Posted by Pragmatic Design on 8 December 2011 | 1 Comments

Tags: eCommerce, website, sales, conversion, tips

Getting lots of visitors, but not converting them into customers? There are a number of possible reasons why your sales could be low, and we're going to list five simple solutions that can help you to get better results from your existing website without costly and time-consuming structural or design changes.

1. Spelling & Grammar

Your website must look professional and reputable, but poor spelling and grammar undermines your efforts to create credibility. A recent analysis estimates that these errors could be responsible for up to 50% in lost sales: many millions of pounds across the Internet.

Potential customers may ask themselves whether a site that can't be bothered to look after the basics can look after the important things, such as their purchases or personal information. Worse, they may associate obvious spelling errors with spam emails and Del-boy Trotter type characters. Do you want your website to be put into that group of shady-fraudsters?

Solution: type your content into a word processor and use the spelling and grammar checker, then copy and paste into your website. Not everyone's a wordsmith, so consider employing a freelance copywriter.

2. Text formatting

Typing your sales-pitch into a word processor is a great idea, but can bring its own problems. When you copy text, hidden formatting information is also copied. When pasted into your website, this erroneous code could be pasted in too, creating text which is a different size, style or colour to the rest of your website.

After going to the trouble of creating a professionally designed eCommerce website, why make it look amateurish with mismatched fonts?

Solution: some content management systems will automatically strip-out copied formatting code. If yours doesn't, paste your text into Notepad (which doesn't support text formatting), then copy from Notepad and paste into your CMS.

3. Reviews

Online customer feedback has transformed product sales, yet even the best product or retailer can receive negative reviews. The savvy internet seller can turn even negative reviews into a positive.

Solution: closely monitor customer comments, and post helpful replies to any unfavourable ones. For example, if someone has posted that a product has failed, you should apologies for the inconvenience, offer a replacement and maybe point out the product's usual low failure rate. By publicly responding and offering a solution, it shows other potential buys that you care about your customers and take problems seriously.

Don't delete negative reviews, it can make readers suspicious, but do delete malicious or spam comments.

4. Extolling the Benefits

Many businesses start their sales-pitch with “we do this service, and we do that job”. Sorry to upset you, but potential clients don't care- they only want to know about how it will benefit them. Businesses want to know how it will make them money or save them money. Consumers want to know about how good it will make them feel or how good it will make them look.

Solution: turn the language around. Talk about how good things will be when they use your product, rather than just focussing on the product itself. Where possible, include a photo of a smiley, happy person enjoying the product. Make them want to be the person in the photo or description.

5. Hidden charges

Possibly the number one reason for abandoned shopping carts littering eCommerce websites: the unexpected fee. Postage and packaging is often added right at the end of the checkout process, and can come as a nasty shock, especially if your visitor is buying your product on price. All websites should clearly state their shipping charges throughout, but these are often missed by click-happy-consumers.

Solution 1: show shipping charges in the basket as soon as the first product is added. Even if they weren't expecting the charges, the customer will feel that you're being honest with them, and will be more likely accept them.

Solution 2: if you're able to, offer free postage and packaging. Everyone likes something that's free, and you can use it as a selling advantage. Of course, there's no such thing as “free” and the shipping cost is actually included in the unit price. However, even with a slightly higher unit price, free P&P can increase sales.

About Pragmatic Design

Wolverhampton-based Pragmatic Design provide graphic design, website design and print solutions for businesses of all sizes and not-for-profit organisations. Find out how we can increase your sales, call us on Wolverhampton (01902) 58 10 12 or use our contact form.