Many factors contribute to increasing online sales with your ecommerce website. The first step is attracting the right visitors. The second step is converting those visitors to paying customers. But how do you maximize conversions? Start by working on your website’s usability and customer shopping experience. Website usability and a positive shopping experience encourage sales and customer loyalty and significantly impact conversion rates. The following best practices for increasing conversions on your ecommerce website can easily fit into any marketing budget.

Website design tips for increasing conversions

When website visitors cannot find what they are looking for quickly, they abandon the website without making a purchase. For an ecommerce website, every aspect of your website must serve the purpose of encouraging sales. Use the following website design tips to connect with potential customers and drive profitable sales:

• Differentiate your company from the competition. Emphasize the unique benefits that make you stand out from the competition.
• Personalize the shopping experience by “remembering” the potential customer from their previous visits to your site. Greet them and display items and information relevant to their past viewing habits and keep unpurchased items in their shopping cart similar to sites like Amazon.com’s persistent shopping cart feature.
• Add user-friendly navigation features such as advanced site search that enables search by size, price, brand, and more.
• Build credibility and trust among potential customers by displaying relevant certificates and seals on your website home page and critical action pages, such as a Better Business Bureau seal, a McAfee Secure seal, a TRUSTe seal, an SSL certificate, or a consumer ratings badge.
• Let your customers get to know you by putting employee bios and photos on your About page and use social media platforms such as a blog, Facebook fan page, FourSquare or Twitter to interact with customers on a more personal level.

Product page tips for increasing conversions

Once a website visitor has found a product that may fulfill their needs, give them everything they need to make a purchase decision. Dynamic, informative content that answers all their questions will keep your potential customer from comparison shopping on a competitor’s website. Increase conversions and profits with the following product page best practices:

• Incorporate images and rich media features into your product pages like zoom, colorizing, dynamic image re-sizing, and online video.
• Add complete product features and specs for each product including differentiating factors, customer reviews and testimonials, and frequently asked questions about the product. Indicate if the product is available or out of stock and the shipping methods.
• Make the “Buy Now” or “Add to Cart” button prominent on the page.
• Include complementary products on the page in order to give your customers a complete range of options and potentially increase the amount of the purchase.

Simplify the ordering and checkout process
No matter what you are selling, be it Apparel and Accessories, Furniture or Office Supplies, a drawn out or confusing checkout process may lead to a potential customer abandoning their shopping cart.  Improve conversions and increase sales by eliminating unnecessary steps in the checkout process. For example, displaying the total purchase cost including shipping in the shopping cart before checkout gives customers peace of mind and helps avoid sticker shock that may cause them to abandon the purchase.

Other factors that encourage customers to follow through on a sale are quick one page checkouts and multiple payment options. With one page checkout, the customer knows where they are in the buying process and can see all information related to their order at the same time. Give your customers the convenience of multiple payment options such as PayPal, credit cards, online checks, BillMeLater, eLayaway or Google checkout.

Recover shoppers with abandoned shopping carts by contacting them later via email. Find out what prompted them to abandon the cart so you can make necessary changes in the future. Increase conversions by offering them customer service assistance in completing their transaction and a discount if they complete their purchase within a certain time frame. A reminder email greatly increases conversions and the added attention builds customer loyalty as well.

Analyze visitor behavior and make website adjustments

Use web analytics tools such as Google Analytics or Omniture, and eye tracking tools like Crazy Egg or ClickTale, to understand the online activity of your visitors and potential customers. You may also consider employing website feedback forms using tools like Kampyle or GetSatisfaction to analyze visitor behavior. Analyze your exit pages to find out why visitors are leaving. Is all information clear and accurate, are any links broken, and is the page easy to navigate? Remedying these factors will keep visitors engaged and interested, thereby improving conversion rates. In addition to the exit pages, analyze the top entry pages as well. Make these pages even more effective with up-to-date information, easy navigation and call to action links.

Eye tracking is another element that can improve conversion. Find out where visitors give the most attention and where they click – even if it is not a link. For a graphic or photo that gets many clicks you may want to add a quick zoom feature, additional information, or make it a navigation point. Analytics and eye tracking tools tell you what website your visitors come from, where they click within your site, and how long they spend on a given page.

Enhancing a potential customer’s experience on your ecommerce website is the key to increased conversions. Every contributing factor combines to make purchase and profits more likely, eliminate abandoned shopping carts, and acquire and retain loyal customers.

Increase conversion rates with GoECart’s suite of Optimization Tools

GoECart® offers innovative solutions designed to help merchants and retailers of all sizes to compete more effectively in rapidly maturing ecommerce markets. GoECart has long been known for its quick one-page checkout and recently introduced transactional email module that helps recover lost sales from cart abandonment.

Further, GoECart’s built-in integration with leading Web Analytics tools allow online businesses to understand the customer experience by providing deep insight to what visitors are doing, where they are coming from, how much time they are spending, what they are buying most often, and when and why they are leaving. GoECart integrates seamlessly with advanced ecommerce analytics including Google Analytics, Omniture and Unica NetTracker (now part of IBM, NYSE: IBM). GoECart also features Web Usability Testing Optimization through tools like Google Website Optimizer to help ecommerce businesses eliminate design and UI pitfalls and increase website and shopping cart usability.

Visit GoECart today and join hundreds of companies that rely on GoECart every day to Sell more™ products and services online.