This post is sponsored by Community Merchants USA.
Buying online is huge business. For many it’s become such a convenient way to shop that even staple, every day items such as contact solution and toothpaste are acquired by turning to a trusted eCommerce vendor.
With sites like Amazon blazing innovations like same day shipping it’s only a matter of time before we buy most everything this way.
Whether you sell products or services of any kind offering them online is essential, but there are some practices that customers have come to expect from the online shopping experience.
Even if you have no designs on becoming the next big online super store you would be wise to adopt the following tips.
Social proof
People know that Target is legit, but they may not know much about your business. Make sure that you offer lots of proof that you do what you promise.
Add plenty of testimonials, industry awards and memberships, product reviews and social network follower counts to offer proof that others trust you. If you’ve received coverage in 3rd party publication make a big deal out of the “as seen in” notices.
Internal search
Few things are more frustrating to someone with the intent of buying something than not being able to find it.
Put a search box at the top of every page using Google Custom Search Engine or via your shopping cart tool and make sure you constantly analyze the search queries to see what people can’t find and perhaps what else they would like to find.
Payment options
Give people lot of payment options.
Obviously you need to accept credit cards of all makes, but don’t forget to offer eCheck payments, PayPal, Google Wallet and Amazon Payments.
Assurances
When someone is shopping online there are many things that can spook them. Make sure you answer some of the obvious questions every shopper has.
Things like how secure the transaction is (of course that means you need to make sure that it actually is secure.), when they should expect to receive their purchase and how, what your return policy is, what your guarantee is and your privacy and promotional policy going forward.
Abandonment issues
A Forrester study found that 89% of consumers had abandoned a shopping cart at least once.
There are many reasons for this and you need to understand a fix as many as possible.
Think about your own shopping – why do you stop short of purchasing at the shopping cart?
Some of the more common reasons are:
- The site is too slow
- Forms to clunky
- Ask for too much data
- Lingering questions
There are two practices that can help fix shopping cart abandonment.
Add live chat so that people making a purchase can get extra information and assurances about their transaction.
Add shopping cart abandonment campaigns. Using your shopping cart’s abandonment tool or 3rd party add on such as Rejoiner you can immediately reach out to shoppers who abandoned their purchase and potentially save the sale.
Obviously you need to analyze, test and tweak every element ongoing, but also make sure you add some live user testing so you can see how people actually interact with your eCommerce site.
This post is sponsored by Community Merchants USA. Community Merchants USA is a complete online resource for navigating the world of payment card acceptance. Our site will provide educational resources and tools that will help you get the best value for your business.
