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Brad Ahrens Fevereiro 25, 2015

5 tips to increase e-commerce sales with relevant content

Hey everyone! Welcome back.

In this series of blog posts, I’m examining the e-commerce conversion funnel from Awareness to Advocacy . Last time I discussed how to increase Awareness for your online store.

Once you’re posting relevant, interesting content for your target audience and interacting with them, they’llnaturally filter into your store. Now that they are at your store, you should optimize the next stage of theconversion funnel, Consideration, which is the topic of today’s post. Ultimately, we want to increase e-commercesales with relevant content.

Consideration:

Brick-and-Mortar : Customer enters store, browses, touches,smells, and tries on your productOnline : Customer enters your site, views images, andreads product descriptions

How to optimize this? Empower your user.

Give your users all of the information they need to make apurchasing decision. In a physical store, your customers cantouch your products, try them on, and ask a sales associatefor more information. Online stores are vastly different. Thebiggest limiting factor is the amount of information customersreceive about your products.

Case in point:

In December, I came across an online shop having a big saleon wetsuits for surfing. I was interested in buying, but forsome reason forced customers to email them for pricing. Wetsuits aren’t usually that expensive and I saw noreason to hide this information. Anyway, I emailed them asking for a price, but by the time I received an answer Ihad already moved on and bought what I needed from Quiksilver. There was no reason for the first store to hidetheir prices and to a larger extent, there’s no reason to hide any of your products’ information. Keep everythingtransparent and your customers will reward you for it. Quiksilver: 1, Other Shop: 0.

1) Product description. Ensure that you’regiving your customer all of the informationthey need to make the purchasing decision. That means product materials, color,sizing, etc. Give your customer an idea ofnot only the product features, but also whowould use it, when, and why. Make the product descriptions so detailed that the user can envision themselvestouching, feeling, and using the product. If you have a model in the photo, be sure to note their height and weight

as well as the size they are wearing.

Here’s an excellent example from Nalgene:

Starting with “Made of…,” they give you everything that you need to about how to use and care for the product. Everything else is explained in the Tech Specs. *One thing I would add to their description is the measurementsin metric, for non-US buyers.*

2) Photo & Video Quality. High quality photographs of your products go a long way. Be sure to use natural light,without flash as the product will come out looking, well, more natural. If this isn’t possible, say you live in northernSweden and want to take pictures in December, an interesting idea to try is to make your own light box, whichilluminates the image without seeming overly fake. This is best for small products that look good on their own.

One thing missing in online stores is a fitting room. Sell clothes online? Check out these two cool Shopify Appsthat allow your customers to virtually try your products on, FitFyle and Metail. Sell shoes? Shoefitr app may bejust the thing for you.

3) Product Reviews. Allow product reviews and encourage your customers to review your products. You maybelieve that your products are awesome. I’m sure you do. But, your customers don’t see this as an unbiasedopinion. Let your customers review your products directly on the product page. Studies have shown thatcustomers are more likely to buy from a shop with customer reviews than one without. Even negative reviewscan be a positive. This gives your audience a better understanding of the product itself. Does the shirt fit one sizesmaller than usual? Your customers will want to know this before they buy and you may have forgotten to mentionthat in the product description.

Want to make these reviews public on social media? Consider using Facebook’s comments social plugin. Thisallows your users to share their comments with their social network. Remember to make the default “requireapproval before visible to everyone” on your site so that you remain in control. You can also forbid certain words

or ban users.

Have WordPress? Check out WP Review.

Have Shopify? Product Reviews from Shopify is the top rated app. Note that you can flag and remove reviews.

4) Customer Support. In a physical store you have a sales associate whocan help your customers when they’re in your shop. The online equivalentis through a small chat window on your site. This allows you to help answeryour customers’ questions and solve any of their problems in real-time, increasing the likelihood that they’ll buy from you and not move on toyour competitors. A really good software for this is Zopim. (https://www.zopim.com). Not only is the Lite version completely free, butthey also have a mobile phone application (for iPhones at least) that allowsyou to provide real-time customer service even when you’re away from yourcomputer.

5) Clear Returns Policy. You can only reduce returns to a certain extent while keeping your customers satisfied.

That notwithstanding, here are some general tips on keeping your returns policy from ruining your finances.

Make it clear and easy to understand. Everything else is secondary.

Post a link to your returns policy on each product’s page.

Reduce the time customers have to return the item. 10 days should be enough for someone to decidewhether they want it or not. Giving customers 30, 90, or 360 days to decide if they want to return the itemor not vastly reduces your ability to re-sell that item if they do return it. Take into consideration your ownability to re-sell the item if it is returned and factor that into your returns policy.

Analyze which items are being returned and why. Did your product description not match your customers’expectations? Then change the copy. Is the product being damaged during shipping? Is there somethingfundamentally flawed with the product itself? Then, it may actually be cheaper to discontinue selling it.

Summary:

If there’s one thing you should get out of this post it is this:

Give your customers all of the information they need to make their purchasing decision. This will help increasecustomer satisfaction and reduce returns. Be exceedingly clear about your returns policy but not overly lenient. Analyze your customer feedback each step of the way to optimize this step of the funnel.

How do you increase your customers’ likelihood to purchasewhen they’re in your online shop?Have any tips/tricks to share? Apps or plugins that you love?

Comment below!