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Building a successful e-commerce site can be a tricky endeavor. With competition like Amazon, stores often have to find a specific niche which sets them apart from others. Some people do this through content creation by pairing their store with a blog, but some people find success selling their niche items outright.
While traditional methods of advertising are still useful—especially through social media sites like Facebook and Instagram—advertisement means very little if your consumers are not buying once they reach your site.
Optimizing your website for maximum customer conversion is crucial. The following three tips will help you improve your website to garner more sales from the advertising methods you are already applying.
Tip #1: Design
Web design is your first step to creating an e-commerce site that consumers trust. You may sell the greatest product in the world and have the best Internet security, but if your site has unsavory pictures or simply looks like a 13-year-old’s MySpace page, consumers are not going to buy.
Why?
Because even though we heard not to do it all our lives, we typically judge books by their cover.
Theme
The first step to creating a design for your website is to determine what your niche is. You need to choose your colors and your theme layout based on your target market.
Are you targeting business owners? Are you targeting teenagers? What personality types are you targeting?
Answering these questions will help you know what kind of design type to go with. If you are selling clothes like those at Hot Topic, choosing an edgier design theme would be favorable. However, if you are trying to sell golf clubs to retirees, choosing something more traditional would serve you well.
Another thing to watch out for are current design trends, which will give your site a great look and help you stay in front of the competition.
Color
Another element of design to consider is color. Psychologically different emotions are tied to different colors. Doing a little bit of research into the psychological reactions humans typically have too certain colors will help you determine what kind of feeling you want consumers to have when they are on your site. The most common example of this is the color blue. The color blue represents peace and tranquility and is often very calming. For example, if you are trying to sell essential oils, blue is a wonderful primary color for your color scheme.
Call to Action Placement
The last element of design to consider is navigation. Every website needs to have an easy-to-navigate navigation bar. Having a clear About page, Frequently Asked Questions page, Homepage, and Purchasing page will help consumers to navigate through the site.
However, on the homepage, there needs to be a call to action button in a very specific place. Having striking images with blurbs of information on your homepage is crucial to help consumers know exactly where they need to go. Placing call to action buttons in the lower left-hand corner of your photographs and design pieces will help people to know exactly where they need to click immediately to start browsing.
Tip #2: Internet Security
Another way to improve your e-commerce site is by amping up your Internet security. The first way to do this is to check with your site hosting. Do you have free reign to make your own Internet security package? If you do, it would be wise for you to invest in some coding classes. This will allow you the opportunity to put up the best firewalls and security systems to protect your users’ identities.
If you do not have a hosting platform which allows you to customize your security measures, considering upgrading to a dedicated hosting platform may be your best option. In addition to keeping your website safe from malicious content generated by other websites on your hosting platform, by upgrading to a dedicated hosting platform you have the ability to protect your site and content new viruses which your current security measures may or may not have upgraded to protect.
Tip #3: Chatbots
The last tip we have for you is to consider installing a chatbot. When it comes to consumers abandoning their shopping carts it is usually because they simply got cold feet at the moment of purchase.
When a consumer has been hovering over a shopping page for more than three minutes, it is clear that they are considering a purchase whether now or later. Engaging them in this moment is absolutely crucial. If the consumer can find what they need and have their question answered immediately, their chances of buying skyrocket.
However, as a busy business owner, you do not have time to engage with every single customer and you likely do not have a customer service support staff to do this for you.
This is where the magic of AI comes in.
Installing a chatbot which can engage a consumer will allow your website to interact with the consumer on your behalf. Chatbots can be programmed to interact with consumers by name, to answer basic questions about purchasing or about items, and can also walk customers through the purchasing process. Now, if a consumer has a question that the chatbot is not programmed to answer, the chatbot can provide contact information or gather their contact information for you to reach out to them and answer further questions. This sort of engagement turns browsers into buyers.
Overall, employing these three tips will help set your e-commerce site up for success and ensure that your business thrives in the long run.
About Eric Gordon
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