Ten hints to win with your e-commerce site

As a digital marketing agency, Swiss Tomato has collected a couple of ideas to make your internet e-commerce site more successful.

E-commerce is set to boom across Europe and North America in the last years. Shoppers purchase more and more online and they are not afraid to spend bigger amount of money and transferring it from their bank account.
In 2015 the average online customer spent usually 75-85 CHF (app. 70-80 EUR) per online purchases. So in online commerce there is an intense competiton too, your rival is just one click away. As a result, if you want to gain more customers, more attention and higher conversion rates, your website needs to be as user-friendly and as easly managible as it can be.

1. Buying Without the Need to Register

One thing online shoppers hate the most is the long and tedious sign-up process before finalizing a purchase. Webshops don’t need family and/or birth details of the customer. They only need his/her name, address and any form of contact (like e-mail address or telephone number).
Also allowing your customers to register/login with any social media account will increase conversion rate, because it is fast and easy for them. Then maybe you can ask them afterwards if they want to sign up, to make the next purchase on your site easier?

2. Include social elements on your internet commerce platform

Including social elements is important not just for the registration process but for reviews and testimonials as well. Almost half of the digital marketers believe that social sharing is a very effective way to boost your website. You can attract more visitors and reach more purchases thourgh social media visitors.

3. Go mobile with your electronic commerce site

We cannot emphasize enough the increasing importance of smartphones. They play a key role in all aspects in both our and entreprises lifes. Therefore webshops need to design their platforms for smartphones, they must have responsive sites that adopt any type of devices. If you aren’t building ecommerce businesses with mobile in mind, you may be irrelevant in three to five years. Read more about M-commerce here.

4. Call To Action & Sign-up Buttons

As an internet commerce website it is essential to have a call to action button. Your CAT button should be clear and visible, well separated of the other parts of the website.
More and more users appreciate newsletters with great deals and sales. So, if you want to increase your conversion rate, sign-up buttons could be useful, too.

5. Add search function & navigation to your online commerce site

Customers hate when they don’t find what they want. Thus a well-functioning search engine is a must have for e-commerce sites. The other major reason for high bounce rate is poor navigation. Make sure your visitors easily find their way around your website and ensure obvious categories.

6. Build a fancy shopping cart in your internet commerce platform

When we are talking about online commerce sites, having a shopping cart is evident. Although onwing a great one is much more harder. If you want to possess a good cart, it should have proper content management and personal detail security.

7. Suggest Related Items

When a buyer is purchasing something on an internet commerce site, it should suggest related items to his/hers. Like, if a customer is buying a laptop, related items could be batteries, accessories or a mouse. Related items not only help saving the customer’s time but also help increasing revenue for the entreprise.

8. Use Browsing History for Personalization

Personalization is as important in a webstore as it is in a boutique, since no one wants to spend money on faceless companies. Metrics such as location, traffic sources and search history can improve customer service and foster loyalty. Also, the idea to brand your company using one or two people as the “face” of your business could be useful.
Send your customers short videos or photos how your products are made. Address people with their names in your e-mails, every little detail of personalization counts.

9. Have an Easily Identifiable Sale Section

According to an E-tailing Group study, 47% of online shoppers want to buy only discounted products. So it is advisable to collect all of your discounted products on your homepage or in a seperated folder so the customers could explore their options simply.

10. Reveal your address and phone number

When it comes to e-commerce, customers like to be sure whether they will get the product they have ordered or not. One simple way to secure your buyers is to give them your contact information so they can reach you anytime.
If you have comments, questions or have app development or web design needs in Switzerland, please contact us.