5 Ways to Increase Ecommerce Sales

So you have an ecommerce site that is attracting customers but sales could be better. Here are some tips that can help you convert the casual shopper into a customer, increase number of purchases and make more sales.

Keep it clean. Keep it simple.

Keep your ecommerce site design clean and simple. Many ecommerce website are so overpopulated with lengthy menues and flashing calls to action that it distracts the customer from the actual products. Keep your ecommerce website design clean and uncluttered.· Focus on the products.

Do write navigation systems that are meaningful to the customer.

Don’t write long, complex menu descriptions that are aimed at search engines. Focus on short, simple, meaningful navigation systems that the customer can easily navigate. Use intuitive sub navigation systems that customers can easily follow.

Design

Design your site with your customer in mind. Make the site market appropriate. An online store is similar to a brick and mortar in that it needs to appeal to the customer visually and emotionally (in a good way).

Do: Research the best ecommerce sites with similar product offering and get ideas on layout, colors and navigation.

Don’t: Purchase just any old template that is not compatible with your target audience. As with most aspects of design, less is more. That goes for colors too. Follow a 3 color combination (white, pop color, low light color).

Up sell and Cross Sell

If you’re not taking the opportunity to up sell and cross sell your products then you are missing out.· This is the oldest retail trick and it works online just as nicely.

Do use Related items, Customers who bought, wish lists, features products and items you might also like.

Don’t use Heavy and confusing menu systems, too much copy, black hat tactics aimed to increase search engine optimization.

Go easy on the copy.

Unless you’re selling books, go easy on the copy. Long winded copy, lengthy product descriptions kill the customer experience. Online shopping is highly visual.

Do Give clients an easy to scan, short, bulleted list of features. Go for photos over text as a selling feature.

Don’t Write lengthy product descriptions aimed at attracting search engines. Limit the amount of text show on the website main page and category pages.

Make It Easy

Make check out a breeze.

Do: Highlight the shopping cart, make registration and checkout quick and painless. Have a remember me feature.

Don’t: Skip lengthy registration process that requires email verification prior to login.

Try these simple tricks to boost your ecommerce sales in 2011.

Fran Jacoberger is a full service web design and consulting studio based in NY.

Tags: ecommerce, ecommerce marketing

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 at 11:40 am and is filed under Marketing, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.