What do some of the top online shopping sites have in common that draw tonnes of shoppers to buy from them? Nice pictures. Lots of nice, clear and colorful images. Less text. The design of their sites were made in such a way to put all the focus on the products. Whatever that is on the main page of their sites were placed there to capture the attention of shoppers the moment they land on the site. I’m not saying that everyone’s web store should all start looking like these top shopping sites as it would very well depend on what your own online store is selling but there are clear pointers that we could all learn and pick from these top sites.
How Can You Improve User Experience On Your Site?
User experience can make or break a site. The user experience honeycomb design above puts things very simply if you’d like to take a closer look at the user experience expect of your site. If your site checks all the boxes, it’s good to go. But more often than not, it won’t.
For many of us, we only look at 2 of the elements listed above – findable and usable – and disregard the rest. As long as our site can be easily found on search engine results pages and the features on it work as they should, we think our work is just about done. But that’s not the case now, is it?
Google has been increasingly harping on user experience these past couple of years. Everything is important, from the point a user clicks your online store’s link on SERPs to the time the same user exits your store.
Shopping Search Engines To Compare And Place Your Products
Getting your products more exposure will help spread the word about your online store. Normally, merchants will have their products added to the popular shopping search engines like Google Shopping and Amazon. However, there are a few other top comparison search engines that one could consider.
Most of these sites have major categories like Electronics, Computers, Clothing, Accessories, Appliances, Sports, Jewelry, Furniture, Health and Beauty, Home and Garden, Children, Games, etc.
Depending on the type of products that you are selling, you could check out the categories listed on these sites to see whether they are offering similar products as your store along with the pricing to compare. If you’ve got a better price to offer, then by all means go for it.
If you’re on a tight budget, stick to the free ones. Otherwise, you could check out some of these popular shopping search sites that consumers normally go to when they want to look for specific products. I’ve listed the tops ones here. Most of them will charge a cost-per-click (CPC) rate.
Add Value To Your Customers’ Online Shopping Experience
Selling at times is quite an art. You need a combination of getting the ‘desire effect’ right. Look at how Apple did it. Their products are more expensive but whenever there’s any product launch (or even a hint of it), everyone goes a bit nuts. Then comes the sales.
But let’s get down to reality here. Not all businesses are like Apple. Normal folks who are just setting up a small online store to sell products need to offer something more to their customers.
Other than the usual buy 2 and get 1 free or free shipping thrown in, one of the best ways would be to add some value to your customers. Depending on what type of product that you are selling, your online store should not only be about your products. It should have a mixture of tips, advice and relevant information to help your customers. Or it could even be a good place for people to visit to get relevant, useful and informative tips and advice. This will help your store’s SEO if you get a lot of natural traffic coming in.
Boost Store Conversion With Appropriate Tools And Strategies
I’ve always said that everything on a store page should somehow lead a visitor to add a product to cart and hopefully the visitor will end up successfully completing the checkout process.
Our ecommerce solution offers lots of tools that can both improve conversion as well distract visitors when not applied wisely.You don’t have to use every single tool that’s available. Chill a bit and look at your store from the point of view of a visitor, a potential buyer.
Link Building – The Logic Behind It
Link building is still iiiimportant in this post Google Panda & Penguin Updates day and age. But this time around link quality is more important than ever.
Offer Clear Communication And Proactive Solutions To Retain Customers
Ever wondered what’s actually going through your customers’ mind when they visit your web store and decided to buy from you? Maybe as a seller, we tend to think we know what our customers want and have tried our level best to offer them what we think they are looking for. I never knew how frustrated I could get with online stores until I started buying online from some of them. Let me just relate some of my experiences to you. I won’t mention any store names here.
Is Your Business Targeting Emerging Markets Or Over-Saturated Ones?
Happy New Year everyone! Hope you’re all doing great. We’re still hearing constant news of economic slowdown and the never-ending budget woes coupled with stock markets bouncing around. But one thing has certainly remained constant. Consumers are spending more and more on online shopping year on year. Last year had some pretty impressive figures to show when it came to all the Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Cyber Monday and holiday shopping season.
Happy New Year 2013 From InstanteStore
In a few hours, we will bid goodbye to 2012 and welcome the brand new year of 2013. While 2012 may have its set of challenges along with its ups and downs, let’s not forget to be thankful for the victories and successes that we have experienced along the way in doing business online. May the year 2013 bring you to greater heights of success in both your personal life and work.
InstanteStore Partners With Payza, Award Winning International Online Payment Platform
InstanteStore continues to grow its partner list of payment processors by integrating with Payza, an award winning international online payment platform. Payza has over 9 million members and services 197 countries in 21 different currencies. The company recently acquired AlertPay which was another payment provider that InstanteStore had integrated into their ecommerce solution.