E-commerce tips from online retail experts

A recent catch up with colleagues at the Online Retailer exhibition in Sydney gave me a chance to learn some new e-commerce tips from experts that are in the trenches every day.

This is important, especially in light of the new Chrome release.

One of the things we were talking about is the primary purpose of a website. What’s yours?

You might think it’s B2B, or to educate, or any number of other answers, but when you get right down to it the primary reason for your website is to generate leads and sales. And some of the things we found that prevented this were too many calls to action on the homepage or just a homepage with too much clutter.

Some of the simple things you could try to increase conversions are labels on the product pages that say ‘In Stock’, ‘For Sale’ or ‘Ships Today’.

Another thing you could try, which I’ve talked about before, is a countdown clock on the front page that tells viewers how many hours are left for the ‘Ships Today’ deadline. All these things increase your customers’ sense of urgency.

Also, try de-cluttering the homepage by moving your social icons to the bottom of the page. You don’t want to steer users away from your website  —you’ve just gotten them there!

If visitors really want to promote your brand or products on social, they will find the icons with little fuss.

Get your users to the important part of your site as fast as possible.

Plus, try to stick with one page, and feature all your products, instead of having multiple pages for product variants, such as colour.

Now, last week Chrome released a new update, so you might be seeing ‘Not Secure’ warnings all over your screen. Even our Australian Navy was caught up in that one. The point is, get your HTTPS converted over as soon as possible because the last thing a potential customer wants to see is a security warning on your site!

This article originally published on stewartmedia.com.au.

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