Spring into Spring and give your online sales a boost

Whether your website needs a wake up or your sales are suffering from the winter blues, check out our eCommerce tidy up tips and give your online business a boost to make sure you’re maximising online conversions, rather than cart abandonment:

Think like a customer

Before you change anything on your site, test drive your browsing and shopping experience to see how things are working. To do this properly, choose a couple of your most frequent visitor scenarios and walk through them as if you were a customer. Whilst you do, compare your site to that of your favourite websites and brands to see if the experience is equally as good.

You might be looking to buy a specific item, so make sure you can find it easily by searching, that the images and description keep you interested, and that it’s easy to select and put into your basket. Conversely, your customers might not know what they want to buy, so check out your home page and make sure it’s exciting to look at and draws attention to your best sellers. Click on links and make sure they go to the right places – nothing destroys confidence like a 404-error page. Check that your loading times are not too long and that the website is accessible on numerous devices, whilst still looking just as good as it does on your laptop.

You could also consider using a third-party tester, for example a friend from outside the business, who shops a lot online – they will be able to spot things you might not have and offer some constructive feedback. Alternatively you could use third party testing tools to really dig into your website health.

Focus on the journey as a whole

Once you have items in your basket, check out. Not part way, but right to the end. Pay attention to how much data you ask your customers to share with you – is it too demanding, does it all feel relevant and necessary? When it comes to paying, do you get the options you expect, and does it feel painless or are there too many steps? Once you’ve paid, look hard at your order confirmation messages – make sure you say thank you, set the right expectations about delivery, make it clear how customers can contact you.

Encourage repeat customers

It doesn’t stop there because at this point, you’re still a customer waiting to be impressed. Review any follow up emails you’re sent and when they arrive, ask yourself if they set the right tone, and give you the information you needed? Overall, did you feel in control and comfortable throughout the buying process?

Regularly carrying out this kind of user testing will give you a list of things you can improve. Keeping on top of this action log means continual improvement for your business. And the chances are, your customers will thank you by coming back for more.