The old adage, “build it and they will come”, clearly doesn’t apply to Ecommerce websites, as many of us are painfully aware. You can have a professionally designed website with all of the bells and whistles and your website can still languish in the black hole of the internet.
So once you have designed and optimised your Ecommerce site for the search engines and you have made it user-friendly for your visitors, the next step is to invest in online marketing. You don’t need a massive budget here, but you do need to invest your time and some of your budget into increasing the traffic and conversions on your new Ecommerce site.
So here are a few tips that should help your new Ecommerce website receive a greater share of traffic and improve your conversion rates.
Landing pages
Depending on your business model, you might find that landing pages are a good way to increase conversions. If you have 100's of products then this might not be the best strategy for you. However, if you have a small number of products, then landing pages that are aimed at your target audience can contribute significantly to your ROI. Landing pages work especially well when combined with paid advertising like Google Adwords or Facebook Advertising as they send users to a page specifically related to the advert itself.
Cross Selling & Upselling
Cross selling is an opportunity to present other related products to customers within your shop. This way you man intice a user to select additional products or choose a product that is more relevant. As opposed to cross-selling where you suggest other products your visitors might like to purchase, upselling presents a better and more expensive product to your customers, before they head to the shopping cart. They might have no idea that a newer model is available or that you sell a similar product that might be more suitable for them.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a term used for advertising to people once they have been to your site. Every noticed that a product you were looking at suddenly appears in ads on other places on the internet? That's remarketing. It has been shown to be highly effective in converting those one time visitors into purchasers and can be very cost effective.
Collect email addresses
One of the best ways to make sales is to target interested shoppers who have already purchased your products or are interested in more information. So it is important that you ask your visitors for their email addresses, offering them a monthly e-newsletter or updates on new products for example, in return for their email address. Another alternative is to offer a "value add" item like a one time discount or download in return for their email address.
Social sharing
You need to include social sharing buttons on each page or post of your website, allowing visitors to repost your product pages and product images across their social networks. Pinterest, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are some of the most popular social media platforms, but there may be others that are more appropriate for your products.
Reduce abandoned shopping carts
Why do customers not follow through with their purchase? If you can solve this problem, you can significantly increase your sales. So make the buying process as simple and easy as possible with the minimum number of steps. Always show the shipping costs upfront (high shipping costs can be a cause of abandoned carts) and instigate a recovery email campaign, where you email customers to remind them of their abandoned shopping carts.
Wish lists
You might have seen that more and more Ecommerce sites are encouraging their visitors to create a ‘wish list’. This can be a good strategy for increasing sales, giving you the opportunity to email these visitors, reminding them of their wish list. For example, you can let them know that one of their wish list items is now reduced or that a newer model has been released. Maintaining contact with these visitors can result in future sales - if you don’t overdo the sales pitch, and instead coming across as their ‘personal shopper’.
If you want help setting up an online marketing strategy for your new Ecommerce website, call Flow Interactive on 02 8097 7957 or complete our online enquiry form.