E-commerce websites must produce online sales to be considered effective and successful. Just launching a website is rarely enough to produce the desired online sales and outcomes. Regardless of company size, retailers look for methods to improve their e-commerce websites in order to increase sales.
To meet the desired online sales goals, website pages must be created with the proper conversion tools and call to action elements. A business wants the website visitor and consumer to venture as quickly as possible to the checkout and hopefully not abandon the checkout process prior to completing the purchase.
This even though sounds simple enough is all too often not the case. Shopping cart abandonment alone can be as high as 50-60%. In order to decrease this number and increase customers, here are 10 e-commerce design tips to help increase sales.
10 E-Commerce Design Tips To Increase Sales
1. Deploy Responsive Design
All e-commerce websites should be Responsive Design by now. If not, they loose lots of potential business. To increase sales chances update to HTML5 (Responsive Design) websites. They work across all major devices such as tablets, smart phones, and computers.
2. Offer Incentives
A key method to increase sales online is to offer website visitors the right incentives. Incentives can be deals, specials, discounts, and giveaways. Often companies use “Free Shipping” and other forms to give website visitors incentives for shopping.
3. Have Short Checkouts
Lengthy shopping cart checkouts increase shopping cart abandonment. For best results, e-commerce websites should have short and simply checkout processes. Consumers hate complex and confusing online shopping experiences, especially during checkouts.
4. Create Simple Navigation
Confusing and complicated website navigation can quickly cause an e-commerce website to fail. This is true for most websites. Navigation is critical to the success of a website. E-commerce website design should use smart and simple navigational structure for best results.
5. Display Product Reviews
Product reviews are a key method to increase sales. Consumers love customer and product reviews. Displaying them properly can quickly drive sales up and improve customer loyalty.
6. Publish Quality Photography
We judge the book by it’s cover. E-commerce websites that use high quality photography have better chances at success. Quality images for shopping carts and website design ads trust and increases chances at sales.
7. Create and Publish Videos
Videos increase drastically online sales. Companies that want to improve online sales should create and publish videos on the home page, shopping pages, and key landing pages. Videos can be testimonials, reviews, introductions, and product details as example.
8. Add Cross and Up-Sell Features
To improve chances at additional sales, e-commerce websites should integrate features that enable retailers to cross and up-sell to their website visitors and customers. These features should be strategically placed and located on key pages.
9. Display Contact Information
Websites that display their contact information well and in key areas of the website tend to perform better. Consumers have more trust with websites that don’t hide their contact information. Displaying a phone number, chat, email, and other contact methods can increase online sales.
10. Make Sharing Easy
We live in a social media age and websites that don’t allow their visitors to share something they see, risk loosing potential sales and customers. Social media sharing tools and features should be incorporated in the website design properly to support overall company goals and online sales.
