Having a high number of unique visitors to your e-commerce site is a great sign that you are doing good in areas such as SEO, marketing, and brand awareness.
If lots of people are visiting your site but aren’t buying your products, then there are likely things you need to fix. Obviously, not every person who finds your site will end up buying from you. As a general rule though, you should aim to achieve a sale 1% – 2% of the time someone visits your site.
In simple terms, for every 100 unique visitors, 1 – 2 of them should make a purchase. If you aren’t hitting that level yet, it might be time to change a few things to help generate some more sales.
Make The Buying Process Simple
Your e-commerce website should be easy for all visitors to use. It can be extremely frustrating if you’re looking for a specific product or category of products, and you can’t work out how to navigate to the appropriate part of a website.
Potential customers are used to being able to find exactly what they’re looking for in just a few seconds. A confusing website can really hinder the sales process.
While you may think your website is user-friendly and as simple as it could possibly be, you’ll probably be surprised how much your existing knowledge of the site plays a part in your ability to find what you’re looking for.
An easy way to test how easy your website is to use is to ask several people (could be friends and family) who’ve never used the website before to try and purchase a certain product.
They can then give you feedback about their experience as a first-time user of your website.
If they struggled or found any part of the buying process difficult, see if there’s an easier way of doing things.
The simpler the buying process, the more likely it is that people will go through it.
Raise Brand Awareness
Most people won’t make a purchase the first time they interact with a brand. Some kind of relationship needs to be established before they trust enough to part with their money.
It commonly takes several interactions with a brand before people remember them and think of them when they are online shopping.
Interactions don’t necessarily have to be visits to your website. They could be in the form of social media posts, blog posts, a podcast, or online ads for your business.
The point of raising brand awareness is to get your business’s name, logo, and website in front of as many relevant people as possible. When these people want to shop for a product that you sell, your brand should be fresh in their minds and they could very well head to your website.
Target The Right People
Everything you do to raise brand awareness and drive traffic to your website needs to be done very carefully.
While getting your brand to be seen by thousands of people sounds like a great idea, if most of those peoplethose are people have no interest in what you’re selling – it’s no different to no one seeing your brand.
It could actually be worse than this though, as your brand could be seen as being “spammy” or annoying to a lot of people. This could lead to negative comments on your social media posts, bad reviews left online, and an all-round less than perfect reputation for your business.
It can take a very small number of negative interactions for someone to dismiss your business as somewhere they would ever shop. That’s why targeting the right people is one of the most important things you can do to boost sales on your e-commerce website.
Any marketing needs to be aimed at an audience who will likely want to buy something you’re selling.
Social media ads and Google ads can be targeted to a very specific audience and you need to know who your audience should be.
Think about the age range, interests, location, and any other characteristic that potential customers of yours might have.
By selecting a well-defined audience for your marketing efforts, it may result in fewer people knowing about your brand and visiting your website, but the ones who do visit will be much more likely to make a purchase.
It’s worth remembering that it’s far better to have a few hundred visitors to your website who regularly buy something, than thousands of visitors who never have, and never will buy anything from you.
A good way of testing whether you’re reaching the right audience is to look at the bounce rate of your website. Anything higher than around 90% will probably indicate the wrong audience is being targeted.
Make some changes and then check the bounce rate again. If it’s gone down, you’re closer to your ideal audience.
Provide High Levels Of Customer Service
This is one of the most simple things you can do to boost sales on your website.
People want to feel valued so by providing exceptional customer service, you’re giving your customers an experience they’ll want to have again. This means they’ll be very likely to return and buy from you again.
Good customer service doesn’t begin once someone has made a purchase though. It begins as soon as they visit your website.
They need to be able to navigate your site easily, they need to be able to find the answers to any questions they have, and they need to know you’re there to help if they need it.
Being honest with your potential customers from the start can make a huge difference as to whether they end up buying from your site or not. They should be able to easily find out how long they’ll likely have to wait for their order to be delivered, the cost of items should be easily seen, and very clear product descriptions should be visible.
Giving customers all the information they need without them having to search for it can give reassurance that you aren’t trying to hide anything.
