As online shopping and sales continue to rise, online retailers need to implement several key techniques to drive sales and conversions from their website visitors and stay competitive with other businesses in the online marketplace. Here, we highlight some important tactics needed to grow and sell more products online.
Categories
Whether you have 10 products or 210, grouping them into proper categories helps your customers find what they need without much guesswork. Identify umbrella keywords that naturally represent the specific types of products and choose those to be the category names. Appending category tags and creating category pages will help with filtering.
Product Descriptions
Thorough and detailed product descriptions can make or break your conversion rates. Customers need to know what the product is, including its:
- Features
- Physical Properties
- Functions
- Size
- Color
- Value
Clear product descriptions and specifications are key to improving sells, but take it a bit further than the boring descriptions seen on every other site. Add your brand tone and personality to the descriptions to make them stand out and grab the customer’s attention.
Product Images and Videos
Just as great descriptions are important, images and videos are even more valuable in driving sales. Trying to sell a product with no image is a sure fire way to sell nothing. Customers want and need visuals prior to making purchasing decisions. Having quality product images helps build trust that may not be there otherwise.
In addition to static images, videos can also drive a large boost to online sales. Create videos that provide:
- Usage demonstrations
- Product care techniques
- 360 tour of product
Suggested Products
Adding additional product suggestions or recommendations to relevant product pages is a great way to retail other products that customers may also want to purchase. Ideally the suggested products would be related or complimentary to the product that the customer is currently viewing.
Calls to Action
Strong calls to action should be prevalent throughout the site, on the homepage, product page, category page, and special offers page. A few examples of strong calls to action are:
- Buy
- Buy Now
- Book Now
- Reserve Today
- Purchase Now
In addition to calls to action, we also recommend adding call-outs to create urgency. Such statements include:
- Last one in stock!
- Only a few remaining!
- Deal ending soon!
- One day only!
- This offer won’t last!
Product Reviews
Product reviews offer real-life stories and experiences that other customers have had using your products. This builds consumer confidence for new customers. Develop a review system to allow customers to leave honest reviews and ratings about your products, which will ultimately help others in making their own decisions to purchase.
One common push back business owners make regarding reviews is that negative reviews will drive business away. While it’s true that positive reviews drive more sales, a few negative reviews won’t have as big of an impact as business owners might suspect. They tend to add authenticity to the reviews and overall experiences. Now if there are a significant number of negative reviews, then that means there could be issues with the product that need to be addressed.
Lastly, while reviews do help drive sales and build trust, businesses that go above and beyond by responding to reviews show customers that they are paying attention, reading their comments, and care about their experiences. Who wouldn’t want to buy from a company that makes the effort to stay tuned in and engage with their customers?
Easy Checkout
The last important key to improving online sales that we’ll discuss here is an easy checkout experience. Customers shopping online don’t have a lot of time and patience to complete a lot of complex steps to check out, which will often lead to cart abandonment. Simplify the process by requiring the minimal amount of information needed to process the order.
If there must be several steps to complete a successful checkout, keep the customer aware of their progress so that they don’t get anxious, frustrated, or quit in the middle of a seemingly never-ending process.
If you need assistance with implementing these techniques and developing your ecommerce stategy to sell more products online, contact RedCircuit and we’ll be happy to partner with you.
