For many businesses, converting visitors to your store into actual customers, is somewhat of a mystery. You can target the right market, set the prices perfectly, and still have problems meeting your sales goals.
But, never fear! Our team at Kissinger helps companies every day build some of the best performing eCommerce websites in the world. Here are our top tips to companies looking to convert more browsers into buyers.
Customization Creates Ownership
People like to customize stuff. It’s fun and creates a feeling of ownership. An ever increasing number of companies are offering the possibility to customize their products exactly as the customer wants. This trend has impacted every type of consumer good product you can think of – from cars to electronics, to home accessories and even mobile phones. Enabling customers to personalize their goods at the moment of purchase builds feelings of ownership and product loyalty – and gives you a competitive advantage over those selling similar products.
A survey of more than 1,000 online shoppers found that while less than 10% have tried customization options, 25% to 30% choose companies that offer customization as a choice over companies that do not.
And beyond the pure size of the opportunity, surveys show that those customer who had customized a product online engaged more with the company. They visited its website more frequently, stayed on the page longer, and were more loyal to the brand.
Professional Product Images
This one may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how often we have to beg clients to revisit their images: if we’d have to pick one single thing that would sell a product online, it’s great images.
Simply put, people want to see what they’re getting. The grandfather of boosting eCommerce conversion rates is having high quality photos of your product. The more the better. Show the products from different angles, in context, make them zoomable. If your products have different colors or types, make sure to get the variations on there too. And if you can’t take proper photo’s yourself, we highly recommend hiring a photographer to do so. You will not be disappointed.
Perfect Product Copy
Product descriptions matter. The role of product copy is to give buyers enough information, so they could convince themselves this is the right product for them. Clarity trumps persuasion. The best sales copy is full, complete information. No hype needed.
We suggest you offer both, the concise version and the long version. The shorter version should capture the essence: who’s the product for, what will it do and why is that good. The longer version should give so much information that the user will not have a single question left. If they read the whole thing and still have questions or doubts, then you have a problem. If they’re convinced only half way through, they can just skip and continue to checkout.
Make Your Site Mobile Friendly
People now look up from their phones exclusively to eat, drink, and sneeze – and even then, not if they can help it. The global mobile phone user base is 5.2 billion people, and 30% of them are smartphone users. This might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised at how often eCommerce website developers forget (or don’t know how) to optimize for mobile… and they lose customers because of it. According to data from Google’s Think Insights, 29% of users cite the inability to see detailed product information as a barrier to purchase on smartphones.
Stand out from the crowd and make sure you optimize your eCommerce store for mobile. Our suggestion is to use swiping functionality. It is a particularly effective way of saving space and is fairly intuitive for the user when presented well. But sometimes pinch-to-zoom implementations work too.
We know it can be hard out there for eCommerce storefronts, but we hope these tips will help your business master eCommerce conversions.
