Today, it is not enough to just have an online shop; although, if you don’t, you should join the bandwagon immediately. There is immense competition in the online space, with companies investing thousands of dollars in expanding and developing their online stores. Here are the top 10 ways to boost traffic and ecommerce sales for your online shop.
1) Investing in quality photos
This is often ignored and taken for granted. Having high quality photos must be the first item on the checklist for any e-commerce site; this can be a make or break any website. If you compromise on the photo quality, in spite of great content and even better design, users are likely to be put off. This problem must be tackled at the source. Reach out to the manufacturers and get high-resolution pictures of products from them. If there’s no manufacturer or third party involved, you can hire professional photographers to shoot pictures of your products. This is a sure instance of money well spent.
2) Offering multiple payment options
With the average customer becoming more tech savvy than ever before, having just one payment option is no longer enough or wise. Offering just Paypal or a single-payment option can mean losing a customer. It is a better idea to offer payment though credit/debit cards in addition to other gateways. Make this as convenient for the customer to checkout as possible. If you’re selling internationally, you need to be aware of country-specific preferences that people have.
3) Offering multiple delivery options
It is not enough to offer multiple payment options. Multiple delivery options go hand in hand with multiple payment gateways. To cater to all kinds of customers, the ones who’re willing to pay more for fast delivery and those who want to pay less for late delivery, the option of multiple delivery options must be made open to the customer.
The key to optimization of delivery is being explicit about the cost incurred for shipping the product. Sometimes, the cost may be held right up to the last moment, which may result in last minute abandonment of the shopping cart. Absolutely no customer likes hidden costs; try to keep costs low, but be upfront about it nonetheless.
4) Making your site mobile and tablet friendly
Technology has progressed so much that the PC continues to decline, and it’s now the rise and dominance of smaller devices. Ensure that your e-commerce store is optimized for both the mobile and tablet. The experience for the customer, whichever device he so choses to use, must be seamless right from product search to payment. Approach a professional and competent mobile app development company and ensure you focus on building a good user interface, design and customer experience.
5) Using Pinterest
Although presence on all social media platforms is a huge boost to the store and to sales, there’s one particular platform that is constantly underutilized. Pinterest already enjoys exponential growth, and it also enjoys the highest average order value of any major channel, twice as high as Facebook. So get started pinning!
6) Posting regularly on social media channels
Don’t just focus on getting more likes and followers, give them something worthwhile to talk about after. Posting quality content, be it photos of your products on Instagram or links to your website on Twitter, is an absolute must. Social Media continues to be a major part of Internet marketing. Posting regularly, if possible, daily, will add credibility to the brand and store, as customers are bound to feel more comfortable to see a socially active handle. This can also be a huge source of traffic to your e-commerce store. Most e-commerce stores have a social media manager or a content creation manager. If you don’t have a dedicated resource, it can certainly get tough to post regularly.
7) Having a Best Sellers Category
Another good practice is to use analytics to feature products in the following categories where customers are bound to click:
- Best/Hot-sellers
- People also viewed
- Related items
- You may also like
This way, you’re retaining customers for a longer time at your store, and increasing chances of cross selling and up selling.
8) Facilitating social media login
Signing up for a new account can sometimes take up valuable time of the customer, so why not leverage already popular platforms where the customer is likely to have an existing account? It makes the process easier, saves time as well as keeps the customer satisfied, as he didn’t have to fill out the same details again. However, this doesn’t mean you will lose out on customer data. You can use services like Gigya for precisely this reason.
9) Focusing on product description and SEO
The time and effort you spend on unique, genuine and catchy descriptions for each of your products will totally be worth it. Ensure that descriptions engage the customer. The text that goes into each description will help search engines with something to index, and apt keywords will ensure your store is found. There are several companies that specialize in SEO optimization, so this can easily be outsourced; you could also hire an SEO and content specialist.
10) Maintaining a blog
While it may seem a waste of time and energy to focus energy on creating a blog, as you want to boost traffic and sell products, not create content, keep in mind that all important SEO. Blogs can offer the much needed SEO and other benefits, which will in turn boost traffic to your store. Content on your blog can vary:
- Curated content about your own products
- Stories of life at work in your company
- More information about your industry
- Tips and tricks to make the most out of the store etc.
There are several blogging platforms to choose from like WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr to name a few.
While concise, these ten tips are certain to help increase traffic and improve your best practices to benefit your e-commerce store. Get started now and watch your sales stats go up.