Once a potential shopper hits your landing page, the conversion clock starts ticking. Your only goal at this point is to get the user to add the item to his shopping cart. While there are infinite ways to arrange a product landing page, below are the most important tactics to help retain buyer interest and make he or she more likely to commit to a Call TO Action (CTA) and a purchase.
Photos: High-quality photography is key to showcasing your product. If you don’t have top notch photos of your products, stop reading and get this done. You can have the best product in your class, but if the imagery is less than perfect, you are shooting yourself in the foot. If you can only give them one photo, make sure the product has a neutral-colored background. Also, if you want to show more detail and “click to enlarge” options – be sure to use a Lightbox overlay so the image loads OVER the page and not in a NEW window or tab – click the image below for an example.
Price: Price is possibly the biggest reason why a shopper will abandon your site and look elsewhere. While determining prices is a topic I will cover in another post, here are a few things to help sweeten the deal.
- First, display the price boldly and clearly.
- Don’t make users register or add the item to their carts before showing them the price. This will certainly annoy users and cause them to leave in droves.
- If your price is discounted from the suggested retail price, show them the discount because everybody likes to know you are giving them a deal.
Reviews: Social proof & social influences have a massive effect on consumer shopping behaviors. You can have the best copy money can buy and the best phots your budget allows, but visitors won’t believe one word of it until it’s been confirmed by an independent customer, ideally someone in their network. While positive reviews motivate users to purchase, negative reviews give you a unique opportunity to either make product changes or respond to customer concerns publicly. This open and proactive approach to giving and receiving feedback ultimately gives your website more credibility, which translates into loyal customers and repeat sales.
Add to Cart: Because your call-to-action entices the user to click on the “Add to Cart” button, you must give plenty of attention to optimizing it for conversions. Try the following tips to increase your conversion rate.
Use the words “Add to Cart.” This may seem obvious, but shoppers can either be apprehensive about the commitment of “Buy Now” as it might seem too committal. The convention of the words “Add to Cart” is non-committal, and leaves them comfortable that they still have options and can continue shopping. It’s your most important button, so don’t hide it. Use bold colors that contrast well with your design and attract attention. Try choosing a color that is not used anywhere else in the design to really set it apart. By making the button plainly visible, shoppers won’t have to wonder how to add items to their shopping carts. also it’s a GREAT tactic to add the payment methods yo accept so the user knows what they can expect on the rest of the process.
Related Products: Offering shoppers suggestions gives you the opportunity to feature items they wouldn’t have stumbled upon otherwise. Some shoppers might not be savvy in searching, but are more likely to wander through your website based on the suggestions they receive. Because the biggest reason for a lack of conversion on ecommerce websites is not being able to find the desired product, this feature gives you the unique opportunity to customize the products your customers see based on their browsing history.
Deals: Without a doubt, shoppers are responsive to deals and promotions, and the king of all deals is free shipping. Marketing guru Seth Godin dedicated a whole chapter of his book Free Prize Inside! to Amazon’s success with its free shipping model. In order to offer this and still make a profit, make a minimum purchase amount, but don’t make it too high. A minimum purchase amount will encourage shoppers to spend a little bit more just to get free shipping.
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Bonus Tips – Once a User clicks add to cart
OK – so the user added your item to the cart – no need to start the hi-fives just yet. The next and evenMORE important step is to get this new potential customers through the payment as quickly and painlessly as possible. I’ll offer some helpful tips.
- One-page checkouts increase conversions. Long forms with many steps require the browser to load a new page, proving detrimental to a shopper’s patience. One A/B Split Test study determined an improvement of more than 20% when users were able to checkout with one click of the submit button.
- Provide instant chat. A study by BoldChat found that 76% of shoppers want to have instant access to a customer service rep during the checkout process. Instant chat not only lets you help your users with technical problems, but it also allows you to encourage them to complete their order. I recommend http://www.snapengage.com. They are the most flexible, easiest to integrate AND They have a built in Facebook Module – get the 15 Day Trial and see for yourself.
- Follow up. If you’ve been keen enough to capture a customer’s email address in the first steps of the checkout process, you have a unique ability to recover a lost sale if she decides to jump ship. Get an Aweber account or Mailchimp – both are solid and have excellent delivery rates and very easy to use Dashboards.
- Don’t require registration. A Forrester Research study found that requiring users to register before checking out decreases ecommerce conversions by a staggering 23%. While registering users is a great tool for identifying repeat shoppers and making the checkout process more streamlined, make this an optional step. Also, consider using Facebook Connect or other social media sign-in widgets. These tools allow shoppers to register with your site without having to create a unique account.
- Use cookies. A cookie is a small amount of information a website puts in a user’s web browser so that it can remember something about him/her at a later time. Use this info so when they do visit your website again, they can pick up where they left off, with item(s) in cart.
You still need solid design help and correct A/B testing, but by implementing the suggestions provided in this post you should rapidly increase your conversion rate.