E-commerce websites used to be extremely expensive and laborious to create. This is no longer the case and instead of paying £5k+ for an online shop you can now utilise Shopify yourself or ask someone like myself to set it up for you for around £2k. Whilst many people can create their own Shopify site – they often don’t have the time or knowledge to do it well and the result is little or no sales. By using someone like myself there are a myriad of things done correctly to give you the best chance of selling your products effectively online.
However no matter how brilliant your website is – if you don’t effectively tell people that it exists – how can they know it’s there and how can they visit it? Make sure you have a good plan in terms of telling people you exist!
In this blog I will give you 5 ways to improve your e-commerce / shopify / woo commerce website.
1. Make the process easy
Too often I see the products not appear on the homepage or far too far down. If the primary focus of the website is to sell then you need your products on display front and centre! This is a surprisingly common mistake! E-commerce websites are NOT brochure websites. You don’t need all your about info on the homepage because sorry to say – people don’t care until later in the buying process and some don’t care at all. They just want to buy the product and be gone. To explain this I’ll outline a basic buyer process and where they’d find the info…
– Am I in the right place? Is this for me? (Home header)
– Where are the products & relevant info? (Products top of home)
– Is this a reputable company that I can trust & pay safely? (About page/ testimonials)
– Is the transaction easy? (Checkout)
That’s it. Simple really. Let your products be at the top of the page and easily accessible.
2. Add trust signals
This is something most small businesses are missing. Whether or not its Google reviews, Trust Pilot, Feefo, Certifications or Testimonials. Trust signals are hugely comforting to a buyer who lives in a world of scams and fake adverts leading to phoney websites who take your money and send nothing in return. Trust signals let people know they’re dealing with a genuine, trusted seller who is offering a quality product or service and who will deliver with no stress or hassle. They also let the buyer know you’re organised and put their mind at ease before they part with their cash.
3. Image sizes and file names
Google penalises poor performing websites. This could be how responsive they are, their accessibility and of course their load speed. Therefore you MUST ensure you are not uploading huge images into your online store. Large images will make decrease the speed of your site and increase your loading time. Users are impatient and if they have to wait too long for things to load – they will just give up and go elsewhere. Keeping your site light and fast is crucial for selling products. There are compression apps on shopify which do this automatically for you and you can compress and resize images in bulk for free.
The other important thing with images is that they are named appropriately. This is very good for SEO or very poor if it’s not done. People search on google via ‘images’ frequently but your product won’t be found this way if your product is named “Picture1.jpg” However if it follows the format “Product Name – Vendor – Product Type” or similar, it should perform significantly better. The file names will support your SEO efforts and will then be working for you as opposed to not! Again, there are apps that do this for you in Shopify in bulk for free.
4. Consistent imagery
When you’re selling a product or anything really – you need to show it in its best light. This means having good photography. I always tell my clients – I can create a wonderful branding and you can have a great product but if your photos are poor quality – it’s all for nothing. Poor image quality or unprofessional looking photos will result in people thinking you offer a poor quality product. If you can’t organise yourself to get good consistent, well taken photos – how can you organise yourself enough to create a product or service they would want to buy?
Also in order for the site to look good and function well, images need to be consistent. In terms of their orientation, colour background and style. You can easily take consistent photos yourself on a phone these days. The other day i met someone taking jewellery product images on a beach on the sand and on the rocks – great idea! It gave the products context, a style, uniqueness and consistency. Or you can buy a mini white room from Amazon for £25, create a tripod, mark the product position and hey presto – consistent white background product imagery. Also you can easily buy mockup Photoshop files and create product imagery that way if you have Adobe Software.
5. Engage and relate to customers
Remember our buying process at the beginning of this article?
– Am I in the right place? Is this for me? (Home header)
– Where are the products & relevant info? (Products top of home)
– Is this a reputable company that I can trust & pay safely? (About page/ testimonials)
– Is the transaction easy? (Checkout)
This relates to the first point, “Am I in the right place? Is this for me?”
This is the first and most fundamental question you must immediately answer for customers when they arrive at your website. You should immediately relate to them, they should feel like they belong and you ‘get them’. Tell them, “This site applies to you and here’s why…”. Until you do that they are not ready to be sold to. If you immediately jump in with “BUY THIS!” they will turn away and say “no thank you” more often than not.
The other thing we must do is ENGAGE with customers. Not only in terms of making them feel like they belong and gaining their interest – we must also create a dialogue with them if possible to allow for future purchases and creating an on-going buyer, seller relationship. These engagements could be any of the following…
– Sign up discounts
– Offers
– Newsletter sign ups
– Pop-up banners
– Account creation
– Subscription offers
– Prizes
– Social media follows
– Discarded basket messages
– Free delivery threshold
If you’re not doing any of these things, chances are you’re not selling as much as you could be, you’re not offering a good buying experience and you’re not engaging or creating a strong customer relationship.
There it is! 5 FREE tips on how to improve your E-Commerce website and performance. I design WordPress Woo Commerce websites, offer high quality Shopify websites, which are correctly setup to give you the best chance of selling successfully. I have worked with a wide range of industries including Food & Drink, Clothing and retail, jewellery and many more. Check out the website service page for more info and get in touch if you need my services.
