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    eCommerce Conversion Factors for your Webstore

     

    Having a webstore is no guarantee of sales any more than owning a jacket proves you wear it. 

    Two distinct things directly influence how many sales you make on your webstore:

    1. How many customers visit, and
    2. How many of them complete checkout.

    Getting customers to visit your webstore is a Marketing and SEO affair.  But the fact customers visit your webstore is no guarantee they’ll buy, and if they leave without buying, there’s no guarantee they’ll return later.

    Just as you put the plug in before filling a bath, you absolutely should be ensuring your webstore provides all the motivations for customers to buy, and eliminates blockers that would stop them doing so.  We call these Conversion Factors.  Investing in SEO, marketing and advertising campaigns without having first ensured your webstore converts well is literally throwing money way.  You’re driving customers to a leaky webstore, and that’s really bad for cashflow and profitability.

    So what are the conversion factors you need to pay attention to?

    There are many things that contribute to converting visitors into customers on your webstore, but we reckon the most significant ones are these…

     

     

    Credibility

    Your webstore visitors can’t see, hear or touch you.   They can only see what you choose to display on the screen of the device they’re viewing your webstore on.  If you don’t tell webstore visitors who you are, and share your achievements, accolades, reviews and accreditations, they will assume you don’t have any.  Transparency builds trust and establishes rapport.  Display your legally registered company or business name, your ABN and your location.  If you don’t accept walk-ins or pickups, just display your suburb, state and country.  The more transparent and forthcoming your webstore visitors perceive you to be, the more willing they will be to buy from you, and the more they will be willing to spend.

     

    Findability

    Ever misplaced your car keys or mobile phone?  Then you are already familiar with that frustrated, sinking feeling your webstore customers will experience when they struggle to find what they’re looking for.  eCommerce is rooted in human psychology.  Identify things that could trigger frustration and abandonment, and you’ll know what to avoid.  Findability is all about making sure your products are easily found via all possible pathways on your webstore.  Browsing categories, clicking banners or links, and searching – these are all pathways that need to be carefully evaluated to reduce the effort required to arrive at what the customer is looking for.  Navigation menus should be rational and intuitive.  Your category structure must be concise and logical.  For search to function intuitively, all of your product attributes, keywords and codes must be optimised, including alternatives, misspellings and equivalent or superseded product codes.  Put simply, your webstore is only the machine.  The quality, consistency and structure of your product and category data is a crucial element that in our experience is often overlooked.  That can quickly neuter many sales opportunities.

     

    Confidence

    We don’t give money to people we don’t trust.  It’s that simple.  Your webstore absolutely must instil trust and confidence in your visitors, or they won’t become customers.  That means on any page of your webstore, the customer needs to be able to understand what they’re seeing, without any confusion or distraction that could derail their shopping journey.  The layout and styling should be designed to support the shopping experience, not detract from it.  Photos need to be crisp, high quality and portray each product in detail so there is no room for ambiguity or uncertainty in the customer’s mind.  The quality of your product titles, descriptions, attributes and categorisation all impact how confident shoppers will feel. Where customers might still have lingering doubts or want more information, there should be obvious pathways to where they can get assistance and answers.  The most critical page of your webstore is cart, when the customer is making their final decision whether to complete the transaction or walk away.  If there’s any doubt or confusion at this point, it will lead to cart abandonment, and all the follow-up emails in the world won’t bring them back.  The better you understand your customers’ mindset, knowledge, expectations and the competitive landscape, the better you will be able to instil trust and confidence throughout the entire customer journey.

     

    Satisfaction

    Buying something online is a mere promise.  Until the physical product turns up on the customer’s doorstep, has been unboxed and experienced, there may be some niggling doubt in their mind.  The promise you have made on your webstore needs to match the physical experience on delivery day.  So set generous, realistic and competitively assuring expectations on your webstore, knowing what you can deliver by way of physical experience once the customer gets what they ordered.  So far as your webstore is concerned, this means paying careful attention to what you promise.  Beyond your webstore, it means ensuring your processes, communications and post-transaction experience is consistent with what you’ve promised.  This doesn’t happen by accident.  If you don’t contemplate customer satisfaction, you’re leaving it to chance.