Online shopping has exploded in popularity since the pandemic kicked off. Ordering food and household items online is so much safer than risking exposure to Covid-19 in a store. You don’t even need to wear a mask when you order online! There’s also no queuing and items are delivered straight to your door. Or possibly someone else’s door if you are unfortunate enough to have parcels sent via a certain courier company named after a mischievous Greek God.
Given all of the above, you might be wondering why your e-commerce store isn’t doing quite as well as you’d hoped. Unfortunately, there are a huge number of online stores, so standing out from the crowd can be tricky. With that in mind, we have a few useful tips to help you boost organic traffic to your e-commerce store.
Read on to learn more.
Website Design
Three-quarters of visitors say website design is critical. If a visitor’s first impression of your site is poor, they won’t return, which isn’t helpful.
Look at your site from a customer’s perspective.
- How intuitive are the menus?
- Is it easy to find your way between different categories?
- Is there a search function?
Look at your competitor’s sites. See if you can make your site better.
The Checkout Process
How customer-friendly is the checkout process? Aim to make it as simple as possible. The more hoops a customer has to jump through, the more likely they are to become frustrated and abandon their cart.
If a customer does abandon their cart, all is not lost. It’s worth sending abandoned cart emails to encourage people to finish the checkout process – you can automate this.
Great Content
Content is an integral part of an e-commerce store. Most visitors don’t hang around long. You only have a tiny window of opportunity to grab their attention, so make it count.
Are your photos are top quality? Show the product from all angles, so it’s absolutely clear what the customer is buying. Embedded video content can also help, by illustrating how the product works and why it’s a good buy.
Product descriptions must be clear and unambiguous. Explain in simple terms why the customer should buy your product as opposed to one from another store. Amazon does this by listing a few bullet points about each product, so the buyer can see at a glance the item’s unique value proposition. You don’t need to write a 1,000-word essay on blue widgets, but a well-written paragraph will make all the difference.
We recognise that not everyone has the skill to write great product descriptions. Fear not! We can help you with your product description pages. Send us the URLs you need descriptions for and let the Ink Elves weave their magic.
Keywords
Keywords are an integral part of SEO. Include relevant keywords in your content. Do keyword research to find out what keywords are the most relevant. Long-tail keyword phrases are useful. Think about what your customers are searching for when they type queries into Google.
Google is quite useful in this regard. If you start to type in a search query, Google autocompletes the query. This tells you what people are searching for in that niche. You can use these key phrases in your content.
Click here for Google’s keyword planner.
Upselling
Make the customer’s life easier by linking to other related products on the same page. Again, this is something Amazon has down to a fine art. For example, if the customer is viewing a pair of shoes, link to other clothing in the same collection, or similar shoes they might be interested in.
The more money you can persuade the customer to part with in one single transaction, the better. Remember, it’s a lot easier to upsell to an existing customer than it is to lure them into your store.
Encourage Social Proof
Social proof is critical in today’s social media-obsessed world and lots of positive reviews will improve conversion rates. Customers are far more likely to trust your brand if other people trust it enough to spend their hard-earned cash in your store.
Give people an option to leave a review. This can easily be done by installing a widget that collects reviews and embeds them in the page.
Don’t fear negative reviews. It shows the reviews are genuine and it gives you an opportunity to correct any problems with the item or customer service. If someone is disappointed enough to leave a negative review, ask yourself what you can do to fix the situation. With the right attitude, a disgruntled customer can easily be turned into a happy, loyal customer.
Mobile E-Commerce
Nearly 50% of shoppers now favour mobile devices for online shopping. If your site isn’t optimised for mobile, you could be missing out on a lot of traffic.
Again, make sure the site is well designed for mobile. It should be easy to navigate, preferably in less than three clicks.
- Do product pages fit a mobile screen?
- Is the search bar visible?
- Is the design clean?
- Is there a click to call button?
These features are all important to mobile users.
Website Speed
How fast your site loads matters. Back in 2016, Google research found that 53% of mobile users clicked away if a site was slow to load. Today, 64% of online shoppers are unhappy if a site’s load speed is slow. Even a one-second delay reduces customer dissatisfaction.
Use https://www.webpagetest.org/ to check the speed of your site, and if it is below par, work out how you can improve it.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is an inexpensive way to boost organic traffic to your e-commerce store. Send out promotional emails to people on your subscriber list, to let them know when new products are in stock or you are running a sale.
Repeat customers are valuable. Hang on to them by rewarding their loyalty with coupons and special offers.
This is not an exhaustive list. There are many more things you can do to boost organic traffic to your e-commerce store, but whatever steps you do take, use A/B testing so you can verify what works – and what doesn’t. Otherwise, you won’t have a clue what strategies have been successful.
Contact us if you need any help with your e-commerce web content, product descriptions, or blog posts. We have you covered!