Creating website traffic for your online store does not guarantee a sale. You may attract all the traffic in the world, but if your website is not enticing visitors to buy, you are wasting your time and money on any form of marketing.
Selling products online is not easy. If you hear anyone tell you otherwise, then do what I do. Smile politely and fight the overwhelming desire to engage in a heated debate about the difficulties of earning a regular income through online retail.
Having a fully functioning e-commerce website is only the very start of your journey into e-commerce. There are many more rivers to the mountain of success that must be crossed before sales really start to generate for you.
Search engine optimisation and social media promotion are vital to building your brand, however, no matter how much money you spend on marketing, if your website misses these vital selling points, no amount of traffic will get you a sale.
Here are the top five tips to generate an online sale.
Ensure your products are easy to locate on your website. Don't fill your home page with a bunch of graphics and ads. Get straight to the point and assist your customers in making a purchase by clearly directing them to the goods or services for sale. The average time a visitor spends on a website is 7 seconds. This reduces to 2.6 seconds if the home page looks to crowded or complicated. Therefore having a well laid out landing page or home page is essential.
If your website is selling a product that requires instruction or further explanation, install a live chat feature so customers may ask you there and then about the product. Live chat also gives you the opportunity to make a sale "'face to face". There are free live chat apps that can easily be installed on your website, therefore no investment is required.
Be descriptive. Simply having an image of the product with the price underneath will not persuade anyone to buy. However, a description such as "'this beautiful piece of jewellery has been expertly handcrafted" will do wonders and create a positive image in the customer's mind.
Monitor your competitors prices closely. Any savvy online shopper will do their research. If they can get the same product elsewhere for cheaper, they will. That is not to say you should sell products with very little profit, if you are doing this stop immediately. And a purchase decision is not always down to price. However, you must do you research.
Figure out what your customers are thinking. Tap into their thoughts and put yourself in their shoes. For example, ask why your customers want that product. If you sell vitamins, then use language such as "our vitamins will assist you with your goal to be the healthiest person you can be" as this directly addresses one of the primary reasons your customers buy your product. It also shows you understand them.
There is a psychology to retail, online or in store. Learn it and you will succeed.
