E-Commerce Tips
E-commerce sites, for those of you who might not know, are far more involved than a standard brochure site.
For those of you who have already taken the plunge and gone and had one built for you, it might be interesting to know how a few simple tools could really impact your online store and help to massively boost your sales!
One of the most powerful ways is Remarketing. This is a proven method of making sure someone doesn’t forget to buy from you instead of from one of your competitors! So, what is Remarketing?
The easiest way to explain it is to demonstrate it – go to a major e-commerce site (of those online who seem the best at it, a great example are John Lewis) browse their site and look at one or two specific products. From there take a little browse around the internet, sites which have advertising space especially; Facebook and so on. If it’s working as it should, you’ll see adverts about the company (let’s use John Lewis as an example) all over the place, popping up subtly reminding you about what you looked at on their site. Because, and this is the really clever bit, the adverts you see will usually be showing the EXACT product(s) you looked at on their site!
It is a monumentally powerful and statistically proven method of bringing customers back to your site, up to 60% increases in conversion rates have been seen by companies effectively using remarketing. You’re able to set remarketing campaigns up to show to customers who visited your site for a certain period of time before it gives up and it works in a similar way to PPC (pay per click) campaigns in that you’re only charged to a budget then it stops.
Remarketing can be complex to set up but look into it, read the statistics for yourself and ask why companies such as John Lewis use it. They use it because it really does work!
“Abandoned cart reminders really do work”
Another pretty simple step, but again statistically not to be ignored, is what is called an “abandoned cart reminder”. This does what it says on the tin. When a customer visits your site, shops about, puts some items in their basket and then leaves without completing it, often that will just stay there, uncompleted, awaiting the return of a customer that might have completely forgotten about it.
An abandoned cart reminder simply sends an email to those customers with uncompleted baskets a week later with a reminder that they haven’t completed their shop with you! This method has proven that on average 30% of those who are emailed will come back and complete their shop with you! For something that takes so little time to set up and no effort on your part to keep going, why wouldn’t you do it?!
There is another method to employ on your site that is the most powerful in terms of reporting on your e-shop’s conversion rate. Simply put, it is a conversion tracker it is something you’d need to have your web developer set up on your site correctly, but once done it is incredibly powerful.
Conversion Tracking
There are an endless number of statistics it can pull through for you but simply put, it can tell you what activity people take on your site that results in a conversion, from there you can better understand why! What if Product A is being looked at by 300 people a day but only one person buys it a week? Why is this? What is it about this product that means almost no one buys it from you? Are you too expensive? This might have taken you months, if not longer, to identify if you didn’t track these figures.
Conversely if 200 people a day are looking at Product B and 180 people are buying it, why is that? Are you too cheap? Or do you need to start offering more products in that range because that’s what people want?
Again, this is something you might not have identified if you hadn’t had conversion tracking statistics being given to you. These can be offered as a service by us or some e-commerce platforms offer them as a plug-in. These generally need some setting up by someone who knows how to tie the code in correctly. Come and ask us if you’d like any advice.
These are just a few things that are worth considering if you want to get the most out of your online shop. If it is your only sales porthole, then surely it’s worth trying every trick in the book to get it going great guns for you! For more advice on e-commerce please contact us.
