8 Top Ecommerce Tips to Boost Online Sales

Discover the secrets that the pro’s use to maximise their income each month. Follow these 10 simple ecommerce tips and you will see a spike in your sales and income.

1) Plan 

If you are thinking of starting  a new ecommerce website then you must plan in order to be successful. An ecommerce website is like a second business and will take a lot of time in adding new products, changing prices and inventory, responding to customers and delivering your product once a sale is made.

Make sure that you know who is going to undertake each task and approximately how long it will take.

Shipping and payments are two areas where ecommerce website owners often overlook when planning a website. Who is your courier and what are their rates? Are you going to ship locally or internationally? Will shipping be calculated by weight and region, by total price of cart or by some other measurement? Will you offer free delivery in some cases and will you allow the customer to pickup the product from your store? All of these variable have ot be coded into the shipping calculator so it is important to understand your shipping process before you begin development.

Paypal is a popular option for payments but some customers don’t realise that you can pay using your credit card with PayPal. For this reason it might be a good idea to use a reputable credit card processor such as Realex. You will also need to setup a merchant account with your bank for payments to be cleared to your account.

2) Measure

If your ecommerce website is already running what’s the current state of play? What are the monthly sales? What products are selling well. What is stopping customers from buying. Where on your website are users deciding to leave without completing their purchase (exit pages). All of this information can be gathered using a good ecommerce cart system and Google analytics.

Armed with this knowledge you can improve your users shopping experience and increase sales.

3) Simplify

Make it easy for users to shop on your site. Don’t confuse theme with massive lists of products. Put related products into categories and try to have no more than 7 main categories. You can sub-divide categories into sub-categories if required but make sure that it makes sense to your customer.

Use an easy to understand navigation menu so the user can find their way around your website and make links clear and descriptive.

Make sure that the shopping cart is always visible. This reassures the customer and shows theme the current value of their cart. One click should lead them to the full shopping cart where they can remove or update products.

Provide a direct route to checkout. The user should be taken to the checkout page in one click. Anything more slows down the sales process, frustrates the user and leads to loss of sales.

4) Don’t Force Users to Signup

Website users are sick of constantly being asked to enter their details in web forms. Users want your products, not a relationship. Allow users to buy from your ecommerce website without having to register. Collect only as much details as you need on the billing/shipping page. Avoid the annoying two step verification process where you ask the user to verify their email address before proceeding. Anything that slows down the checkout process leads to cart abandonment and loss of sales.

5) Make Your Website Mobile/Tablet Friendly

This study shows that mobile ecommerce sales have grown by 31% in the first quarter of 2013. Many consumers prefer the convenience of shopping online using a mobile or tablet. Make sure that you are catering for these users by ensuring that your website is mobile friendly.

A high volume of user use mobile or tablet devices and this number is only going to increase.

6) Use High Quality Product Images

It is not possible to create a great website with poor image. The quality of your images will have a huge effect on the users perception of your site. Taking good product photos is all about the correct use of light. Dark photos are of no use. Try to eliminate shadows and distractions in the background. A professional photographer will know what to do but you can also achieve this yourself with some practice, and if you are going to regularly have new products it would be wise to learn this technique.

7) Include Product Testimonials

Whether you are selling a service of have an ecommerce shop full of products, people rely heavily on product reviews and customer testimonials. The testimonial should be authentic and fair. A name and picture of the reviewer or person giving the testimonial is even better.  If it is someone that they can identify with, like someone famous, better again. Give you visitors an option of adding a review and if the review is bad, you should still publish it on your site, with your response. This will give extra weight to all of the good reviews that you get.

8) Highlight Popular Products

Popular products are more likely to be bought again. Highlight them on the frontpage, in the sidebar or as an extra option when someone is viewing another product. Many ecommerce stores rely on a small number of products for the bulk of their sales.

We have created many ecommerce websites and in each case the website has proven a high return on investment for our customer. To get your own ecommerce site contact us at info@irishwebhq.com or phone 087 7667974.