The world of eCommerce is very competitive. Brands are fighting for the same audience and recognition, so you have to find a way to grab your customers’ attention and make them keep coming back to your store.
If you want to stand out from your competitors, you need to make sure your eCommerce site provides a great user experience. The easiest way to make the shopping experience memorable is to help your customers find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.
In this article, we’re sharing 6 tips to help you improve your eCommerce site and start driving more sales.
- Make Navigation Simple
A cluttered website with poor navigation can disorient and confuse visitors. In fact, research has shown that poor website design could cause you to lose more than 35% of your customers.
The design should make it easier for customers to explore what you’re offering. Make sure to organize your main menu in a way that allows shoppers to instantly find the pages that are offering the products they need. The eCommerce giant Amazon, for instance, uses vertical navigation links that keep the page decluttered and keep the entire site easily accessible.
To improve the user experience even further, consider offering extra services through filters like color, price, and size.
- Optimize for SEO
SEO is a vital necessity for eCommerce sites. Why? Because your products must rank higher in the SERPs than your competitors so that customers can find what they need and choose to click on your online store.
Optimizing your eCommerce website for SEO can yield a free, ongoing source of organic traffic to your store. When done correctly, eCommerce SEO optimization strategies will not only help you rank higher, but your pages will also provide the best solutions to a user’s search intent.
However, SEO strategies can be complex and take time to carry out, so you should consider hiring a specialized eCommerce SEO company to get the best results. With thorough and correctly-implemented SEO optimization, you can yield far higher CTRs and sales than through paid search.
- Personalize the Shopping Experience
Did you know that 59% of online shoppers believe that it’s easier to find more interesting products in personalized eCommerce stores? In addition, 56% of them are more likely to return to a website that recommends products, and 53% believe that online retailers who personalize the shopping experience provide a valuable service.
Personalization helps you establish a deeper relationship with your ever-busy and demanding customers. Help them find products that they’re likely to be interested in by offering product suggestions based on past searches and transactions.
- Get Mobile-Friendly
Today, everyone is using a mobile device, so that’s where you need to be. According to Statista, in Q3 of 2020, mobile devices generated 50.8% of the website traffic, consistently hovering around the 50% mark since 2017. Mobile optimization enables customers to multitask while on the go. Moreover, Google has employed mobile-first indexing, which means that its indexing, crawling, and ranking systems now use the mobile version of your site to rank you in the search results.
The best way to tell if your eCommerce site is mobile-friendly is to conduct a test either with a trusted online tool (like Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test) or get an audit from a web professional.
If your eCommerce site is falling short, it’s time to optimize. Sometimes this involves minor tweaks like responsive themes, mobile-friendly checkout, or progressive web applications, while other times it involves an entire redesign.
- Improve Loading Speed
Today’s customers are busy and have a shorter attention span. They expect you to offer a faster and smoother shopping experience, so if your site takes ages to load, you’re at risk of losing customers to your competition. Research has found that even a one-second delay can decrease customer satisfaction by more than 15% and cause a 7% loss in conversions.
Here are some tips to help you increase the speed of your eCommerce website:
- Avoid embedding large images or objects on the pages.
- Use compression software to reduce the size of the data sent to a browser.
- If you have customers around the world, consider using a CDN.
- Utilize caching to avoid accessing a database unnecessarily.
- Use tools like Google’s PageSpeed Insights and Pingdom to measure and diagnose site speed and proactively resolve issues.
- Implement a Simple Checkout
Once the customer decides to make s purchase, you need to close the deal as fast as possible by simplifying the checkout process. Research has shown that more than 25% of customers drop their shopping carts because the checkout process is too long or too complicated. Visit Abunda for simple payment plans on millions of products.
To boost user experience at checkout, reduce the number of form fields and avoid asking customers to provide repetitive information. In addition, don’t ask them to create a profile in order to continue with checkout and instead, allow them to use their Facebook or Google accounts.
Besides speed and convenience, you also need to think about providing a secure environment where shoppers don’t doubt your site. Since eCommerce deals with sensitive financial and personal data, consider using an SSL certificate and choosing extensions and plugins that will secure your site.
- Efficient Systems
Setting up a straightforward checkout process via a Punchout catalog requires integration with your procurement system, allowing buyers direct access to your catalog. Simplify the catalog interface for easy product selection, displaying key details like descriptions, prices, and availability. Enable buyers to add items to their cart effortlessly and proceed to payment. Ensure real-time updates of pricing and inventory to maintain accuracy. After checkout, smoothly transition back to the buyer’s procurement system. This approach streamlines the purchasing experience, improving efficiency and satisfaction.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to improving your eCommerce site, it’s important to accept there are no shortcuts and have patience. But while it is true that it takes time for your ploys to take hold, it’s better to build slowly and achieve lasting success than a fast one that will dissipate just as quickly. Just remember these 6 tips and will be on the right track to success.
