As more companies take to the Internet to develop an e-commerce website, they quickly realize that not everything comes up roses in the online industry. After spending multitudes of money on marketing strategies to drive customers to their site, and effective tactics proven to achieve high rankings in search engine queries, they realize the high majority of online visitors abandon the shopping cart.
In light of that, it is not surprising that many highly successful e-commerce companies use proven strategic approaches to guarantee shopping cart usability. Through simple tweaks, these companies can alter potential customer behavior and increase their sales and profitability.
It has long been known that slow load times on product pages can cost any online company a huge portion of their sales. When potential customers are not accommodated at the speed they desire, they will often look to the competition for solutions to their problems. This can have dramatic negative results on the company’s conversion rates.
By developing a clear site navigational system to the website, online companies can improve their customers shopping experience, and optimize search engine results. Anytime a potential customer lands on a specific product page they need to understand exactly where they are in the architecture of the site. The web developer needs to design the site to allow the user to browse through a variety of categories leaving “breadcrumbs” on each visited webpage. That allows them to know exactly where they have been.
Every experienced eCommerce Software marketer understands the importance of customer service. By providing an easy way to contact the company, the potential customer is offered a variety of preferred methods of placing the order, whether by phone, e-mail or shopping cart. This one change in tactics can convert many visitors into premium paying customers.
Each page containing products or services your company sells needs to be simple, direct and as visually appealing as possible. Every visited page should be designed to allow your customer to collect as much information as possible in 3 seconds or less. Visitors that are overwhelmed tend to click the back button to return to the previous page.
All the e-commerce product pages need to be unique, rather than just a cookie stamp of other websites containing the same products and manufacturer’s description. Providing unique compelling descriptions are sure to encourage your potential customers to read about the product, along with the associated reviews, feedback and comments from individuals who purchased and used the product.
Not every visiting potential customer is ready to purchase the company’s goods or services. By providing additional calls to action, the company can improve the value of their products and services, to increase the possibility of a sale. It can be as simple as using a recommendation engine to offer a way to increase product cross selling.
Guest Post by Brian: Brian Taylor is the VP, Business Development at Forix, a web design company Portland, OR. Forix specializes in web design and development for small, medium and large company websites and also we have eCommerce developers Portland.
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Ready! (6 months ago)
Some times it’s hard to customize any wordpress plugin, so users try to use some custom Ecommerce themes , created especially for some shopping cart plugins.
You can check new ecommerce plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ready-ecommerce
Magento extensions (6 months ago)
The most effective way is to simplify the checkout step. With magento platform, you may use Magestore Onestepcheckout extension. It will remove all the annoying steps and help customer to finish their checkout very quickly