When selling online, conversion is your primary goal. While traffic is helpful, that traffic means nothing if people don’t buy from your site. If you’re struggling to convert visitors to buyers, it’s time to look at the layout of your site.
Keep it organized
What’s one thing that could be harming your conversion more than anything? A disorganized site. Internet shoppers don’t want to waste time, so a site that’s difficult to navigate turns them away. Your layout needs to show visitors where to go with a logical design.
Make search prominent
Consumers who can’t find what they need at your store often try to search for it before clicking away. Make that search bar prominent on your page, above the fold and in the customer’s natural line of site. Don’t hide it. Make sure it works well, too.
Make it work for mobile
When redesigning your site to increase conversions, make it easy to use on mobile devices. Some companies are getting up to 50 percent of their sales from mobile devices. If your site isn’t accessible to mobile users, you’re losing out on some of these conversion opportunities.
Use a simple shopping cart
Don’t make the checkout process complicated. Give users features they need, like a shopping cart that updates on-screen as they shop, but keep it simple. Put the shopping cart in a location that the customer can easily see it, keeping it obvious at all times. The goal is for the customer to be able to make the purchase quickly and easily. Simply click, and the item shows up in the shopping cart.
Don’t ignore SEO
While playing with your site, don’t forget about optimization rules. Yes, traffic isn’t the only thing you want, but without traffic, you won’t get any conversions. If you have a 5 percent conversion rate and 100 daily visitors, you’ll have 5 conversions a day, but if you draw in 1,000 visitors a day and maintain your conversion rate, you end up with 50 sales per day. Whenever you make a change to your site, make sure it benefits your SEO.
Follow good design rules
Loading up your front page with every product you offer isn’t going to make people buy more. It’ll probably make them run screaming in search of your competition as they rub their bleeding eyeballs. A cluttered site is like a dirty store, and people won’t shop there. Make sure the color, fonts and layout all follow good rules of design, and you’ll keep more people on your site. If that seems overwhelming for you on your own, find a company that can design your business site and work with them.
Make the order total obvious
Consumers are turned off by hidden charges, so don’t hide your shipping and handling charges. Shoppers shocked by your fees are going to abandon their shopping carts and find someone else to buy from. Keeping them informed throughout the shopping process will increase conversions by preventing these surprises. Make the order total obvious throughout the checkout process. As soon as your shopper clicks “checkout,” show the order total, including shipping.
Add testimonials
Solicit testimonials and ratings from customers, then add them to the page. All testimonials or ratings, even negative ones, increase your chances of making a sale. People trust products that others have used. To make them visible, place testimonials on a sidebar box with a slider and display the star rating on the product page.
Converting traffic into buying customers is the definition of success in ecommerce. By incorporating these changes into your site, you’ll start seeing an increase in conversions.