So you want to sell more online?
Good news, customers want to buy more online. E-commerce sales in the US rose by $33 billion from 2011 to 2012. Mobile shopping alone is predicted to represent a quarter of all e-commerce by 2016 and by 2014, mobile will account for 30% of all US Internet access and will likely surpass total desktop usage. In light of these seismic shifts, is your site optimized for e-commerce? If not, here are seven simple things you can do now. We tackled this at my company and it took five very full months to implement with results well worth the efforts.
Choose one main goal to focus on, such as improving your conversion rate or increasing traffic.
2) Pay for the right things
While many resources and tools are available for free (WordPress, plug-ins), there are definitely some things you shouldn’t skimp on. Be prepared to pay for graphic design, a project manager who knows how to drive things forward, and a website design company that understands your goal, can work within your budget, and has a proven track record of delivering on time and on budget.
3) Faster is Better
Have you tried your site from a smartphone lately? If you have time to sip your latte while waiting for it to load, it’s too slow. Have your web team look at the platform they are using and see how they can improve the speed.
4) Optimize like Crazy
Plan for mobile shoppers - your site needs to be able to re-size based on the device of the visitor. Add more visual content for people viewing on the go. Make sure all buttons and calls to action are “tap-friendly.”
5) Sales Funnel
If you are selling, make sure you are taking visitors down a sales funnel. In other words, guide them to the parts of the site where they can purchase where they won’t get distracted by lots of shiny objects on the site that don’t lead to getting out their credit card.
6) Offer Free Shipping
Research shows this is the number one thing that convinces visitors to buy. Think about Amazon and Zappos. It works. Do the numbers to see how you can make it fit with your business model.
7) Focus on SEO
Invest in more content and the right content. Video ranks higher than text in search engines and it has more a long-term effect on SEO.
What you can do right now:
• Research the sites of competitors in your space and also companies not in your space that have successful e-commerce businesses
• Look at your data in
• Talk to people in companies selling to the same demographic about what has worked, and what hasn't on their websites
Don’t give your customers and visitors any excuse to click or tap away from your site…make it easy for them to buy quickly, even if it takes you five months to do so!