Trust plays an important role in online shopping so it’s well worth doing all you can to make your business appear trustworthy for potential customers.
Customers have high expectations when it comes to customer service. Your business will need to meet (and exceed) these if you want to boost your sales.
Ask Customers For Reviews Of Your Business
When someone buys from your business, they would’ve gone through the entire process of finding your website, buying a product, and then receiving their order.
Their experience can be a hugely valuable thing for you to find out about. They can tell you what they liked, what they didn’t like, and whether they’ve been encouraged to buy from you again or to recommend your business to others.
An easy way of getting reviews is via automated emails. These can be programmed to send to customers a few days after their order has been placed. This gives enough time for the order to be processed, packed, shipped, and delivered to the customer.
You have some options when it comes to asking for reviews. You could use a questionnaire that asks specific questions about the experience. You could ask for ratings of certain aspects of the buying process. You could also simply ask for a review and allow the customer freedom to write whatever they are thinking.
It’s worth bearing in mind that a lot of customers will only give you feedback if they’re unhappy with something. Customers who had a positive experience are more likely to not get in touch with you as they are satisfied with how things went.
This is where you could offer some kind of reward for providing feedback. A small money-off voucher for their next order or something similar could be enough to generate some feedback (it can also help generate repeat customers).
Receiving negative feedback or reviews is never pleasant. You’ve worked hard to build your business so hearing someone say they aren’t happy with the service it provided can be disheartening.
What’s important to remember though, is that knowing what people don’t like about your business gives you the opportunity to change things for the better which can help boost sales in the future.
No one knows what it’s like to buy from your e-commerce website more than the people who have done it. They can be a very useful resource for finding out what you’re doing well and what you could do better.
Have A Very Clear Call To Action
Masterfully describing the products you sell, clearly explaining delivery costs and times, having a user-friendly website, and getting the right people to visit, still isn’t quite enough to get people to make a purchase.
You need to give a very clear call to action (CTA) to encourage your website visitors to take the final step and actually buy the product they’re looking at.
Your CTA needs to be located in the right place. An example of this is a “buy it now” button. You could have this near the top of the product page before any detailed product description, delivery information, and specifications are given.
This allows customers who already know everything they need to about the product the option to buy it immediately without any further actions.
Another CTA could be placed further down the page after the product information is provided.
Any CTA used should be consistent with your branding and other CTA’s on your website. They also need to be appealing and encourage customers to use them. There are specific colors that can draw customers’ eyes and promote positive feelings that can lead to action being taken.
You need to be very clear about what you want the customer to do. Buying the product they’re looking at is the ultimate goal so appropriate CTA’s need to be highly visible and actively encourage customers to use them.
Upsell During Checkout
Once a customer is going through the checkout process on your website, they’ve made it very clear they want to buy from your business.
This is a great time to try and increase the value of each sale.
Simple things such as adding a “customers who bought this also bought….” section can lead to increased sales. When people are buying something, they are more inclined to buy something else too. Sometimes, just showing them another product similar to the one they are buying, or linked to it in some way is enough to persuade them to add to their order.
If you’ve managed to get a customer to see your branding, visit your website, and go through with an order, it makes complete sense to try and encourage them to spend a bit more money with you.
This can also tie into providing good customer service as other products may enhance the benefits customers get from their current order. Recommending these additional products is a great way of making sure customers’ experiences are as good as they can possibly be.
Have Multiple Payment Options
If you can offer different ways for customers to pay for their orders, this can help them make the decision to buy.
Some people don’t want to spend a big chunk of money in one go so look for payment plans where they can pay for their order in monthly installments. Other customers may want to pay by credit card or with a gift voucher.
Offering several different methods of payment can go a long way in boosting sales.
While you might not be able to offer much variety in payment, there are now quite a few third-party companies whose systems could be installed on your website for easier payment.
If payment methods are limited on your website, offering options based on dispatch time and shipping times can help meet the needs of potential customers. Cheaper options can be favored by some customers, so any way they can save money could be the difference between them making a purchase and looking elsewhere.
Financial reasons are one of the most common for not buying a desired product. If your business can help with cost reduction or offer different ways to pay – a customer will likely appreciate this and feel more comfortable going through with a purchase.
