costs or product pricing. This is a sure way to get rid of your potential customers quicker than they arrived.

Clear return policies and contact details are essential, and more importantly should be easy to find. Think about your visitors, are they going to find it easy to get what they want out of my online store?

2. Using images to say things you haven’t said.

Using photos online is essential. There are still online stores and ecommerce websites that do not provide images for their customers. Providing images is an essential part of selling online. If you think about the differences about online shopping and walking in a retail shop, sure you won’t have to leave your desk to shop, but you are also a click away from the shop down the road. It is vital to close the sale. Use clear, prominent images and pictures to display your products in the best light.

Remember to simplify images for your viewers. It is better have 5 photos with one item in each than to have 1 photo with 5 items in it.

Online usability studies show that people don’t read information on the internet, they scan pages on the internet and it is for this reason amongst other reasons why keywords are important and why images are extra important. It is apparently 25% – 30% harder on average for people to read on the internet. Keeping this in mind it is important to:

Keep your headlines to a max of 7 words.
Avoid making people turn their heads when reading your websites content

Keep sentences to a max of 25 words.
Introduce valuable content only, anything that may confuse your reader, may send them packing. It is important to have plenty of content on your products, but save this for another page, not your immediate sales pages.

Keep products descriptions to about 30 – 40 words max.
If they want to read more, they can click through to your “More information” page, don’t force your readers to read what they may not want to.

Try to keep paragraphs to 60 – 70 words max.
Valuable points in small quantities can work wonders!

3. Get ready to market your website.

Market your website once is live and kicking. Creating a professional looking website is a great idea, don’t get me wrong but, a website no matter how professional, with no visitors = No customers. Marketing is one of the most important concepts to master in the online world.
A few ways to market and get customers:

Collecting email addresses on your website when people make purchases gives you the opportunity to market to these people at a later date again.

SEO – use search engine optimization techniques to better your search engine rankings. Find competitors in your niche and look at their websites, what keywords are they targeting, how much of this traffic could be yours. If you want some more information on search engine optimization, you can visit one of my posts on search engine optimization tips.

Collect links from other website or directories to increase your link popularity, If you can find website relating to your topic that are not in direct competition with you, this can help you get targeted traffic to your website, this will work pretty well for your search engine rankings as well.

4. Make payment easy

Many people shopping online are looking for the quickest way to get what they want. Integrating an easy to use, immediate payment method is a vital part of “cracking a sale” online. If people have to wait for cheques to clear, or for funds to go in overnight they are generally dissatisfied and before you know it are looking for a place where credit cards are accepted and they can get what they want a lot quicker.

Paypal
Using Paypal is easy enough, and while the fees for using Paypal can be higher than online payment merchant fees, it is an easy way to integrate payment via credit card into your website with little or no high end skill required.

If you are a online retailer expecting plenty of traffic and sales through your website maybe an online payment merchant is the best option.

5. Think like your customers
What will your customer be looking for? Most of your viewers in any given day will all be looking for something slightly different. Some may be looking for the lowest price, another maybe looking for great quality and some may just be looking around, which is fine because these people can pass on messages to your future potential customers.

A few tips:

Add the products you’re selling to different categories.
Everybody thinks differently. If you arrive at an online store and decide you want to purchase some boots, you may look in the boot section on the store, another may be looking in the formal dress section for the same item. If you added this one pair of boots to both sections within your website, the potential to get both of these customers would increase.

Encourage other products upon selling items.
You may like to compliment other products within your ecommerce website at the time of purchase. For example adding a line: “People who bought this product, also purchased this product.”
Allow people to list your products.

Allow for products sorting.
People like to see a range of products when shopping online, just like you would when you go to a retail shop. As mentioned most people shop with a predefined motive as to what they want to find. Allow people to sort your products through their requirements; some people may have a set budget they can spend, and would like to limit the results to that price range. This would speed up purchase and provide the ideal customer experience.

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