eCommerce is undeniably the future of retail. With around 12 to 24 million active eCommerce stores operating to bring convenience to customers, it’s a given that the competition is fierce, and each one is looking for that slight advantage. But even if this sector is fairly active, online retailers face a universal issueーmaintaining positive eCommerce performance in an ever-demanding market.
To put it simply, customers love positive experiences and forming meaningful relationships when they shop. And, if an online store fails to deliver that, customers will simply move to another that can. Sadly, the failure rate of eCommerce businesses is around the 90% mark. This percentage indicates that there is no room for mistakes, and every decision store owners make needs to benefit customers and improve their overall customer journey.
A great challenge eCommerce stores face is high shopping cart abandonment rates. In fact, the average cart abandonment rate is a whopping 69.99% percent. So, it’s plain to see that despite the eCommerce business model being more popular than ever, there are quite a few obstacles stores have to face and resolve to reap the rewards.
Luckily for you, we have all the right answers and all the right secrets to help you hit all set milestones and offer prospects and clients an unparalleled online shopping experience.
Understand Your Current Performance
There’s no going forward without taking a look at your past performances. Start by analyzing the success your eCommerce business had in the past year and take note of all the tools that helped you reach your milestones. When planning your 2023 roadmap, you can refer to that list and pinpoint just what made it possible to reach those goals. You should also list the challenges you faced in the past year, outline how you solved them, and determine whether you will encounter some of those same challenges in this fiscal year.
After that, look at your conversion rates and see whether they are satisfactory. Running a business that fails to convert is not financially viable, and you will not stay afloat for an extended period of time if there are leaks in your conversion funnel.
Besides checking your conversion rates, you can also do the following to get a better picture of your eCommerce performance.
Listen To Your Customers
Your customers are the only ones who can tell it to you straight and with no sugar-coating. So, don’t be afraid to seek an honest assessment of your performance from them. By bridging the gap between your store and your customers, you can establish a source of information that will always provide you with data that you can use to optimize almost all facets of the customer journey.
In addition to extrapolating valuable data from customer feedback regarding their experience with your store, you can also recognize which of your products are adding the most value to shoppers’ lives and then use that value as a key point in your future promotions.
On that note, proactively engaging your clients and seeking feedback will help you build better customer relationships which means that they will be more likely to make repeated purchases from you for years to come.
Outline Your Goals
It’s time to start paving the way for success in 2023. Whether you’re utilizing Shopify or Google Analytics as part of your tech stack, make sure you’re focused on gathering crucial insights to use as a stepping stone to reach your goals – from boosting conversion rates & sales figures, cutting cart abandonment levels and churn rates, to delivering an unforgettable experience for your online shoppers.
But you should always have personalization at the forefront of your strategy. According to a report by McKinsey, more than 71% of consumers expect personalization. So even if your marketing efforts are, by all accounts, successful, and your offers are simply unalluring, you won’t see the success you expect out of them.
Although the goals you set for your eCommerce store might be unique, we will share some strategies that will undoubtedly boost your eCommerce store performance and get you to reach previously untouched milestones.
Target Your Prospects Better
The way you target your audience is what makes or breaks your entire strategy. You can’t expect one price to appeal to all online shoppers; different countries use different currencies, and you should enable them to carry out their purchasing experience in a familiar and comfortable manner.
This is where IP geolocation comes into play. You can analyze where your web traffic exactly comes from, and as soon as they land on your sales page, they can preview your products and their prices in their native currency. Don’t forget to also include shipping and extra costs to the total price to avoid confusion. Other great pieces of information include shipping timelines and restrictions to avoid frustration later on. Your consumers should enjoy a seamless purchasing process on your online store.
- Extra Tip: By determining which location you are getting the most traffic from, you will have a better idea of how to stock your inventory. It pays off to know your customers. If you have customers from all over the world, understanding their culture and everyday needs will help you provide the right products and services for them. Accurate inventory management starts with IP geolocation. Leverage this invaluable tool to make intelligent stocking choices.
Offer Value, Not Just Products
Most online retailers want to offer multiple product types from various niches to online shoppers; however, there is nothing wrong with offering only a few or even one product on your online store. Having an expansive selection of products might initially appear attractive, but this can often lead to a convoluted inventory. Don’t underestimate the power that lies in having a valuable product.
To put things into perspective, nowadays, shoes are designed with a strong focus on aesthetics rather than comfiness. If you offer soles that make wearing pretty shoes comfortable, you will garner attention fast. That one type of product can help you reach massive success and build brand recognition fast. The key to building a successful eCommerce store is delivering what consumers want. Don’t be scared to stock your inventory with a few items that serve a purpose rather than a hundred that the majority of shoppers find unappealing.
Revamp The Onsite Experience
If you want the eCommerce store of your dreams, having great products isn’t enough – there’s a lot more to it. You need to make sure all aspects of your online conversion funnel are rock-solid so customers have an unforgettable experience and keep coming back.
Below we outline six handy tips for delivering a better onsite experience and boosting sales.
Start With The Basics
According to a new study, every millisecond of website load time significantly impacts the user experience, especially for mobile traffic. And, since more than 59% of global website traffic is generated with the help of handheld devices, optimizing your site for mobile traffic is a no-brainer if boosting your eCommerce performance is on the agenda.
