As a nation of shoppers, our love affair with online shopping shows no sign of abating. But there's still much that e-commerce websites can learn from traditional high street retailing.
Think about what works best on the High Street.Strong branding, great service, product knowledge, competitive pricing and no queue at the till. The same principles apply to the web.
Tips on how to get those virtual tills ringing:
Just browsing?
It's not just about Internet Explorer. Have you tested your site on other main browsers? At Createanet, we come across far too many websites that have never been tested of the other browsers. So check out Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera 10? Take a look at your stats. They should be able to tell you visitor numbers and how they found you.
Why you're special
Whatever your company's USP, it must be on the home page, not buried at the bottom of the About Us or Contact Us page. Apply the KISS approach to navigation (keep it simple, stupid). Not everyone is whizzy with a mouse so make your links big and bold.
Key products need to be as near to the surface as possible. Remember that every click towards a purchase loses up to 10 per cent of your visitors so let them know right at the start of their journey to the checkout why this is an irresistible purchase. By placing your key item or special offer at the end of a five level drill down, half your potential customers may well have already gone - probably to your competitors.
Picture perfect
Don't underestimate the importance of good quality pictures, multi angles, zoomed views, and increasingly video, to show off your product and provide customer confidence. This is the single most common failing of any website. And don't believe the myth that lots of images on your site will slow it down. If your website has been built correctly, providing good quality images will have no effect on load times.
Bouncing bomb
Do you honestly understand the difference between a click, hit, visitors and visits? If you don't, it's time to do your homework! One figure you should really concentrate on is your bounce rate. This is the number of people who hit your site and walk away within 30 seconds. Key things to look out for are where are they falling off, and what key words were driving visitors there in the first place. It's completely possible that you have inadvertently optimized a page for a product or service you no longer supply. Businesses evolve but their keywords don't always keep up with them. It all goes back to "the conversation" - that comparison between visitors and sales
Too many questions?
All websites want to capture visitor information for their databases but this needs some restraint as it can be off-putting. Ask yourself, is this information really necessary? Will the client have it to hand (you don't want them leaving their screen) and will you need this information again if the query converts to a sale? And here's how to avoid another big turn off - make sure that if a visitor fills in a form incorrectly, they are not greeted with 'invalid format'. Instead offer a helpful message.
Check it out
Converting shopping carts to purchases should be simple and efficient. Make it complicated and you're on a losing wicket. At Createanet we're always looking at ways to reduce cart abandonment. We recently reduced the abandoned cart ratio by over 10% for a client by simply changing the word registration to express checkout. Sometimes it's just simple signposting that does the trick.
DIY SOS
Visit your own site. Yes, blindingly obvious but you'd be surprised how many companies don't visit their own site, let alone those of their competitors. Road test them all regularly, get your friends and family to do so too. Invite feedback from regular customers. Encourage them to be brutally honest. Would you use it yourself as a customer? Are there spelling mistakes? Are the pictures clear and tempting? Is the check-out system easy to use? These things are all turn-offs to your potential customers. Remember the numbers game: it's not just about the number of visitors, it's about the number of sales.
For more information please visit www.createanet.co.uk
