7 Tips to Increase Online Sales and Grow E-commerce Traffic

Your website is the front door to your company, would you walk in? In order to capture visitors a website must be interesting enough to keep the user engaged and quickly guide them through the buying process. We have summarised 7 ways to capture visitors to your website and make sure that they convert.

1. Page Load Speed
   Website page load time is an important aspect of any website’s user experience. Often websites will sacrifice page speed to accommodate new design or functionality. However, visitors tend to care more about speed and 40% of people abandon sites which take longer than 3 seconds to load. To keep users engaged make sure your website loads quickly. To check how your website performs for page speed you can visit this google page which will rank your website and provide suggestions for improvement.
2. Meet Expectations
   It is important to meet a user’s expectations for content within a website. Links from other pages, heading titles and descriptions should match the information contained on the given page. The information must be understandable and should provide clear call to actions for users to take the next step in the buying process. Additionally, ensure your page content is CRATA – Complete, Relevant, Accessible, Timely and Accurate.
3. Simple
   Keep the content on your website simple. This is particularly important for information that shows above the fold of the website (anything that shows within the main screen before scrolling down the web page). Because of its high visibility, content placed above the fold should be the content that is most important to achieving your business goals and objectives. Make use of engaging headlines which immediately grab the user’s attention and present them with the content that they are looking for so that they don’t leave to visit another site. Information below the fold can then increase and become more detailed convincing the user to take action. Ideally aim for 1500 words or less per page.
4. Hide Complexity Until Needed
   Sometimes products or services can be complex and require detailed information to explain. This is important to share with your website visitors, however, hide this until the visitor is ready to view. Placing this at the top of the page can scare visitors away. Review your website to make sure that such complexities are thoughtfully placed on the page. Alternatively, consider the use of accordion drop-downs with clear titles or placing such information on a separate page and visitors can progress through to reading this if desired via the placement of clear call to actions.
5. Be Interesting
   Having interesting content keeps the website visitor engaged. Show off customer testimonials or the latest and greatest offerings. If it helps to be a knowledge leader in your industry, then aim to blog first about trending current topics or report breaking industry news. For service-based business, show new blog posts on the homepage so each time a visitor returns to your website, they’ll be greeted with fresh content.
6. Show Comparisons
   Comparing is an important task for potential customers so make sure it easy for website visitors to compare product offerings. If you make it hard to compare your products, it is likely website visitors will not become customers. Provide a product comparison chart. This should be summarised on one page and include details such as the main characteristics of comparable products or services, an overview of the similarities and differences, show the value before showing price and focus on features not solving problems. For SEO optimisation it is also good to include the word keyword ‘versus’ within the product comparison page content.
7. Make Use of Video
   People prefer watching videos over reading. A study conducted by the Firebrand Group revealed that nearly 85% of marketers received a positive return on investments from video content. Additionally, video content has been proven to build both trust and knowledge. Now more than ever videos are most likely to get the consumers attention amongst the content clutter, it is therefore important to ensure you are making use of relevant video content on your website.

What can you do?

These 7 ways to capture visitors to your e-commerce website are a good starting point to work towards increasing conversions. Take some time to review your website and see if any improvements can be made to better engage with your website visitors. Reviewing how customers currently see your website, what content they are interested in, and implementing changes to guide them through the buying process could make the difference between making a sale or not.

360 Commerce are experts in eCommerce and can help you maximize these opportunities. Get in touch and see how we can help you and your business embrace the revolution.

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