Pimp Your eCommerce Store To Boost Your Sales

Global eCommerce is experiencing unprecedented growth, and that growth is only going continue!

According to Statista,

worldwide B2C retail eCommerce will reach almost $2 trillion by the end of 2016, and $2.5 trillion by 2018.

In short, there has never been a better time to start an eCommerce business.

A major reason for this exponential growth in eCommerce, is the widespread usage of smartphones and mobile devices. In the U.S alone, more than 52% adults have a smartphone or tablet.

Studies suggest that global mobile commerce spending will reach almost $700 billion over the next 2 years. And we already know that more than half of Google searches now originate from mobile devices.

All this points to one direction.

You need to optimize your eCommerce store for mobile conversions if you don’t want to lose a major chunk of business.

Here are a few ways you can do it.

1. Mobile Friendly Yet?

This might sound like obvious advice, but you’d be surprised that a whopping 91% of the top 100 eCommerce websites still do not use a responsive design.

Just because your website is accessible from a mobile doesn’t mean it’s responsive as well. A responsive website design adjusts according to the visitor’s device. It allows mobile visitors to easily tap on different links and view your products clearly.

Without a responsive design, mobile users would need to pinch and zoom (something we all hate, right?) and they would also face difficulty in opening links because of the small text sizes.

For example, here’s a snapshot of Selz Store Pro, a leading eCommerce store app and digital selling platform. Since it uses a completely responsive website design, you can see how the design adjusts according to the device it’s viewed on. and makes life easy for a mobile visitor.

To check whether your eCommerce website is mobile friendly or not, you can run Google’s Mobile Friendly Test.

In general, poor user experience is one of the biggest reasons why mobile shoppers will leave your eCommerce website.

2. Simplify and Optimize

Your mobile website’s navigation menus and forms have a huge impact on user experience. Almost 27% of mobile shoppers leave an eCommerce store because of poor navigation.

How exactly do you simplify navigation? By keeping it clutter free. Keep the number of links to a bare minimum and maintain proper tap distance between links.

Similarly, minimize the use of text forms on your mobile store as filling forms on smartphones can be really irritating sometimes. Instead, offer checklists or drop down menus from where the users can select options.

3. Use Retargeting Bring Back Lost Buyers

Retargeting is a powerful way to regain your website visitors who abandon their purchase midway. Simply put, retargeting uses cookies to track the users who visit your website or open your emails. Once they leave your site, they are shown your advertisements on other websites.

Source: Retargeter

Studies suggest that buyers who abandon a purchase on your site spend 55% more when they are remarketed to.

The conversion rate for retargeting is even higher when the visitor is already subscribed to your email list. So this is a avenue that many of you should be seriously considering!

4. Simplify Your Check-Out Process

The length of your store’s checkout process has a major impact on conversions.

Almost 47% visitors abandon purchase when the checkout process has more than 5 steps. Ideally, your checkout should include a minimum of redirections and steps.

On the other side of the coin, if your checkout process is only one-step, make sure the user doesn’t have too many fields to fill in. A long checkout form also causes a higher the abandon rate.

So there is a compromise, and making it clear and simple is the key.

5. Remove The Barriers

Do you force your buyers to sign up before they can buy from you?

If yes, you are losing customers. On average, businesses lose around 22% of buyers because of sign in barriers during checkout.

Mandatory sign up might be useful for a select range of products, but for most eCommerce stores, especially the ones selling eBooks and other forms of digital products, it’s better to just ask for the buyer’s email.

Another alternative is to use social sign up, which allow buyers to login with their social media accounts (easy for them) and collect the remaining information once they’ve signed up.

This can  also increase the social media traffic to your store.

6. Improve Your Website’s Credibility

With the rise in eCommerce transactions, the amount of online fraud has also increased significantly, and that concerns your visitors too!

Roughly 18% of buyers abandon shopping because of concerns over payment security.

That is why it’s important that your product and checkout pages look credible and secure.

How do you solve this problem?

You can do that by displaying product reviews and testimonials on your product pages, and by using different security symbols like Verisign, Visa, SSL Secure and a few other well placed badges.

7. Expand Your Payment Options

With the exploding number of online shoppers across the globe, it is imperative that you provide as many payment options to your buyers as possible.

Different buyers have different preferences, and they can easily abandon a purchase if you don’t have the payment option they want or need.

For example, 79% of U.S buyers prefer using PayPal while 40 % also use Google Wallet.

Buyers in Europe however, prefer to use a credit card.

It is also very powerful to display these options on your product pages and checkout page, so that people know from the very beginning what payment options you offer.

Even if you can’t offer them all, at least ensure that you are offering the most used payment methods in your industry.

8. Can I Switch Devices While Shopping?

Despite the increase in mobile commerce, there are many buyers who browse on mobile but purchase on desktop.

In fact, a Nielson research indicates that almost 95% of tablet shoppers and 72% of mobile shoppers browse from the comfort of their homes.

Many such shoppers look for products on their mobile device, but make the purchase on desktop. They see their desktop as more reliable, secure and easy to use while making the actual purchase.

Because of this increasing trend, you must provide them the option to switch devices for a later purchase.

There are many ways to do this, but one of the simplest is a wish list option where they can add the products they find interesting.

This is of course quite different from providing a shopping cart where visitors have the intent to buy. This is obviously not always the case.

9. Is Your Website Fast?

Your website speed not only has a major impact on your sales, but also on your search engine rankings.

Around 47% of visitors expect a website to load in 2 seconds, while just over 40% visitors leave a website if it takes more than seconds to load.

In order to optimize the loading speed of your eCommerce store for mobile visitors, make sure you’re using

• a responsive website design
• a reputable webhosting service
• and a reliable CDN.

Also ensure that the images and other visual content on your website is optimized.

You can calculate your website speed using Web Page test tool. It gives you an idea of the reality of your page load times because it uses actual browsers in various locations around the world.

Apart from calculating your website speed, this tool also shares best practices and recommendations to increase your website performance.

10. Don’t Hide Your Fees

One of the biggest reasons customers abandon their purchase midway through the checkout process, is because they are presented with additional costs at the time of checkout.

According to KISSmetrics, almost 57% buyers leave without paying when they encounter unexpected costs.

The obvious solution to this problem is to disclose all costs involved in a purchase upfront.

Do not hide any costs  from your visitor and wait until the checkout page to disclose them.

Ideally, you should be offering free shipping to your customers since that increases the purchase probability significantly.

However, if you can’t afford to do so, make sure the customer is aware of all the taxes and shipping costs involved right from the get go.

Wrapping Up

When it comes to mobile shoppers, user experience should be at the center of your conversion and sales strategy.

Make sure every element of your mobile design is guiding buyers towards purchasing and simplifying the buying decision for them.

If you apply these tips to your website, you will certainly be ahead of most of your competitors.

Most of them, surprisingly, are yet to optimize their eCommerce stores for mobile conversions.