Mitash SEO, e-Commerce, Shopping Cart, Web Design & Development Blog

Man, you’ve done some great SEO, your eCommerce website is ranking high on major search engines and traffic leading to your website keeps increasing. But is this considerable traffic and top ranking leading to increased sales through your website? If it is, then you’re doing a pretty good job of converting prospects to customers; if not, then your ranking to conversion ratio is low and you might just have figure out how to capitalise on your high search engine rankings.

I’d like to share with you some smart and simple tips to improve website conversion rates that have succeeded for my customers. A common error that most website owners indulge in is to focus only on attracting traffic. But if little efforts are made to rectify simple website issues, it can lead to huge improvements in conversion rates. Listed below are my 5 quick tips to take your website visitors to the next level.

Easy accessibility and navigation

As soon as a visitor lands on your website, he must immediately be able to identify who you are, i.e. what business you are into and how you can benefit him. Use bold headlines and short paragraphs to catch his attention, as readers online tend to quickly scan text instead of reading through word-by-word. In this way your website is accessible and easy to attract attention to anything that is relevant rather than distract visitors away from your site.

Time is money

This adage works well for you as well as for your customers. Don’t waste your visitor’s time by trying to extricate irrelevant information, especially something that would involve the discretion of the user and impinge of his right to privacy. While it is prudent to collate critical information like shipping address, payment terms, etc; give your visitor the option to fill in less important information if he wants to instead of making it compulsory.

Initiate interest with information

Any credible eCommerce website will do more than merely function as an online catalogue. It will include relevant information on the product the visitor shows interest in purchasing. This information could be in the form of articles, customer testimonials, product reviews and the like. It will serve to aid him in the initial stages of his product purchase decision-making process.

Honesty, the best policy

Be direct, don’t beat around the bush as far as your product and pricing is concerned. If a product of yours will not be available in stock for a while, be honest enough to mention it. Rather than incurring the loss of a frustrated user who after having read all your product details, adds it to his cart and proceeds to the checkout payment process, only to discover that the product is out of stock.

This is true even for pricing, when visitors discover that delivery or shipping pricing is an added expenditure in addition to the cost they will incur on the product purchase. Ideally, it makes sense to display approximate delivery costs of countries your products are most often delivered to.

Clear Call to Action

If a user decides to buy a product from your site; he needs to add it to a shopping basket by clicking on a button or a link. However, this crucial button needs to be visible to him without the need to scroll, as several visitors are uncomfortable with scrolling. You should have an ‘Add Product xyz to your basket’ button, bold and around the top of the page. It need not be ‘in your face’ type of attention-grabbing call-to-action, rather an evident and visible one. This helps in a definite increase in sales as your visitor feels guided into the next step in the buying process.

Above all, make a concerted effort to differentiate yourself from your competitors by defining your product USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Because, finally this is the basis on what you target visitor to your site in the first place – converting them into customers is a matter of great attention to detail in creating a memorable customer experience.

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