This time of season is a great time to start running sales through your online store.
E-commerce during this holiday season can be tied to a variety of different events and promotions. But how do you turn your traffic into sales? This is a major problem for many stores who see lots of people checking out the website, but very few who are following through with actual purchases.
Here’s how you can use autumn sales to get your visitors to fall in love with your products:
- Get your customers to trust you — No one is going to buy from your business if they feel like they can’t trust you with their data. Trust badges have become a new concept that is catching on. Trust badges allow customers to know if your site is SSL certified (for example) and is therefore safe to use.
You also want to make sure you are well represented on websites such as Angie’s List, TripAdvisor, and Yelp. Encourage your customers to leave an honest review on those websites. If a customer does post a negative review, respond quickly and politely to see if you can rectify the situation and get the review changed or updated.
- Know your customers — The first thing that you need to do is optimize your storefront and buying experience using Google Analytics. This can be used to pull out demographic information including the gender, age, and interests of your visitors.
You can also check how many pages visitors are viewing on your site. If they are not checking more than a couple of pages, then they aren’t realistically browsing your site to see what products you offer. This can give you a starting point for figuring out what needs to be fixed.
- Start a marketing plan — The first step of this should be to find ways to drive web traffic to your store. Search engine optimization can be used to help improve your rankings on Google and other search engines. You should also consider doing targeted advertising such as Facebook ads based on the demographics and data that you found during your background research.
- Go mobile — Today, more people are using their cell phones and tablets to view the Internet and shop instead of using desktops or even laptops. Unfortunately, not every web page is optimized for viewing on a mobile device. Changing up your website to ensure that it can be properly viewed on a mobile device is the first step in bringing in this huge demographic of potential customers.
- Improve your pictures and descriptions — Make sure that you are using high-quality images of your products on your website. If an image is grainy or doesn’t offer multiple views of a product, then you can bet that a customer won’t choose it. In addition to good close-ups of these products, also take pictures of the products in use so that your customers can visualize themselves using the product.
Additionally, you want product text that is eye-catching without being over-the-top with lots of obvious marketing catchphrases. Don’t just copy and paste the descriptions of your products from other sites, but personally write them yourself to help focus on the interests of your potential customer base.
This time of year is the perfect opportunity to snag those early shoppers who are trying to get ahead of the Christmas chaos. By optimizing your website and your customer’s shopping experience, you can help them to fall into your autumn store sales.
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