How often does your eCommerce business succeed in getting people to visit your site, but then fail to get them to actually buy something?
Pretty much every online store experiences this sometimes. But if you have an overwhelming amount of visitors and very few shoppers, you may have a problem.
The answer to that problem, according to some eCommerce experts, could lie in your website analytics. Scott Sanfilippo, co-founder of eCommerce consulting company Solid Cactus told BusinessWeek:
“It’s a good idea to constantly review your site’s analytics to determine where weak spots may lie or stumbling blocks may pop up that act as roadblocks to a sale.”
There are plenty of free services like Google Analytics you can use to find this information. Once you’ve signed up for a service, you should look for things like who is visiting your site, what pages they are visiting, and at what point in the process are they abandoning their carts.
For instance, if potential customers are getting to the actual checkout stage and then leaving, your checkout process may be too complicated. Or you might not offer enough payment options to appeal to a wide range of customers. But if people are visiting product pages and not putting items into their cart, you might not be providing enough information about each item.
If you want to go a step beyond these basic analytics services, there are also heatmapping and user testing programs that can give you more details about how people use your site. The main point is to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try to make the site as easy for them to use as possible.
In addition to keeping an eye on your site’s analytics, some other tips for improving online sales are to show some personality, upgrade the site regularly, optimize it for mobile devices, test its functionality, and make the buying process as quick and easy as possible.
Customer image via Shutterstock
Aira Bongco
Analytics is one way of doing it. Another way is by asking your prospects directly about what they want. You’ll be surprised when they answer.
Annie Pilon
I agree. User testing is one way to do that, but you should also reach out directly to customers and leave ways for them to easily contact you.
User testing’s a really good idea. I believe there are sites out there that facilitate that for businesses.
Annie Pilon
Yes, there are several of them that offer services for businesses.
Great ideas shared to convert web visitors into actual customers. I believe that user testing is a great idea to get implemented with.