As an e-commerce business you need your website to do the heavy-lifting in making sales, sure you can be attracting lots of potential customers on Instagram or Tik Tok or ads but if they reach your website and don’t then click the ‘add to cart’ button then your marketing efforts are wasted. It can leave you wondering why your website is not converting to sales and how you can convert those visitors into customers.
Assuming your products are amazing, of course, and I am sure they are. There are many aspects that could be stopping your business or brand getting the sales that you would like from marketing, branding, positioning and the website itself.
What is your website traffic like?
You should have access to your analytics or someone you trust to be able to review them for you. The first thing you need to check if you haven’t already is whether your website is getting a good amount of traffic. If not you could have a marketing or positioning problem. Small amounts of data can help you to assess what’s working and not, but larger amounts of data is going to give you more accurate information.
So if you aren’t getting many views still check that you aren’t making any of the mistakes in this article but otherwise focus on increasing the views to your website first by working on your marketing strategy.
Are you getting views to your website but they aren’t converting into sales?
If people are visiting your website then you can gain extra insight by looking at the pages they visit and where drop-offs happen. This can help to potentially pinpoint why they might be leaving. Can you spot anything on the page that could be off-putting, do the links work, in fact check everything is working at this stage, is there anything that might be distracting (like a big social media call to action that ends up with people getting lost in the scroll).
Here are some of the reasons potential customers will leave your website without purchasing:
- The product is not for them
- They don’t understand the benefit of the product
- The price is too high
- The price is too low
- It’s different to what they expected from social media/ads/marketing
- Branding is not appealing to the visitors you are getting
- The brand looks and feels different to social media/ads/other marketing
- photography isn’t good
- Brand voice is inconsistent
- hard to navigate
- annoying pop-ups
- slow-loading
- poor or unappealing design – looks untrustworthy
- legibility issues
- they can’t find what they are looking for
- not having relevant information like measurements, size guides, ingredients etc
- high shipping cost
- distracted by social media links
- no or bad reviews
- a discount code box
- no upfront shipping costs showing on the website or within the basket stage
- a long or complicated checkout process
- the mobile version of your website is not great
How to get more sales e-commerce by building trust
Every time we visit a website our subconscience is checking that it feels legitimate and trustworthy. Visitors look to see if anything looks ‘fishy’ (sorry, fish), it’s a gut check as to whether things look right at first. People will notice if there are things like spelling mistakes, if the site looks really basic or put together in a rush, if the design is outdated and more as little indicators that something isn’t right.
Customers don’t want to buy from a website that looks like it’s here today and gone tomorrow. So how can you show you are a legitimate website and business that is sticking around. Investing in website design can really pay off as a website designer can ensure your website looks professional and modern, is easy to use and navigate and ultimately set up to sell.
Trust Markers
SSL Certificate
You need to make sure that your website has the little lock icon in the url bar to show you have a valid SSL certificate. A few years ago this was only really utilised by e-commerce and banks but nowadays most websites will have sorted this because browsers like Google began to flag when there wasn’t an SSL.
Well-known payment processors
Having a secure payment process is paramount for customers and it can help to see well-known names like Paypal, Stripe and WorldPay as they will feel reassured that the payment part is handled by a secure method.
Policies
Have a clear link to your policy pages: Shipping Information, Returns, Privacy Policy and depending on your products things like Sustainability Policies may also be relevant.
Addresses or easy ways to contact for support
If your website looks a bit anonymous and doesn’t have contact methods, people will worry that if they have a problem it will be tough luck.
Here are the main things that your e-commerce website must do to convert visitors to customers
1 – be easy to navigate
- A clear menu
- A working and powerful search functionality
- Uncomplicated pages with focussed call to actions
- Plan a user flow
2 – make it easy to purchase your products
Make use of product categories and filters especially if you have a larger range of products. Have a clear ‘add to basket’ button, go with high contrast to stand out and ensure it is high up on the page and not pushed down by text. The basket and checkout process should be simple to use, like a guest checkout and a one page checkout, you can add features like postcode lookup to help people quickly enter their addresses.
I’m a fan of being able to see the shipping costs clearly, I hate adding products not knowing how much the delivery cost is going to end up at until I have put my address in and progressed through the checkout – if I haven’t been put off (I realise this can sometimes be unavoidable as you need the address to calculate however even then a calculator at the basket stage or sooner).
3 – great product photos
It can be great to have a number of photos from different angles as well as a ‘lifestyle’ photo too of the product in use, for example a lipstick shown on different skintones, clothing on a person, artwork on a wall etc. For some products especially at the higher price point a video can be a nice touch to include.
4 – appeal visually to your target audience/customers
With so much competition online your website must be on-brand just like everything else. Although it’s no good just having a consistent brand if it doesn’t appeal to your target audience. This can be colours – pink can be a bit of a divisive one so just because your audience are female identifying and your favourite colour is pink does not mean you should plaster pink all over your website (or brand) if actually your potential clients are into minimalism with white, blacks and subtle neutrals!
5 – speak to your target audience/customers
Does your brand voice fit for your audience, is it consistent across all customer touchpoints from social media, adverts and of course the website.
As an ethical business you can and should make a point to find ways to showcase your values, ethics and policies. Part of your brand is the ethics and values that you have, so consider what your customers will want to know and ensure you reassure them. For example if you are vegan beauty brand then make sure your website clearly indicates 100% vegan ingredients and cruelty free. If you are a fashion brand talk about the sustainable materials you use and how they are ethically sourced
6 – be search engine friendly but user focussed
It goes without saying that you should have some basic SEO measures in place to help your shop get picked up by google. What you should focus on though is being user friendly first and creating an engaging website for your customers.
7 – be accessible
You should take steps to make your website more accessible, things like good contrast of colours on pages and alt tags for inages.
8 – be optimised for speed
A light site will be a fast site. E-Commerce has a lot of content, pages and photos – so using caching becomes a must, as well as ensuring photos are compressed before uploading.
9 – have strong calls to action
If you are an e-commerce site whilst your site will likely have informative and educational content too always focus on the outcome you want people to take which is to purchase. So don’t bury the Shop links and keep pointing people back to that for example featuring a clickable product or shop category in an informative article or blog post on your website.
10 – provide the product details your customers want to know
People mostly want to know how a product is going to benefit them in their lives, more than a list of features. Most e-commerce have a short description and long description option and I’d typically suggest you follow that format. The long description can go more into features and extra details that some people might wish to know. However don’t use this as an excuse to not include the details that go into things like sizes or ingredients depending on your product as you still need to have that too, but it could go into a tab or table further down the page.
Remember that your website can change and you can test things
The good thing with a website is it’s not supposed to be a static thing it can change and evolve, so test and see if a change boosts sales. Get expert advice or consider redesigning if your website is holding your business back.
