The Webgility TeamImagine a typical situation of an e-store owner. For example, Lily, who’s tired of watching visitors leaving her website without a purchase. Thanks to the high-performing ads, socials, and SEO, Lily has 20K traffic. It would be great if her website were a content project.
But it’s a retail store. And 20 orders per month seems to be an ecommerce nightmare.
Good to know there are proven methods to fix this! There are six best practices online stores use to improve “visitors to customers” conversion.
Add product recommendations
56% of customers chose e-stores that provide product recommendations based on their interests.
That is one of the hacks Amazon uses to boost sales. Each time you visit some product, you’ll see a list of relevant items to choose from:
Consider the following table as a constructor of recommended products based on the best use-cases. Just decide who should see your message and when it should be seen:
| What to Offer | Where | Whom | How |
|---|---|---|---|
| Latest deals and discounts | Home page | First website/product page visit | Website banner |
| Bestsellers | Product page | Repeated website visit | Chatbot |
| Location-based recommendations | Shopping cart | Cart abandon or exit-intent | Website pop-up |
| Items that are complementary to a customer’s purchase/cart items | Product category | Right after a purchase | Trigger email Web Push Notification |
| Products from the same category | Search page | Add-to-cart event | Paid Ads |
To make it live, you can hire experts, for example, design, CRM, or chatbot agency. You can also manage everything on your own with the right tool. Test each option separately or find ready-made comparisons like Olark and Intercom comparison by HelpCrunch to arrive at a final decision afterward.
Add reviews
The best way to get customers’ trust is to provide them with other customers’ reviews. Reading reviews is the first step of a purchase decision process for 95% of shoppers.
And here is an example of what they are looking for:
The above example is an excellent customer review of AirPods from the Amazon store. Here are 5K people who appreciate this author’s feedback for:
- Detailed description of AirPods tech characteristics
- Featured photos
- Stars rating
- Review date
- Author’s name
Want to get the first reviews on your product? Here are a few ideas:
- Ask your family and friends.
- Level up your customer service.
- Follow-up with a review request to customers who just made a purchase.
- Use UGC software like PowerRatings, Reevoo, or Bazaarvoice.
- Hire social influencers.
- Don’t forget to reply to customer reviews. No matter if they are on your or third-party websites.
Encourage customers to share a thought on your products with pleasant bonuses.
Boost sales with bonuses
There are things your website visitors can hardly refuse. For example, choosing between the same smartphones, customers prefer a seller whose offer includes a memory card or phone case.
However, sure thing, bonuses aren’t limited to free add-ons.
Pro tip: According to the content marketing trends, it is better to use “gif” or “bonus” words and limit offers in time to avoid customers’ concern about paying the full price next time.
Suppose you wish to make discounts your traditional method to get customers’ loyalty, set up a points or reward system like the SHEIN fashion platform. When its customers earn points for confirming their email, adding items to the wishlist, making a purchase, or reviewing products. These points can be transformed into up to 70% discounts:
SHEIN app. Image source
Let your customers get support how they prefer
How your team communicates with customers is essential for any business success. It should be fast, easy, and personalized.
But there is a problem: each customer is different. Some people still prefer phone calls, but quarantine and remote work turned some of us into hermits. Thus, there are more and more people who prefer chat or self-service.
Now imagine the horror of such a person trying to know why the delivery is delayed in this 👇 store:
Thus, check if your store provides customer service channels that fit each type of potential buyer:
- Business phone service or call back option.
- Live chat.
- Video chat.
- Company email address or contact form.
- Socials.
- Messengers.
- Chatbot.
- Knowledge base aka Help center.
- FAQs.
The most important thing is to answer fast! 82% of customers expect you to answer them immediately when it comes to sales or marketing questions.
Level up your pop-ups
Pop-ups only work if you send them at the appropriate times. For example, visitors are likely to jump ship if you give them pop-ups before they have a chance to browse your store, or show irrelevant or repeated pop-ups in one session.
With the right strategy, a pop-up can generate high quality leads and boost sales!
So the fix?
Track your store visitors’ behavior to know who, when, and where would be glad to see your message. With this info, shuffling the most popular elements of the pop-up in a table to personalize it according to your customers’ interests will be easy for you 👇
| Pop-up goal | What to offer | Whom to offer | When to offer | Where to place the offer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Grow email list | Bonuses, discounts | First-time visitors | Few minutes after the page visit or scroll | Main page |
| Guide visitors to relevant product | Free shipping | Customers who bought some product | Exit intent | Product page |
| Grow sales | Valuable content | Repeated visitors | Button/link click | Checkout |
| Get feedback | Relevant products | Those who abandoned checkout/cart | Cart/checkout abandonment | Cart |
Thus, you’ll get a pop-up to boost your lead generation or sales. Just like this one from The Oodie clothes store 👇
The pop-up from the store home page. Source
25% off is the main hero here, but it is impossible to ignore that creative title. There’s only one field to fill in to save customers time. The design is simple but eye-catching, especially the CTA button.
Fonts combination could be better. Brands prefer popular fonts for your banner design, like Open Sans and Montserrat.
Clean up your checkout
It doesn’t matter how good your product is. You’re at serious risk of cart abandonment if your checkout has banners, external links, hidden costs, numerous fill-in fields, but not guest login or suitable payment methods.
An ideal checkout page should be quick to process, clean, and straightforward. Just like Sephora’s one:
Image source: Sephora’s checkout page
It follows the main requirements of the ecommerce checkout page:
- There are no distraction elements.
- Customers can easily understand the purchase step they are at: shipping, billing, or order confirmation.
- It is easier to fulfill numerous fields thanks to such a division.
- There is also visual confirmation of the customer’s data validation: whether the shipping address, billing, and card info are correct.
There is a guest checkout for new customers.
And finally, multiple payment options:
Tying it all together
Each of these ideas is tested by the best stores. But the main thing here is not to copy someone. Instead, personalize and define what matches your target audience best. Try A/B testing competitors’ ideas according to your audience. It will help you discover personal sales growth receipts.
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