mclarke1987
07 May 2009, 05:56 AM
This article is going to be all about increasing sales with e-commerce websites. Firstly, before reading any further please don’t expect to make a million your day, just because your audience maybe millions they won’t all buy. This article is to provide some changes which will increase the odds.
If you go into a shop and buy something theirs 3 steps. 1) Go into the shop. 2) Select the product, 3) Buy at the till. Whereas with most online shops there are far too many steps, 1) Go to website. 2) Select the product. 3) Register on the site. 4) Authenticate your e-mail address. 5) Process payment.
All these “added” steps aren’t required, you don’t need your users to register, so don’t force them, give them the option of taking those steps if they wish but don’t make it mandatory. You aren’t at any risk by removing this because you don’t send the product until you have received payment. But the user can make payment quicker. Theirs several reasons why this improve sales but the important one being people don’t want to register, they see it as signing up for junk mail & a waste of time. So don’t put them off by forcing them through this process.
So now we have them buying things quicker, we need to give them the “incentive” to buy. A lot of sites offer the product and just that, but is that what shops do? No they market their products, they point out why they should buy from you as opposed to someone else. Pick the bigger sites in your niche area & point out your cheaper. Encourage the sales & show your competitive edge on prices.
Now we got them realizing your cheaper and not wasting time on the purchase. Is there anything else we can do? Well there are a lot of things we can do but i’m only going to highlight 1 more in this thread then you can wait for my next articles.
The final point I want to highlight is a lot of people over-complicate things. Web 2.0 is all about ease of use for the user, so scrap the long trecks to find things and all the flashy effects, all they want to see is the product, they don’t want to know how good a flash developer you have on the staff. They don’t want to be marvelled by effects, they want to see the product, know why they should buy it & buy it. Nothing more nothing less.
I look forward to hearing any feedback from people using these techniques; I respond to all comments on my blog so feel free to send them over.
If you go into a shop and buy something theirs 3 steps. 1) Go into the shop. 2) Select the product, 3) Buy at the till. Whereas with most online shops there are far too many steps, 1) Go to website. 2) Select the product. 3) Register on the site. 4) Authenticate your e-mail address. 5) Process payment.
All these “added” steps aren’t required, you don’t need your users to register, so don’t force them, give them the option of taking those steps if they wish but don’t make it mandatory. You aren’t at any risk by removing this because you don’t send the product until you have received payment. But the user can make payment quicker. Theirs several reasons why this improve sales but the important one being people don’t want to register, they see it as signing up for junk mail & a waste of time. So don’t put them off by forcing them through this process.
So now we have them buying things quicker, we need to give them the “incentive” to buy. A lot of sites offer the product and just that, but is that what shops do? No they market their products, they point out why they should buy from you as opposed to someone else. Pick the bigger sites in your niche area & point out your cheaper. Encourage the sales & show your competitive edge on prices.
Now we got them realizing your cheaper and not wasting time on the purchase. Is there anything else we can do? Well there are a lot of things we can do but i’m only going to highlight 1 more in this thread then you can wait for my next articles.
The final point I want to highlight is a lot of people over-complicate things. Web 2.0 is all about ease of use for the user, so scrap the long trecks to find things and all the flashy effects, all they want to see is the product, they don’t want to know how good a flash developer you have on the staff. They don’t want to be marvelled by effects, they want to see the product, know why they should buy it & buy it. Nothing more nothing less.
I look forward to hearing any feedback from people using these techniques; I respond to all comments on my blog so feel free to send them over.