The percentage of people shopping online increases every year. Did your online business process its share of online sales? If not, try these techniques that encourage visitors to buy.
1. Encourage impulse buys.
Fast food restaurants understand this concept. Think: “do you want fries with that?” You can do that online as well:
- Suggest related products. Amazon.com is a leader in this technique. An online shopper searches for a particular book and clicks to view the details and reviews. The detail page offers the book at a special price if the customer buys it together with a book on a related topic or by the same author.
- Associate linked products. If a customer buys a video game, ask if he’d also like to buy some batteries, games, or other peripherals. Those are items the customer may forget to purchase or might not realize are available.
- Limited time offer! A visitor is more likely to take advantage of a special offer if she knows there’s a time limit. “Only 2 days left!” But don’t get carried away. An advertised limited time offer really needs to expire, otherwise, you lose the trust of your customers.
2. Offer online-only specials.
Many people use the internet to gather information about products online. They visit several websites to get an idea of what’s available and at what cost. But some don’t complete the sale online. Instead, many log off and head directly for nearest brick and mortar store to make their actual purchase.
Take advantage of this tendency by providing an incentive for these “window shoppers” to buy online. Advertise an offer that’s only available at your website and you give your visitors added incentive to become a customer. Remember though… most users are quite well educated about what’s available, so they’ll know if your offer is really a special deal.
3. Ship larger orders for free.
It doesn’t take much more time and effort to pack and ship 5 items than to pack and ship 1 item. It’s more efficient for you to pack more items in each order, so give customers an incentive to purchase more at one time.
How? Many online shoppers really hate paying shipping charges. It’s not uncommon for the shipping charges for a small, low-priced item to add an extra 50-70% to the purchase price and customers feel that retailers take advantage of them.
But for a small retailer, small orders are a pain to deal with. Raise your profit margin and encourage larger orders by offering free shipping for multiple-item orders or orders that reach a certain dollar level. Online retailers that have tried this, have found to this to be very effective at boosting sales.
4. Be honest about pricing.
People want to know the total price before they start filling out a shopping cart order form. Most users will leave a site without completing their purchase if the site doesn’t show total cost – including shipping – before asking for personal information.
5. Provide great customer service.
It takes far more effort to attract new customers than it does to keep existing ones. That simple concept seems to be forgotten in these days of anonymous email and the torture of automated phone systems:
“Press 1 for the Order Department, Press 2 for Sales, Press “Wish Again” to speak to a live operator!”
42% consumers made their most recent online purchase because of a previous good experience with the retailer.
6. Create compelling website copy.
Design is an important component of website credibility, but design only takes you so far. Visitors quickly note the design, but then look for content. Format your content to reflect how people read online and write persuasive, convincing online copy.
7. Have complete product information and photos.
People want to see what they’re buying and they want to know a lot about it. But consider overall page size and download time when you’re adding this information.
- Informational pages.
You accomplish two goals when you create informational pages. Pages loaded with useful information attract human visitors and search engine spiders. Good information turns your site into an authority site on the Web so customers feel more comfortable buying from you.
- Create thumbnail images and link them to full-size photos of the product. Even if you can post life-size images of your product from several viewpoints, don’t place them on the main informational page. Instead, create thumbnail images the link to the larger photos. Visitors with slow dial-up connections will thank you!
- Optimize images.
You should carefully optimize the size of all the images on your website. Identify slow-loading pages and optimize all your images.
Visitors have a limited amount of time and patience, so make sure they’re spending time reading your content instead of waiting for the page to load.
Closing The Sale
The basic idea of methods 1-4 is to close the sale while visitors are at your website.
They help encourage visitors to buy before they leave your site. None of these methods are underhanded or unethical. They’re based on common knowledge of human nature. Successful marketing and salespeople use them and so should you!
One of the most (happily) frustrating parts of my job is often trying to convince business owners that setting up an online shop is not only easy, but profitable. There are so many people who equate online shopping to identity theft, who equate technology to Big Brother, and who equate online stores to spam sites that I spend a good chunk of my networking time trying to convince them otherwise.
