Date
13 Aug 2021
Author
Jonathan Ward
Think back to the last time you made an online purchase? I bet it wasn’t that long ago, was it?
E-commerce has been growing rapidly over the last several years. The recent global pandemic has hastened that growth even further.
Think back to the last time you made an online purchase? I bet it wasn’t that long ago, was it?
E-commerce has been growing rapidly over the last several years. The recent global pandemic has hastened that growth even further.
In 2019, the e-commerce share of total global retail sales was 14.1% with 2023 forecast to be 22%.
2020 was the biggest mobile shopping year to date in the UK, with consumers collectively spending 82 billion hours in shopping apps, this is a 30% increase from the previous year.
E-commerce Solutions
With so much competition at your customer’s fingertips, it is of paramount importance that your e-commerce store delivers the very best customer experience. So if you have an e-commerce store and you would like to know how to increase the chance of converting your visitors into paying customers then follow our top tips for success.
1. Store Speed
Amazon has calculated that if their site only took a single second longer to load, they would lose out on $1.6 billion in sales revenue every year. Nowadays, consumers expect to have what they want, when they want it, which has made them impatient and fickle, research has revealed that 40% of users will leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load. Meaning, if your site takes just that 1 second too long to load they will click off the website without making a purchase. Furthermore, it is worth noting that Google takes speed into account when ranking e-commerce sites, the ‘slow and steady wins the race’ approach does not apply here! You can improve the speed of your store by taking steps such as optimising or reducing the number of images displayed, minify HTML, Javascript and CSS files, run speed checks, increase server capabilities (more memory, better processor) and increasing bandwidth.
2. Responsive eCommerce Solutions For All Devices.
One of the most important assets of an e-commerce store is a well-optimised website. A website that allows customers to find and purchase the products they want in just a few simple clicks or taps on their smartphone. Mobile device usage has continued to increase in recent years. As of April 2021 56.16% of all web traffic came through mobile phones. Responsive web design stands as an unparalleled solution in offering a standardised online
3. Clear Call To Action.
Every page on your site should have a clear objective, a step for your customers to take, Whether that be to add a product to their basket, subscribe to an email list or redeem a voucher code. For example, on a product page, your objective is to get the user to add a product to their basket. Therefore it is imperative that they understand how to do this. You can achieve this by adding a clear ‘Add to Basket/Cart’ button. The colour, size and copy of that button all contribute to your customers purchase so it’s important to test them before choosing a final design.
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4. Simple Checkout.
The checkout process needs to be as simple as possible. Eliminate any unnecessary steps in your checkout process that could dissuade a prospect from converting. Skip unnecessary fields in forms. Don’t time them out and make them start over from the beginning. If your payment process does involve several steps, simply let your customers know. By letting them know upfront you will decrease the chance of them leaving frustrated before completing the purchase.
5. Follow Up Abandoned Carts.
On average about 70% of shoppers will abandon their basket.
The means roughly 7 out of every 10 shoppers will abandon their transaction.
A potential customer browses your site, loads up their shopping cart with a few purchases, but fails to follow through. Oh well, guess that’s a customer lost, right? Wrong. You can (and should) pursue “abandoned carts” as the potential revenue is substantial. There are plenty of ways to win back customers, chief of which are friendly reminders that they haven’t made a purchase. You needn’t go through the hassle of sending these out yourself, though. Abandoned cart software can recover around 10% of lost revenue. The software captures a users details at the checkout and stores them. Those details are then used to generate a retargeting email. You could use tactics such as offering a small discount to re-engage those more elusive consumers.
6. Accept Multiple Payment Options.
When your customer reaches the payment stage you want the whole experience to be hassle-free and to go off without a hitch. For this reason, it is beneficial to have several payment gateways available. Research has shown that many shoppers will cancel or abandon items due to not enough payment options being offered. Online buyers have a preference for certain payment methods. One buyer may prefer the option to build cashback points with a credit card where as another may prefer to pay using their mobile phone through biometric payment. Before deciding which payment methods will suit and your customers the most here are some questions to ask yourself:
- Do you sell tangible items or digital products and services?
- Do buyers on your site have a certain type of payment gateway they prefer?
- Are the products low-cost high volume or high-cost low volume?
- Do you need a gateway to allow customers to sign up for recurring payments?
Of course, there are more steps you can take when trying to improve your e-commerce store and boost sales but these top 6 are sure to help set you on the road to success.
Here at Reach, we have experienced the ever-changing eCommerce trends over the last 10 years from both a visual aspect through to technological developments. A seamless shopping experience from start to finish is what we strive to achieve with the added advantage of key design decisions, analytical intelligence and automated processes creating a rapid ROI.
If you are looking for more advice or you are in need of a helping hand, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
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