Everyone knows that you need to have at the very least a basic website for your business in the digital era. Whether it is purely a landing page with basic company information on it and contact details, or you are developing your brand to incorporate online sales via an e-commerce store. Making sure you are harnessing online inquiries is vital in a world where over 90% of people search online before deciding about a purchase or when looking for a service provider.
Can you really afford to miss out on this? Even the best-designed websites and online stores can be missing a trick if they are focused on the user experience and accessibility of their online credentials.
Here are some great techniques to boost your online sales and create a more compelling user experience for your website visitors.
Click Testing
Click testing is a technique that allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your linking structure on your home page and look more in-depth at how visitors interact with your page and what they do when they click through to your website. If your design and your inking structure aren’t meeting the standards the user expects, then they could be almost instantly clicking off your website. Utilise Userzoom’s click testing software to get a better idea of what is and isn’t working so you can improve clarity and function.
Keep Your Homepage Uncluttered
If you have too much going on on your homepage, chances are users could find this overwhelming and click off before they even get past the bombardment of your homepage. Try to limit pop-ups or special offer notifications as many users find this off-putting. Try to keep your navigation clear and consider just adding the main offers or products or even fewer products or sales there. Instead, focus on a select few topics to feature on your home page and make sure the user can find anything they need clearly via your menu or main navigation bar.
Avoid too many moving parts, videos, graphics etc., as this can distract from what you are trying to achieve and potentially make your website run slower. And if people have to wait more than a few seconds for a page to load, they may not stick around and wait for it to load fully.
Make sure your above-the-fold call to actions (CTAs) are kept to a minimum too.
Utilize multimedia on your top-performing pages
While it is best not to overload your home page with excessive multimedia options, using videos on your highest-performing pages can help you convert interest into sales. This is because our brains process information faster via visual methods than via text. If you have information-heavy pages, then consider turning this information into a more easily digestible video.
Feature Reviews and Testimonials
People respond better when they can read an honest review of a product or service. Have you ever been on the fence about buying something, but reviews have swayed you? This applies to pretty much everything. Ensure you are featuring reviews from verified sales and ask clients to provide testimonials that potential customers can easily see. This gives them a better idea of what to expect from what you are selling, allows you to boast about what you offer effectively, and provides a more gentle nudge from inquisitive to sold.
Create High-quality Content
Content is king! You have probably heard this phrase thrown around a lot, and it isn’t wrong. High-quality, engaging content that meets queries will help your website rank better for search terms relating to your industry. Look at what search terms you want to rank for and utilise keywords and long for keywords throughout your site to allow you to boost your visibility in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
The more detailed your content, the longer people stay on your website. The more thorough you are about answering their query and providing a solution to this question, the more likely you are ot convert this, not sales. SEO can be time-consuming and tricky, as can writing your own content, so this could be an area you outsource it to professionals to help you increase sales on your website and get those all-important clicks converted.
Upselling Works!
How often does a salesperson try to upsell you a product in a store? Your answer will be 100 per cent of the time if they are doing what their superior has instructed them to do. Is there a reason why you can’t upsell online if you can upsell within a business? Even though we see cross-selling more frequently, Shopify claims that upselling is 20 times more effective than cross-selling online.
This could via a pop up when they add something to a basket or a ” frequently bought with” section below the product description on the page or in the checkout by asking them if they have forgotten anything.
Automated Emails
Collecting emails is still a viable way of creating a pathway through your sales funnel. Automated emails could remind people that they have items in their basket to check out with—an offer for completing a sale with an abandoned cart or a promotional code for the next visit.
Use creative ways to get people to sign up to your emails much in the same way as above. For example, for new visitors to your website, an offer giving them 15% off their first spend over £30 for signing up to your emails can be a great converter. Ensure you have multiple options throughout your website to allow users to leave their emails to address easily.
These are just ways to help you increase the sales on your website and allow you to change clicks into sales. You need to get creative and put yourself in the user’s shoes to ensure you have a fully inclusive and accessible user interface. The user experience needs to be positive to help encourage them to make that purchase and return time and time.
