Tag: online buying

Just as a shopfront should entice customers in, an online store’s homepage should entice visitors to look around your website. After all, the homepage is likely to be the first page many customers visit.

Physical stores tend to use large signage, window displays and product promotion posters to attract shoppers. There are digital ways to replicate these features on a website that similarly entice visitors to look around:

Just as people need to be able to easily find their way around a physical store, it should be easy to navigate an online store. This involves making sure that specific products are easy to search for and find, as well as making sure that there are no obstructions along the way.

Just what are some key things to consider when making an online store easy to navigate?

• A menu bar with clear labels: Most online stores will have a menu bar with different labels to separate different categories of items. This menu bar is usually positioned at the top or left hand side of the page and is accessible from every webpage. Drop-down menus can be used to direct customers to subcategories of products – however you should avoid too many drop-down options as this will make your online store seem cluttered.
• A search bar: A search bar can allow customers to search for individual products using keywords. This is a useful feature for websites that sell lots of different products.
• No broken links: Make sure that links in your menu bar or links on your homepage lead to the right pages. If you delete a category page, make sure to delete that category from your menu bar.

In small physical stores, it’s common for staff members to ask browsing customers if they need any help. This can be a great way of securing extra sales – while some customers may not want to be hassled, there could be some customers that are struggling to find an item or who may be unsure about certain product information. Some of these customers may leave if you don’t approach them first.

When running an online store, you can’t physically walk up to your online visitors and ask if they need any assistance. However, it is possible to still reach out to visitors by using an automated instant chat pop-up. This could display a message saying something such as ‘hi, how can I help you today?’. Customers can then type in their query into an instant chat box and then get a response from an online sales rep.

A benefit of shopping for products in person is that you can physically interact with them. You can pick them up, look at them from all angles and even try them out in some cases.

An online store gives you limited options when it comes to interacting with products. You can’t touch, smell or taste products through a screen. However, there are still more interactive options than a still image. Two options include:

• 360 degree product images: These are images that you can virtually rotate on the screen to get an idea of what a product looks like from multiple angles.
• Product demo videos: These are videos that can allow you to see a product being used or assembled. This gives customers a clearer idea of how easy a product is to use.

Go into most physical stores and you’re likely to see various products being displayed around the checkout counters. These tend to be cheap products like snacks, small gifts and accessories – the types of things people are likely to buy impulsively at the last minute. Placing these products here can help increase revenue by prompting customers to buy extra items they wouldn’t have otherwise bought.

Online stores can use a similar trick to increase sales revenue. During the checkout process, you can ask customers if they want to buy certain extras. These should ideally be small accessories or upgrades related to the product they’re buying. Just make sure that you don’t automatically add these extras to customers’ baskets, instead giving customers the option to add them.

Modern physical stores typically accept a variety of payment methods including cash, debit card and credit card. Some customers may only be able to pay using one particular method and accepting multiple methods can prevent you from turning away these customers.

Online stores can similarly provide an array of different payment options. While cash isn’t an option online, you can still increase sales by considering some of the following payment options:

• Debit card: This is the most common way in which customers will pay for most low value goods.
• Credit card: Some customers are more likely to pay for high value items using a credit card, as it essentially allows them to borrow money for the purchase if they don’t have enough money on their debit card. Accepting credit card payments does mean accepting extra fees and so some companies introduce a minimum spending limit to keep things profitable.
• Loyalty points: A great way to attract return customers is to offer the option of collecting loyalty points with each purchase. These loyalty points can then be used to receive discounts on future purchases. Enabling loyalty points usually involves encouraging customers to create accounts so that you can track their purchases.
• Voucher codes: Voucher codes allow specific customers to access one time use discounts and deals. You can send these to customers via email to encourage extra sales.
• Gift cards: If you sell products at your store that are likely to be bought as gifts, why not consider offering gift cards to customers? These are essentially voucher codes that can be transferred to other people to buy gifts.
• Foreign currencies: Thinking of selling your products to customers in other countries? If so, accepting foreign currencies could be important. Various online payment processors can now allow you to do this – although accept some additional fees.
• Cryptocurrencies: It’s also possible to accept payments in cryptocurrency form. Only limited payment processors allow this currently, and it can come with its risks, but could still be a unique customer perk worth exploring.

When shopping in a physical store, many customers can be put off by long queues. When it comes to online stores, lengthy shipping times can have a similar effect.

Give customers the option to pay extra for fast shipping. There could be customers who need the product in the next few days. Fail to offer fast shipping and you could lose out on these customers. Just make sure to work with your courier to promise realistic delivery times (don’t promise you can deliver a product the next day if there is no certainty).

Wrapping Up

When you design your online store, think as a customer – what problems and questions would a customer face in a physical store and how would you resolve them? The same scenarios and solutions apply to an online store. You’ve to create ways to connect with your online customer at every step of the online purchase process. If you are able to implement the above mentioned ways on your online store, you’ve higher chances of earning more profit.

Over to you How do you run your online store? Share your tips in the comments section.