Is Your E-Commerce Website Selling as Much as It Could Be?
E-commerce websites sales have taken off in 2020. According to Forbes, Adobe’s Digital Insights Manager, Vivek Pandya, “it would’ve taken between 4 and 6 years to get to the levels that we saw in May if the growth continued at the same levels it was at for the past few years” (Forbes). As physical store locations began closing in mid March, selling online became more essential than ever before. What many business owners weren’t ready for are the complexities that comes with selling products online.
Whether you’re new to e-commerce altogether or haven’t yet dived into the ins and outs of digital marketing, take it from us, it’s a whole new ball game. Even if you’re a veteran to the online sales and marketing environment, new strategies and campaign techniques are being developed every day.
It’s our job at Bytes to help our clients sell their products and/or services to their full potential. Our digital marketing specialists are experts in their field and constantly learning new strategies, tools, and technologies that will help you succeed.
So now that you’re heavily relying on your online sales, the question becomes, is your website selling as much as it could be? 99.9% of the time, the answer to this question is no, it has almost certainly not reached its full sales potential. So what are some of the ways to increase your sales? Here are some questions to ask yourself to get started.
Asking The Right Questions
In order to acquire more website sales there are a number of questions to ask yourself:
1. Who are Your Customers?
What is the age, gender, and geographic location of your ideal customer? What are they interested in? What are their major pain points that relate to the product or service you are trying to sell them? These questions help you identify who you should be targeting your digital advertising campaigns toward. Digital advertising platforms such as Google and Facebook Ads allow you to target specific interests and demographics such as these. Knowing this information can also help you develop strong messaging that appeals directly to your audience.
2. How is Your Audience Shopping?
Are your website visitors using desktops, tablets, or phones? Maybe a majority of them are shopping in person? These questions help identify essential features that could be added to your website such as Apple or Google Pay. It may also be time to take a closer look at how your website appears on mobile devices. While your website may be working perfectly on a desktop, it’s important to maintain a positive shopping experience on all devices, as many of your shoppers could be using phones or tablets instead.
3. Are There Any Barriers Your Customers Face Upon Checkout?
Barriers to consider are the number of clicks it takes to complete a purchase or the method of payment required. Enabling payment features like Venmo and eliminating the number of clicks it takes to checkout makes clients much more likely to complete a purchase.
How to Proceed
So now you know what interests and demographics make up your customers, how they are shopping, and some of the barriers your website is presenting, it’s time to address these questions and create a marketing strategy that adheres to your audience and website.
Increase Online Visibility
Understanding your audience is just the first step to successful digital marketing strategies. Now that you know who your audience is, it’s time to grab your potential customers’ attention through the use of social media, SEO, and advertising campaigns.
Social Media
Social Media is the number one way to make a deeper connection with your clientele online. Using platforms like Facebook and Instagram to advertise both your products and your business help potential customers to better understand your authenticity and culture.
Social Media gives your business a kind of persona making you a more trustworthy business that prospective clients can relate to. It’s important now more than ever to update your social media pages and keep your followers engaged.
SEO
SEO plays an extremely important role in organic search results. By improving your website’s SEO, you are improving your search engine rankings and bringing your website to the top of the search engine’s page results to capitalize on that coveted “free” traffic stream.
While there are several ways to improve your website’s SEO, as listed in this article, we highly recommend you begin with regularly writing new, relevant blog posts. This keeps your website updated and will tell Google and other search engines to keep coming back to check for new updates.
Digital Advertising Campaigns
While this method of advertising isn’t free like the two listed above, we can’t emphasize the importance and success of both Google and Facebook Advertising Campaigns enough. As our two leading methods of digital marketing, we see first hand the positive return advertising on these interfaces delivers to our clients.
The ability to customize advertisements to particular audiences gives these platforms unlimited potential in the conversions they can provide. Your e-commerce website can’t afford to go without these forms of advertising any longer.
Create a Demand for Your Product
Now that you have the means to advertise online, it’s time to consider your approach. How can you make your product stand out from others? These days, the chances that you are the only business selling a product like yours online is nearly impossible. It’s your job to create a high demand for your product and promote its uniqueness.
For example, over this past summer Bytes ran a Facebook ads campaign for a local restaurant. The message on the ad read, “Now Open,” creating a demand for reservations and takeout orders. In addition, we targeted people who we knew may be interested in such a service. We did this by targeting people who had already shown interest in the restaurant by visiting the website or liking their facebook page. We even went as far as advertising to the friends of those who liked the restaurant’s facebook page.
By using Facebook Advertising, we were able to not only target the audience we knew would be interested, but we created a custom ad that generated demand for reservations and takeout orders. The results spoke for itself, as this advertisement campaign drove heavy traffic, leads, and conversions through the website.
Optimize Your Shopping Cart
Minimize the Number of Clicks it Takes to Complete a Purchase
Have you ever gone to purchase something online, then after a bit of time adding items to your cart, filling out your name, and grabbing your credit card, decided not to purchase the item after all? This behavior is not uncommon when it comes to online shopping. The time spent between your potential client viewing the product on your website to completing the purchase can be long enough to change someone’s mind.
It’s important to consider this when building out or taking a look at your online shopping cart. How long does it take for my potential customers to see the item they want to finalize the purchase? If you find it takes more clicks than it should, it may be time to consider updating your shopping cart. Minimize the number of clicks it takes from adding to your cart to fulfilling the purchase.
Add Payment Features for Ease of Purchase
One way to minimize the number of clicks it takes to checkout can be trimmed down by adding alternative forms of payment such as Apple or Google Pay. The time it takes for a potential customer to fill out their credit card information may be just long enough to convince them to abandon their shopping cart. Don’t let your customer think about it too long. Adding simplified payment methods makes purchasing items almost instant, leaving little time for the customer to double back on their decision to make a purchase.
Another thing to consider is adding features like Venmo or Paypal payments. This is another great way to increase your customer’s chances of a purchase. Many people, especially millennials and Gen Zers, prefer money leaving their Venmo account rather than their bank account. Think about adding these methods of payment to your e-commerce website for customer convenience.
There are endless ways to improve your customers’ online shopping experience, but beginning with optimizing your shopping cart should be a top priority.
Let’s Wrap it Up
The short answer to our initial question is, no, your e-commerce website is not selling as much as it could be. We are living in a new world in 2020. Businesses and customers are relying on online purchasing more than ever before. Not only for convenience, but for physical well being.
It’s time to take your e-commerce business to the next level. Contact Bytes.co today to find out how we can help your website be more successful and profitable.
