Shopping habits have changed significantly, with many consumers now doing part or all of their shopping online. In fact, 73 percent of purchases begin with research on platforms like Google or Amazon, leading to an average of 19 online purchases each year. It’s clear why e-commerce has seen a remarkable rise—growing 15 percent from 2016 to 2017, which was three times faster than traditional retail.
But in the wake of these exploding online shopping trends, e-commerce sites still face a common problem: They’re missing their on-site sales goals. If consumers are becoming more prone to shopping online, what makes them stop short of actually completing the purchase?
First off, if visitors are unhappy with your website, they are less inclined to buy anything. Bad website performance and other issues lead to an alarming 79 percent of customers being less likely to return to that site for future purchases. Keep in mind these e-commerce website best practices to encourage more sales and help online shoppers move through your checkout process smoothly.
Keep It Simple
As humans, we tend to prefer things that are clear and orderly while we question the complex and complicated. This is definitely applicable to e-commerce sites, as simple aesthetic design choices may be how online shoppers learn to trust brands and finalize a purchase. Here are several questions you can ask about leveraging simplicity in your site’s design to help encourage visitors to purchase:
Is Your Design Too Complex?
A clean, simple, design not only helps you create a seamless shopping experience for your visitors, but it’s proven to be high-converting. The more distractions your website has, the more likely a visitor is to abandon the cart. You can keep your visitors on track and draw attention to specific product areas by removing unnecessary elements, utilizing white space, and sticking to contrasting colors and sans-serif fonts.
Is Your Copy Scannable?
Don’t overwhelm your visitors with too much copy. Website visitors spend fewer than 15 seconds on a website before deciding to stick around or leave, so your brand’s value should be immediately communicated. Copy should be written utilizing the inverted pyramid with the most important information first—and try using an active voice and avoiding technical jargon.
Keep It Easy
Ease-of-use is ultimately what makes for a good shopping and checkout experience. Your e-commerce site should make browsing and checking out as easy as possible to ensure visitors fulfill their purchase—and that they return for more. Consider the following questions to help you determine whether there is room for improvement in your shopping experience:
Is Your Site Complicated?
If visitors are sticking around and browsing to see what your store has to offer, this is a good sign. But browsing doesn’t always equal buying. In fact, this could indicate that visitors are having trouble sorting through your products. Consider streamlining how visitors locate and view products by adding a search feature, improving navigation, or segmenting incoming traffic.
Are There Too Many Steps to Checkout?
Twenty-seven percent of visitors who abandon carts credit leaving to a lengthy or complicated checkout process. Your checkout process should provide this and this alone: a clear path to purchase. To help buyers complete a purchase, examine your checkout process to determine if there are opportunities to limit steps or distractions. This could include expediting registration or limiting competing calls-to-action within your checkout funnel.
Is Your Site Mobile-Friendly?
More and more shoppers are making purchases from their mobile devices, so it’s important to ensure that the purchase process is as simple on a mobile device as it is on a desktop. Pay close attention to how your buttons, forms, and other interactive elements work for your mobile shoppers.
Keep It Smart
Managing an e-commerce site isn’t an easy task, but there are several ways to optimize your site and the tasks needed to run it. Consider these questions about smart techniques for optimizing everything that could affect your visitors experience:
How Can You Improve Conversion Rates?
From ensuring all calls-to-action are clear and prominent and adding quality product photos or videos to adding user generated content like reviews or product displays, there are many opportunities for e-commerce sites optimize their conversion points to improve conversion rates.
Can You Make the Shopping Experience Personal?
Successful e-commerce personalization that is relevant and meets the visitor’s needs is a great way to attract and convert visitors into buyers. In fact, 86% of online shoppers say that personalization improves their likelihood to make a purchase. Try leveraging past visitor behaviors such as recent purchases or viewed items or visitor data such as demographics or where they are in the buying journey to show individualized offers.
Are You Using Workflows?
Workflows can not only keep your customers engaged once they’ve left your site, but they can also improve your site’s overall efficiency. From abandon cart email follow-ups to the scheduling of sale offers and discounts, workflows can help contribute to a better, more streamlined shopping experience without the need for constant manual input.
Final Thoughts:
Online shopping trends are on an upward trajectory. Maintaining a simple, easy, and smart e-commerce site will ensure your visitors a pleasant shopping experience and improving your on-site conversions.
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