Powerful Strategies to Improve Your eCommerce Site
With the rapid development of ecommerce and constant innovations, it appears crucial to stay current with the latest trends and technologies improving business and adjusting strategies. To succeed an online seller should be revising the regular tools, search for mistakes and improve. Each online business owner might be required to help make smart decisions and take the business to a new level. Even when using outsource software development and testing services by relying on professionals, the main aspects and tendencies should be comprehended. Below is a summary of the main aspects to pay attention to when considering powerful strategies to improve the eCommerce site.
Try navigation in a simple user’s way
To purchase on a website users should be able to find what they need. Sounds quite obvious and simple, but in reality, does not happen all the time. Try to understand your customer, take the customer’s journey from search to purchase. Was it easy? You found what you were looking for ? Do you have enough information about the product? Ask yourself a couple dozen more questions and then the answers to them will definitely enhance navigation on your site.
TestFort recommends website testing to be done quite often and the more often, the more pages there are added. It will help improve from the feedback received. Better navigation will improve user experience and motivate him to return for the next purchase. It is not always necessary to have a permanent in-house testing team to make sure the eCommerce website is functioning properly. Necessary professionals for specific purposes might be hired when there are reasons to outsource.
Check site speed
Today’s online consumers will not accept an ecommerce site with the pages taking too long to load. Only imagine that according to the statistics, 1 in 4 users will abandon a website that takes more than 4 seconds to load, and one-second delay reduces customer satisfaction by 16%. Such numbers make it self-evident that no matter how much traffic you attract the website will not make sales without a proper speed.
Plan advertisement campaign
Work on the advertising campaign of the ecommerce store to increase sales. Analyze data to understand your customers better, how and why they come to you, what they look for, what else they might need, what the trends are on the market. This information will help predict users’ behavior, correct mistakes, and plan advertising budgets and options wisely. Analyze where the website visitors stay longer, whether it is the product page, blog, customers’ comments, see what they like, and strengthen it. Understanding customer’s behavior will help understand where to meet the new ones and which tools to use.
Product images and description
Product images are of extreme importance in ecommerce. In an offline store, a customer can see or touch the object, online a picture is the strongest tool to evoke an emotion to make a purchase. Quality images with zoom possibility, 360-degree rotations, and 3D tours fuel customer credence and interest. Remember about the speed factor when placing the pictures on the website. They might be amazing but if they load too long, the client leaves.
Speaking of the emotions, keep in mind that a manufacturer’s instruction might be too boring to spark interest or even finish reading. Explain the benefits of the product, why it is worth spending money on, and how it can make life better. Make the best of the opportunity to present the products when someone is already on the website.
Content and website design should be complementary and together constitute a part of a comprehensive e-commerce strategy.
Checkout process
Remember why you started an ecommerce site? Correct, to make sales. Making the purchase simple for the customer is of the utmost importance. Numerous obstacles during checkout make consumers abandon the store. If several steps have to be taken, do make sure clear directions are given. It is preferable to use different payment methods. Other than Visa or MasterCard, debit cards, PayPal, ApplePay will bring more ecommerce sales.
Once again no matter how simple everything might seem Baymard Institute calculated 68.06% of the average documented online shopping cart abandonment rate. The value was based on 44 various types of research with the statistics on e-commerce shopping cart abandonment. To make sure the checkout process works perfectly it might be necessary to hire a specialist for website testing purposes.
Tracking abandoned carts and addressing the issue is a key to solving it. With the special software, it is possible to send friendly reminder emails about the purchase completion. In such cases, an additional discount can motivate.
Upselling and cross-selling
After the customer is satisfied with his online purchase, it is worth continuing the communication. It took a great effort to start it, now everyone has to take advantage of the sales on one side and more pleasant shopping on the other. A customer should receive information about similar or complementary products, which the ecommerce platform offers. Upsells and cross-sells might often be improved without any alterations in the software. If it becomes necessary to make a few changes in the software, outsource development might be considered.
Shopping from mobile devices
This might be the top priority and if it is not, then it should be considered as a top priority for an eСommerce company. Today a must-have for a successful ecommerce business is not only a responsive website but also an opportunity to shop on smartphones and tablets. Already about 40% of online shopping is from mobile devices and optimization for them will increase sales. After analyzing your sales market, such statistics may appear that most users are engaged in online shopping only from their mobile device. Accordingly, it is worth placing more emphasis on this source of potential customers.