For business and eCommerce websites, each visitor is a potential customer. However, in the common scenario, only a small part of the site visitors are converted into actual customers that purchase the company's products and/or services. So, how could a company increase the percentage of visitors who actually become customers?
There have been many attempts to answer this question. Some companies employ marketing automation tools, others hire expert web designers to create stunning layouts for their sites, etc. However, all these are just elements of a higher goal, and that goal is optimizing the user experience. This is the element that largely determines whether a visitor of your eCommerce website will become your customer or they will leave without making any purchase.
Offering great products or services is no longer enough to achieve success in business. You have to also think of the way you are offering your product and the way the potential customers will interact with your website and company. So, you should focus on your potential customers and improving their experience on your site. Here are a few areas that you can address in order to optimize the user experience and attain better conversion rates.
Learn as much as you can about your visitors
As we already mentioned, your website's visitors are all potential customers for your company. Thus, you should familiarize yourself with their habits, their behavior and their needs. For the purpose, you can employ advanced lead tracking tools and even build an individual dossier for each of your visitors. There are smart web-sales automation solutions that can monitor each of your visitors separately and gather information about their browsing and purchasing habits.
This type of smart sales intelligence can help you get to know your existing and potential customers better and address their needs more adequately. Some solutions can even prepare ROI reports with valuable marketing and sales data that would assist you in devising a working strategy for gaining more leads and increasing conversion rates as well. You could even set goals for your visitors, like completing registration, visiting certain pages, making a payment, and track their progress towards achieving these goals.
If you manage to competently address the requirements of your potential customers, they will have a much better experience when visiting your website and there are high chances that a larger part of them will be willing to buy your product.
Use a clear design and minimize the distractions
When a visitor lands onto your website, you want them to be able to easily locate what they are looking for. Otherwise, they might just leave the website, which will not only cause you to lose potential customers but will also increase the site's bounce rates. This is why you should use an interface that will be easy to read and get around.
In some cases, you might be tempted to go with a complicated design, but don't do it just for the sake of it! Instead, you should have an easy-to-use site navigation, clearly visible buttons and well outlined calls-to-action. Also, minimize the distractions such as flashy banners, unnecessary text or pictures, etc. You should focus on the user experience when developing your website – will they be able to navigate through it easily; will they be able to easily find the main categories, products, terms and conditions, contact information, etc. with ease?
Keep everything simple, short and sweet and you wouldn't go wrong. If you keep the visitors in mind when designing your website, you will get much better results not only in terms of conversions, but also in terms of customer satisfaction and building your brand identity.
Make it easy for the visitors to reach the customer support
Even if your website has a perfectly built navigation and you know your potential customers really well, they will still have questions that you will need to answer. Make sure that the visitors will be able to contact the customer support easily. You can do this through clearly displaying your contact details or adding a contact form. However, the best solution would be to have a live chat option so that your customers could contact you in real time and have their queries answered right away.
Some of the smarter web-sales automation solutions can even provide you with a live chat option that is triggered when the advanced tracking tools of the solution detect that the customer is hesitating what to do next. In such a case, a chat window opens up and you can guide your visitors through the checkout and payment process, for instance. Such a contact option is an invaluable tool through which you can achieve real-time customer engagement and provide your visitors with the perfect user experience.
You should leave your visitors no room for hesitation; you should address them and offer them help the moment you sense that they need it. This way, you will prevent a large part of your hesitant potential customers from leaving your site without purchasing anything and that will help you increase your conversion rates, sales and revenue.
In a nutshell
Your primary focus should always be directed towards your potential customers, their needs and the experience you can offer them through your business or eCommerce website. Improving the customer experience with the help of conversion and web-sales automation tools has been proven to lead to a staggering 40-120% increase in sales closures! Furthermore, a great user experience can help you immensely in popularizing your brand, as satisfied customers are highly likely to recommend your company to new potential customers. Ask yourself what you can do for your visitors and customers, do it and you will be guaranteed good returns on your investment.
Author Bio
Daniel Hristov is CEO of DeskGod Inc. – a company that offers a web-based marketing automation solution for medium and small business owners. He really enjoys travelling and sharing his knowledge in the field of marketing automation, leads management and conversion optimization.
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