Naturally, you would like your sales to go through the roof, so the best thing is to plan how you are going to ensure your website visitors become customers.

Keep It Basic
If you have been lucky enough to have captured your potential customer’s attention with your promotions or campaigns, ensure they land on the page that will be relevant to them. Try not to confuse them will all different offers that won’t apply to them for this visit, or they may lose interest and disappear. Although it’s good to cross-sell, ensure you do it in such a way that they are able to see at a glance what they have visited your site for first, and then take it from there. Don’t overload them. If you have to add pages to your website to support your campaigns, then do so; it will be worth it, or you may consider using a different URL for each promotion or campaign. The effort you put in will be worth it if it increases your conversion rates.

Keep Them Interested
Now your website visitors are looking at your products, you need to encourage them to stay and make some purchases. Offer them high quality, high resolution imagery that looks good on the page and use a zoom tool to ensure the visitor is able to see a close image of the product. A zoom tool is particularly helpful as normal imagery doesn’t always do justice to a product or photograph. Insert a place for customer reviews – people love to see comments about products and how they compare. The more positive feedback you have, the more chance you have of increasing your sales. Ensure you offer as much technical detail as possible as this can also clinch a deal. There’s nothing worse than leaving things to chance. Offer everything that your customer will require and this will ensure they will return.

Website Psychology
When we visit an ecommerce site, we are apt to dilly dally a bit – but this is no good for you. You want the visitor to find everything they need immediately, with full details of everything displayed, and then you want them to hit the ‘buy’ button. If everything is to hand, it will stop them taking so much time over the purchase and they will be pleased that they have found exactly what they are looking for very quickly, with no hassle, and their purchase can be made quickly and easily as your website is well signposted and you haven’t kept the website visitor waiting.

Investigate why visitors do not become buyers
When you know your products well, you will be aware of what the customer is looking for. If you find your visitors are browsing but not buying, you must look into why this is happening. Ensure your prices are competitive. It’s very ‘cut-throat’ out there, so do your homework and make sure your prices are in line with your competitors. A basic thing – but ensure you always have products in stock for the buyer. A buyer doesn’t want to hang about waiting – they will simply go elsewhere. Loyalty very rarely exists these days and a customer will not remain with you if they are being kept waiting. Check all technical details are available on the website so it doesn’t give the potential buyer time to hold back. Offer guarantees and ensure post and packaging charges are transparent.

Almost There ….
Once you have covered the above and have made your website as perfect and as clear as possible, you can then guide them to the payment area. Don’t clog up the page with unnecessary requirements such as too many compulsory fields. You could offer the customer a quick payment alternative where they do not have to create an account or they don’t have to register. Just give them the opportunity to pay and go if that’s what they wish to do – after all, you just want the sales. If the customer is happy with their purchase, they will return and they will tell their friends and colleagues about your company. It would be nice to encourage your customers to create an account or register, but perhaps in the first instance just to give them a taster, let them think they are in control of what they are doing