These are some of the common mistakes that are made that can lead to customers leaving your store without purchasing. Implement these 7 simple steps and see an improvement in your conversion rates!
Conversion
Conversion is the measure of how many of the customers that are visiting your website are actually making a purchase. If for every 100 visitors you make 5 sales, then your conversion rate would be 5%.
First of all, your conversion might not be as bad as you think. The average e-commerce website has a conversion rate of between 2-4%. The following points will explore some ways you can improve your sales.
1. Recapture
The hardest and most expensive part of sales is getting the customers to the website in the first place. Make the most of the ones who visited but didn't purchase by retargeting them. You can create ad campaigns for abandoned carts, entice customers back with a special discount or offer or simply remind them that you exist.
The average person needs to see something 7 times before they are convinced to buy. If you aren't making many sales, you may have luck with a retargeting ad.
2. Make it easy
Put simply, people are busy and lazy. If your customers are having to jump through too many hoops to checkout, it's likely they'll just give up.
Make it simple to navigate your website and reach checkout with as few clicks as possible.You could be making your customers work too hard with something as simple as confusing wording or a lengthy form to fill out.
Let your customers pay quickly with payment types such as Apple Pay or PayPal, checkout as a guest, minimise the info they have to enter and avoid surprises like shipping costs.
People are already parting with their money which is hard, make the process as frictionless as possible for them.
3. Clarity
There are some basic questions that any customer should be able to answer upon loading your website.
- What you sell/What you do
- Who you do it for
- What problem it solves
- How it will make their lives better
- How to place an order/book an appointment etc.
If your website isn't clear then customers might not be understanding why they should purchase from you and how to do it.
Customers need to understand what page they are looking at and what they need to do next.
4. Call-to-Actions
Call-to-action (CTA) is a direct instruction to the customer such as:
- Buy Now
- Book an Appointment
- Follow Us
- Pre-Order Your Copy
You might think it's obvious what you want the customer to do but it isn't. Tell them.
Make sure that your CTA buttons stand out from the rest of the website.
5. Sense of Urgency
Some customers like to think about a purchase before they commit to it. Creating a sense of urgency can be an effective way of encouraging customers to buy right now.
Countdown timers for ending discounts are a popular tactic, as are "Hurry, only 6 left in stock and it's in 5 people's baskets" messages. Urgent colours like red are often used.
Many websites use a popup that shows what customers are buying which triggers a fear of being left out as well as showing social proof (discussed later).
Even if you customer is convinced your product or service will improve their lives, why should they order right now and not next week? Give them an incentive to take the plunge and buy before it's too late!
6. Handle Objections
Where are your customers leaving your site? This will help you to isolate the point you're losing sales and correct it.
7. Optimisation
How do customers view your website? Make sure that you've optimised it for all devices.
Sometimes websites that look great on a desktop screen are a mess on a mobile device and are impossible to navigate.
Make sure all your buttons and links are visible and clickable and images still show correctly. Also ensure your website speed isn't moving too slowly.
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