So before you start developing an elaborate conversion funnel, optimize your site’s load speeds and make it mobile accessible. For starters, to boost your site’s load time, you should avoid redirecting the user to other pages on your site, as the request might take some time to complete. Simply allow your website visitors to navigate naturally through your conversion funnel and guide them with the help of pop-up messages or a live chat service.
Deliver A Better Onsite Experience
Besides helping you deliver a better onsite user experience, pop-ups can also help you with boosting your online sales. You can kick off the whole conversion process by greeting your visitors when they load your store with a simple pop-up message with a nice incentive.
The incentive can be anything you choose. For instance, more than 66% of shoppers expect to pay no shipping fees, and catering to those preferences might be a great idea. Or, if you want to be generous to first-time potential customers, gift them a promo code that will reduce the total price of their cart when they proceed toward the checkout.
During this process, you can also utilize pop-ups to gather prospective customers’ contact info, such as phone number or email address which can help you drastically reduce cart abandonment rates by being able to retarget the leads your pop-ups generate with a solid newsletter later down the line. Bonus points if you make this lead capture collect additional zero-party data points like preferences for more personalized outreach down the line.
Lastly, you have to understand that the way your desktop traffic experiences your store is vastly different from the mobile experience users enjoy. With that in mind, make sure that the promotions your run to captivate your mobile visitors are easy to close, non-interruptive, and easy to read.
If you need help with creating both desktop and mobile promotions, Justuno’s design studio has you covered. Automatically responsive designs mean you can create compelling onsite experiences without doing double work and be confident they’ll provide the right experience to each visitor no matter the device.
Provide Testimonials For Your Prospects
You can also start to build trust with new prospects with the help of testimonials attached to your landing page. For example, let’s say that your SEO efforts brought a potential customer to your landing page, where they had the opportunity to review the social proof you provide in the form of testimonials.
When the potential client previews just how other individuals have benefited from your products and enjoyed the customer journey with your brand, the chances of them making a purchase automatically skyrocket.
Make Your Sales Copy More Convincing
Crafting effective sales copy for your eCommerce store can be a challenge. However, there are several key techniques that you can use in order to make your sales copy more convincing and therefore increase conversions.
For example, you should focus on catering to your customers’ needs by highlighting the advantages of your products and services. Additionally, consider using powerful language that instills confidence and ensures the buyer feels secure in their purchase.
Finally, storytelling can help bring the products or services you offer to life and foster an emotional connection with consumers. By paying close attention to these tips when writing sales copy, businesses can ensure they are crafting content that is persuasive and compelling to readers.
Improve Your Onsite Content
Blogging allows businesses to showcase their expertise and highlight the advantages of their products or services. This can increase customer trust and loyalty, which will only help you boost sales and increase conversion rates.
Rather than burdening your customer support team with tickets, by having useful blog entries, your website visitors will be able to find all the information they require with a quick read on your blog page. Add in a lead capture strategy to these pages too like an in-page newsletter sign-up halfway through the article (high-intent visitors) or via a product recommendation carousel for easy access to items they just learned about.
Create A Sense Of Urgency
Nothing will make prospective customers get their credit cards out like limited-time offers. For eCommerce stores, one way to leverage limited-time offer incentives is by using countdown timers.
This feature lets buyers know how much time they have left to make a purchase before the opportunity vanishes. Countdown timers create excitement and curiosity around special offers, discounts, and promotions and can be used to encourage impulse purchases among your store’s shoppers.
Extra Actionable Tips You Can Use To Diminish Your Cart Abandonment Rate
- Allow guest checkout. Not all of your website visitors want to go through the hassle of registering and creating an account on your site just to proceed to the checkout page. The checkout experience should appeal to all if you want to see a boost in sales. Allow users to enjoy the guest checkout option so they can make purchases without a hitch.
- Allow them multiple payment options. Digital shoppers should be able to pay for their products with their credit card or with the help of payment platforms such as PayPal and ShopPay. By setting up various payment methods, you will ensure that your customers can make purchases in the manner they prefer and enjoy a better customer experience on your site.
- Use exit offer pop-ups: If a consumer fills their shopping cart but does not proceed toward the finish line of the checkout process, it means that your products are appealing, but there’s a tiny impediment standing in the way of a successful purchase. Most of the time, the reasons for the abandonment of your carts are either your shipping fees are too exorbitant, or the price is simply inaccessible.
To sway the tides in your favor, analyze how many pages visitors visit before they are about to leave, and deploy an exit offer pop-up message just as they are about to abandon your site to spark up excitement with an offer that cannot be refused in the form of a discount code or free shipping limited offer.
Bottom Line
You can make huge strides in your eCommerce performance with the tactics we outlined above. Focus on giving customers the best experience possible; it won’t take long to start standing out from competitors. Your brand will be recognizable among shoppers and give you an edge over rivals.
By improving your onsite experience, you can also boost your conversion rates and never fail to push shoppers through the sales funnel. On that note, don’t forget to give your mobile users a unique experience when running promotions, as they deserve as much attention as desktop shoppers garner.
