Don’t worry! This happens to a lot of first time ecommerce entrepreneurs. The right formula is out there; you just need to find it! Trust us, we know firsthand how much hard work you’ve had to put into your website to make it successful. You’ve spent hours adding products, editing images, making design changes, writing your blog and setting up all the odd and ends of your website. When the sales don’t happen, it can be a very frustrating experience. The good news is that with some tweaking and testing you’re sure to find the right formula for your target market, website and products. Every website is different so put a few of these tips to the test to see what helps drive sales on your website.
Here are a few tips to implement on your own website to see if they’re enough to compel your customers to buy.
- Shipping Rates. Shipping costs tend to be the number one reason for abandoned carts on a website. Imagine a visitor to your website is attempting to buy a widget from you. This person has a certain price in their mind as to what they are willing to pay you for that product. Then what happens when they go to check out and the price is much higher than they anticipated? They often get sticker shock because the price of shipping that good to their home is so high! It’s a good idea to test your shipping rates and to think critically about what you charge your customers for shipping. Many successful online stores don’t charge the full price of shipping to their customers. They charge a percentage to their customer and they internalize a bit of the shipping costs themselves. Better yet, if you can afford it, make shipping free! It is a great incentive for your customer to complete their purchase through your website.
- A/B Testing. Many of the best ecommerce platforms such as Lightspeed and Shopify, will offer tools to assist you with A/B testing on your website. That means trying different checkout processes, color schemes and product layouts for different customers. These apps will check to see what types of features on your website will influence people to behave in the ways you would like them to on your website. You can test to see what makes people stay on your website longer, or influences them to put things in their shopping cart, or helps to keepthem from leaving your website. A/B testing can be an extremely valuable tool for identifying weaknesses and strengths in your website.
- Traffic. How much traffic is your website receiving on a weekly/monthly basis? Most people (even those who are starting ecommerce businesses) don’t realize how low typical conversion rates are for ecommerce. Typically, a conversion rate of one percent is considered average. That means that out of one hundred visitors to your website only one will actually buy something. The best way to drive ecommerce sales is to drive traffic to your website! This can be done in any number of ways. The most effective methods are typically through social media, email marketing and SEO or SEM. If your website is getting really low traffic, then driving traffic to your website is the right place to concentrate your efforts for your business.
- Discount Codes. Give people an incentive to buy from your business as they turn every corner on your website. Quite often people will not be interested in buying from your business when they find themselves on your website. Much of the traffic on your site will just be people who were Googling things, or you caught their eye on social media. They weren’t necessarily meaning to purchase at that moment. In order to trigger the purchase, make sure that you tempt them with a good offer. Discount codes are a good way to do this, but they have to be obvious at every turn on the website. Use discount code offers in order to entice an online researcher into become a paying customer.