Creating a seamless, easy-to-use e-commerce site is as easy as putting yourself in your customer’s shoes. Think of the last time you shopped online: was the process so easy you made a purchase, or was it so frustrating you left to buy from a different company? Did the website have easy-to-find information on shipping? Did it have honest customer reviews?
Here are some tips to help ensure your e-commerce site is attractive to customers while also creating great SEO results. Because if customers can’t find you, they can’t spend with you.
1. User experience matters
User experience, or UX, is how your customer interacts with your site; how they find what they’re looking for, and then complete their purchase. Having a great design with simple navigation makes the buying process quick and easy. No one intends to design a clunky e-commerce site, but bad UX makes buying too hard and the customer leaves to buy from your competition.
- Simplicity is key: make your site easy to navigate, purchase from and return to
- Ensure the purchasing process is uncomplicated and quick, lest you lose customers to competitor sites
- Ensure users’ data is secure – and ensure that message is clear
2. Clever design
In the words of Mad Man, Don Draper, “Make it simple, but significant.”
Yes, Don may be fictional, but his are truth when it comes to site design. You need a stylish, professional site with clearly presented information such as FAQs, returns policy, shipping information and reviews.
Also, ensure product categories make sense. If you’re selling accessories, include categories such as ‘earrings’, ‘bangles’, ‘gold hoops’, ‘silver hoops’, ‘evenings bags’, ‘cross-body bags’, and ‘backpacks’ rather than the more general ‘jewellery’ and ‘bags’. Place clear calls to action in prominent places, check page load times are fast and ensure your site is mobile-friendly – check this here.
3. Build customer trust
Consumers are savvier than ever. A website with poor grammar, broken links and slow load times gives the impression that it is untrustworthy. Reviews are a simple way to build trust. Research shows that nine out of 10 customers read reviews before buying a product, and 94% of consumers avoid a company due to a bad review. A bonus: new reviews bump up your SEO rankings as they provide updated content.
Don’t discount bad reviews – keeping them in the mix shows that your business isn’t afraid of all types of customer feedback. Ensure you have a response to each review to demonstrate that you heed customer concerns and want to assist. This also builds trust as sites that only post positive reviews can sometimes feel fake.
4. Safety first
Data breaches and hacks are increasingly common and as an e-commerce business you need to take steps to ensure user data is secure. Start by asking only for required information. For instance, if a customer is buying a digital gift voucher, there’s no need to ask for their home address. The less data you record, the less data can be breached.
Using a third-party payment provider, such as PayPal or Stripe, to take care of transactions makes your site safer and more trustworthy. Installing an SSL certificate that authenticates and enables an encrypted connection is best practice in keeping users and their data safe.
5. Beat the bounce
Bounce rate refers to when a person visits just one page of a website without making a purchase or other type of interaction. The average bounce rate for e-commerce sites sits between 20% and 45%. Bounce rates that are significantly higher than this van impact SEO results, so it is important to design your e-commerce site to entice people to stay, visit multiple pages, and make a purchase.
If you have clear and enticing design, good SEO results, fast loading and other UX features and can’t understand why your bounce rate is high investigate using a scroll map. This is a type of heat map that shows how far down a user scrolls on pages. Knowing where your customers attention is on a page can improve conversion rates and your bottom line. Learn more about these tools here.
Want to increase conversion rates in your next e-commerce campaign? Book in for our free digital audit!
