It’s coming up to Christmas and every online retailer is thinking the same thing: will this year be better than last? My answer is: yes it can! There some people who are never going to buy from you. Write them off! But there is another group of people that you want. They have money burning a hole in their pockets and they want, no they need, to buy something! The only problem is that they might not know what, where or when they’re going to buy. In other words, it might not happen overnight… but it will happen!
As an eCommerce site, your job is make sure the problems of ‘what to buy’,’ where to buy it’ and ‘when to buy it’ are answered by: ‘your product’, ‘your website’ and… ‘now’!
There is an art to improving conversions and this tip will make a big difference to getting extra sales to boost your bottom line. At Web123 we specialise in affordable eCommerce web design solutions so we have to know what we’re talking about; if we didn’t,we wouldn’t have several hundred happy clients. But luckily it’s not rocket science and anyone can do it! Once you know who your customers are, and what you’re offering them, the next step is to map out your buyers journey so you can make sure your website covers everything your customers might want to know before buying.
Does your eCommerce website address every stage of the buying cycle?
There are many stages of the eCommerce buying cycle and if you want to be a successful eCommerce website, you need to make sure you’ve covered all of them.
Your website is your online vehicle to answer every possible question your customer might have. If you answer them all well, you could have yourself a new sale!
Sit down and map out the types of customers you have. Consider their problems, their pain points and how your product/service helps them. Think about what kinds of questions they’d be initially asking. Here is a simple table that outlines the stages of buying your potential customers will go through. Go through and complete this for yourself and then write down where you’ve answered them in your website… and if an answer doesn’t exist then you’ve got some work to do! It might seem like a lot of work, but this is why you need to make sure you’ve got all your bases covered: If a buyer has an unanswered question, it’s an objection to buying. If a buyer gets an answer, it’s one LESS objection. And if YOU are the one answering their question, you’re building your credibility as a trusted source. Who would you rather buy from, the site that just throws products up online shouting ‘buy me now’, or the site that cares enough to understand your needs? This mapping out process also ties in really well with SEO and you will discover some fantastic ‘long tail’ keywords that can bring you some highly targeted traffic (if you want to learn more about this grab our Beginners Guide to SEO eBook) There is a lot more to creating a successful marketing strategy for an eCommerce site, but this is a great start if you can nut it out. I know this blog has been pretty dry, but it’s a topic that you need to know about. It will make sense and you’ll see the big picture once you get into it… I promise!! I’ll talk more about eCommerce tips in coming blogs. Stay tuned readers, because each tip you learn makes a big difference to your online conversions!!