And while I can say a million times, No, it really IS easy! they always retort that I’m online all the time, so of COURSE it’s easy for me. Or if I say Look at the minimal amount of start-up costs! And how there’s little maintenance! they always say you get what you pay for, and that’s why there’s little money directly involved.
For example, there is a very nice lady in a networking group that I’m a part of who sells ladies’ accessories as part of an in-home sales team. She’s rated one of the highest regionally, and she does extremely well with her in-home and book shows.
BUT.
She handed me her business card one day and, being a girl, I went online to drool over her wares. Her website was down. I figured, meh, I’ll try again later.
I ran into her at our next function and mentioned it to her and she said, “Yeah, it’s down more than it’s up. But what can you do?”
?!?!
I quickly scheduled a one on one meeting with her to discuss that YES, there’s a lot that she can do. And SHOULD do. Because that’s basically free money for her.
“But I don’t understand all of that computer stuff.” she told me, wearily.
Here’s what I plan to show her. That you don’t have to understand COMPUTER stuff, you merely have to understand MONEY. Research marketing firm eMarketer announced that eCommerce has risen sharply since the first quarter of 2010; retail (brick-and-mortar) shopping is making a slow comeback. The difference is night and day: eCommerce has risen 15%. Retail has risen 3%.
Now, having said that, the slice of online shopping is still a smaller piece of the pie than the retail side of things, but if .. like in the case of this business owner .. you’ve already got one slice, wouldn’t you want that rapidly growing other slice too?
Last week, I told you about a revolutionary (and tricky!) experiment that was held at he prestigious IDM B2B Marketing Conference. John Bottom, a British social media “pioneer” from the company Base One, proposed that he could launch an eBook during his keynote address and by the end of the day, have garnished 1000 downloads of the previously unreleased material.
It was a startling claim to make, and I know many (INCLUDING ME!) were hoping he would not only meet that, but exceed it. Because we at SimpleHelix believe that the social media revolution is just now beginning to find its feet, and will soon become a far more accessible and profitable platform than our traditional methods of print and tv.
I jumped online and googled how the experiment turned out, and .. honestly .. was a little disappointed.
From Base One:
Now that the dust has settled I can report back on the whole experiment… The final count, including pdf and video views, was 570 downloads – and while I’m a little disappointed we didn’t make 1,000, I’m still delighted that the experiment worked by proving clearly how content can spread if it is interesting.
570 people voluntarily accessed a piece of information – a fact that one member of my audience put into context by saying that it would cost thousands of media dollars to achieve the same effect by interruptive advertising.
I totally agree with John’s overall take from it .. it was a very pointed experiment, and even if they fell short of the goal, I think that it’s fair to say that gathering even half of the goal’s downloads would’ve taken quite a chunk of change to happen in the traditional media. And keep in mind that this was merely HOURS .. not weeks, not a month .. just around twelve hours.
So if you, as a business owner, had been on the fence about jumping into a new foray with social media .. maybe this will be the push you needed.
And if you so desire, there’s a GREAT eBook available at Base One called Opportunities and Threats: the Future of Social Media as Viewed by Senior UK Marketers for download.
I like working here. I like it for a lot of reasons. And it isn’t (always) about the paycheck, lemme tell you.
One of the reasons I really, really like working here is our support staff. Far different from your usual “outsourced” support, our guys are a tight-knit bunch. They really enjoy their work, and they REALLY enjoy the problem-solving aspect of their jobs. They take each support ticket as a challenge, a chance to best the other guys in going above and beyond when it comes to service. And while it’s sometimes an internal battle for the MOST EPIC SUPPORT EVER, I often find results that prove that our customers see the effort as well.
