As an entrepreneur with an e-commerce business, it’s exciting to be in a space with so much potential. Retail commerce sales continue to grow year after year (analysts predict these projections will continue on the upward path for the foreseeable future), and this is the perfect time to capitalize on that trend. Whether you’re just starting your e-commerce business or looking to rebuild your website, there are a few website creation tips that will make all the difference to your website and sales.
1. Split Test Everything
You should be testing as many aspects of your e-commerce website as possible — before, during, and after launch. Testing will help you understand what’s best for your customer and what’s helping you make sales. Use the A/B testing method to test a variety of features:
Typography: This doesn’t mean you have to test every font out there, but split testing two or three favorites or san serif and serif fonts will give you a good idea of what works. It may seem like a simple change, but typography has been proven to affect conversions. You can also test colors and font sizes.
Call to Action: Where your call to action (CTA) is placed and how it appears can also affect conversion. Don’t just stick to what you’ve been told; placing the CTA in the middle of the page above the fold isn’t always the better option. In fact, depending on your website design, it could be more beneficial to place it beneath the fold. You can also test the CTA color and text.
Landing Page Copywriting: Your landing page copywriting is extremely important. Testing content is necessary to get the most impact. You can test long-form copy versus short-form copy, video versus text sales pages, the actual text, and format.
2. Find a Great Cloud-Based Security Solution
Amidst the myriad of online security tips out there, a cloud-based user security solution is one of the best options you can have as you establish your e-commerce business. Protecting your company and your customers is crucial. Regardless of the size or nature, any internet-based business is vulnerable to several types of attacks that could compromise your work and the personal information of your users and customers.
In addition to the preventative security that cloud solutions offer, you’ll also have additional cost flexibility to pay for exactly what you need (i.e., lower capacity during slow-traffic times and high capacity during peak traffic), and round-the-clock customer support.
3. Buy Without Having to Register
Giving customers the option to sign up (or not) can dramatically increase conversions. Many potential customers are put off by a mandatory sign-up process — particularly a long one. One major e-commerce site took away its “Register” button and replaced it with this message during checkout:
“You do not need to create an account to make purchases on our site. Simply click Continue to proceed to checkout. To make your future purchases even faster, you can create an account during checkout.”
This small change increased sales by 45 percent, resulting in a $15 million sale increase that month and $300 million increase for the year. Consider embedding the signup process with the purchase process, or asking for customer information after the purchase is made. Be sure to include the value for your customer, such as a rewards program.
4. Stay on Top of SEO
The e-commerce economy is growing rapidly, search function algorithms are constantly changing, and competition for space is on those search engines is increasing. While search engine traffic is fairly stable, this doesn’t mean that once you’re at the top you’ll stay there forever. This is why staying on top of your SEO is important; you’ll need to be able to adapt to these changes to maintain your SEO position.
5. Breadcrumb Navigation
There are many benefits of breadcrumb navigation and implementing it into the checkout process gives customers an overview of what to expect during the purchase (namely, how many more steps are left). Without this step, potential customers can grow wary and unsure of how much longer they have left before they can actually complete the purchase. Not having breadcrumb navigation is one of the main reasons for cart abandonment. Breadcrumb navigation will also help users easily go back to previous steps and correct mistakes or change details.
Additionally, breadcrumb navigation can help with SEO in the same manner that a sitemap explains a lot about your website structure. Google can identify these secondary navigation trails and present better information in its search results.