Take, for example, this great RatePoint Review we received this week, from Hank:
Their servers are amazing, their support is FAST AND ACCURATE, and they articulate every point precisely and accurately. If you have questions they walk you through every step of the way instead of simply sending you to an “article” or “faq” section of the site. Special *Kudos* to MICHAEL for his knowledge and prompt and accurate help in regards to all my countless questions and concerns. I have been with simplehelix for over a year now and have not had 1 single issue. I have tried others such as bluehost, hostgator, 1&1, however nothing compares to their “light speed” servers and quality human customer service. I never had a Magento site run faster than on SimpleHelix. Thank you guys for all you have done for my websites. It is greatly appreciated.
I also really enjoy how our team is very flexible about trying new things, and they adapt quickly to change. It’s necessary when you work in technology; what’s hip and new one day is completely obsolete a week later. It takes an amazing and dedicated team to stay on top of the new gadgets and gizmos out there. Staying on top of hardware and software changes are often what keep our customers up and running, and you’ll see that as a customer as well.
A great shout-out about this same issue came from Martin Dean in a RatePoint Review:
It is hard to fault the level of support that Simple Helix Provide. As a responsibly technical user, working with a complex Magento deployment I have frequently approached SH with quite detailed queries. Justin, Scott and the whole team are always quick to respond – and if they don’t know they find out. As with all technical services, occasionally things can go wrong – with Simple Helix whenever we have had a glitch (usually down to Magento not them!) the response has always been first rate. In a nut shell, I continue to trust them with our mission critical e-commerce web-servers and have no issues recommending that you do the same.
But I think what sets us apart, aside from our 24×7 support, is the fact that you connect with a live, actual, human being when you call us, Tweet us, or send us a Support Ticket online. You aren’t talking with a bot or a scripted pass-thru; you’re talking with someone who is held accountable for the support they provide you. They take PRIDE in that, and it’s what helps our support excel.
We noticed this in a great Twitter response from our new design partner, Allan MacGregor:
@SimpleHelix technical support was excellent once more ! One of the best hosting companies I have tried so far …!
We are incredibly proud to be your internet host provider. We know that there’s a lot of choices out there, and it’s easy to get caught up in the noise of SERVERS and SPEED and GREAT DEALS! and all of those are important factors, no doubt. But we really, really take YOUR opinion seriously, and we’re more than thrilled to be the hand that helps you up when something catches a snag. There are no “support points” needed to call us. You don’t have to hope that your issue only crops up during office hours. You don’t even have to know how to properly articulate your issue using “tech speak”. You just have to be able to use a phone, send a tweet, or click a link.
We’ll take it from there. And be proud to do so.
1. Non-compliance Isn’t an Option
If your site accepts, processes or stores credit card information, you have to take on the responsibilities of being PCI compliant. A large part of that has to do with the security of your site’s infrastructure and the manner in which your customers’ data must be secured. Internal processes and data accessibility also factor in and can influence your ongoing operations. Utilizing a 3rd party payment gateway, and delegating the strictest requirement to another provider, is a common means for getting an E-com site up and running quickly. This is complicated stuff though, so at the end of the day, if you have questions, be sure to ask an expert.
2. Always Expect (and Plan for!) the Unexpected
Say one of your products is touted by a movie star, talk show host or super athlete. Would your site be ready? Could it handle the traffic or quickly scale up to handle it? Whatever kind of hosting solution you choose, make sure you have a plan in place, so you can build up your configuration and architecture to deal with this kind of unusual demand. And if you have seasonal spikes, sales or promotions, enact your plan and test it weeks before the onslaught.
3. Keep Your Eyes on the Shopping Cart
Online shopping carts are the cash registers of the online world. They ring beautifully when a sale is completed but have a tendency to get jammed on occasion. And when they do, you need to know quickly. Since there isn’t a clerk available on the Internet to inform you of such issues, it is critical to have a robust monitoring solution in place. From basic site availability monitoring to custom URL monitoring and Synthetic Transactions, a multitude of tools are available to ensure your shoppers will be able to complete their transaction on your site.
Magento has listened to the feedback for a mid-tier version of its product, and today has announced the release of Magento: Professional, which will feature “revenue-generating features” not found in the community version at a price tag much more accessible than the Enterprise edition.
For more information, you can read up about the new release here.
May 28th, 2010
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