Increase E-Commerce Store Conversions
Someone asked me to critique their ecommerce store a few weeks ago because they were getting a lot of traffic but no sales.
Now, it was a basic dropshipping store based on what seemed to be [REDACTED]
I gave them a nearly-three thousand word report on what to do next, which was a little excessive, but hey – when people pay me, they get the works.
Now, a lot of that stuff is top-level, classified stuff. But I’ll write some of the basic stuff for those of you with ecommerce stores to benefit from.
So how do you improve an ecommerce store with lots of traffic but no sales?
Let’s find out.
How To Get Higher Conversions For An E-Commerce Store
First things first, I correctly assumed that the client was buying traffic due to the thin store content.
Really, the store content was too thin.
This is a point because whilst you don’t want to go about spending hundreds of hours on content creation for your store, it has to look like a store.
Stuff like:
- An About Page
- Privacy & Terms and Conditions Pages
- Any tiny blurb on the home page
- A couple of links to social media
All of those things make the site look more “legitimate” and more like an entity you’d buy from.
Even if it’s simply, “Hi. We’re a store selling gadgets and gizmos for lovers of friendship. We’re based in Singapore but ship everywhere. Check out our collection here or scroll down for our best selling products there.”
Something like that is fine. There were five words on the home page and two of them were on a button titled “Shop Now.”
Product Copy
I wrote a lot about product copy recently, so I won’t repeat.
That said, here’s a little summary:
- You only need 100-200 words, make them good.
- Tell the audience what they’re already thinking. E.g. “Do you love puppies?”
- Then tell them what they want. “No puppy lover will know true happiness until they’ve bought this adorable puppy calendar.”
- Features and Benefits: “It has twelve gorgeous pups and easy to read dates so that you’ll always know what’s going on in your busy life.”
- Call to action: “Hit the button now and we’ll ship it to you immediately.”
- Sweeten deal: “It’s only on sale for the next three hours, then the price doubles.”
Something like that will go a long way as opposed to the product descriptions that have been copy-pasted from AliExpress.
Images
I know some people disagree with me, but edit your images. Most of the images you get from AliExpress are the weakest pictures you can get.
(Side note for my digital nomad pals: Product photography is weak and hasn’t caught on in China. Demonstrate your photographic prowess, make the link to better sales, prove it to companies and corner the market.)
Flip them, throw them through a filter and make them look nice.
If you’re selling Print-on-Demand merchandise, make sure it looks realistic. People want to see what it actually looks like, not what some weird .jpg attachment in front of a white t-shirt looks like.
Tell People What They Need To Do And Where They Need To Go
The biggest issue with a lot of the “Shopify & Template” stores is that they don’t give anyone who looks any direction.
If you are sending traffic to product pages, then you need to give them a big and obvious buy button and forget everything else. Don’t put pop-ups or subscribe boxes or anything on that page that will potentially get the person doing something other than buying.
On the home page and other archive pages, you have to be real obvious.
I don’t mean having “T-Shirts” in your header menu. That won’t cut it.
Have a big hero image on the front page that basically says, “THESE ARE THE ITEMS YOU NEED TO BUY IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BE A COMPLETE LOSER FOREVER.”
If you think I’m joking, go and look at a major chain’s e-commerce store. It’ll be things like;
“Don’t Miss Our Summer Collection. Browse Now.”
That’s what you need to aim for. Remember, if you don’t give people an option to choose, they’ll probably do nothing.
Make Your Ads Tight And Related To The Landing Page
It might not seem like it, but Facebook Ad > Product Page is a sales funnel. It’s just a short one.
You might have a picture, a headline and a handful of words on any one ad.
The worst thing you can do is give a false impression or not make one at all.
Your ads need to be bold, direct and they need to line up with what you’ve got on offer.
WRONG:
“Click here for Goth T-shirts.” > Sends you to home page.
This won’t make an impression and even if it does, you’ve sent them to the worst place.
GOOD:
“Click here for the latest in fashion for teen girls with an edge.” > Goes to a “collection” page with a model wearing an outfit and you can directly put each item in the cart.
BETTER:
“Last minute sale. His & Hers Skeleton Necklace FREE PLUS SHIPPING” > Straight to Product Page and a Ticking Clock for one hour.
The more you turn the funnel into an A>B>C process, the better the impulse and the less time that your customer has to think “I don’t want this.”
I refer to “time” as in time literally but also the space between each action. You want as little space as you can get. Sending someone to the wrong page means they have to click a link to get to the right page and the more of these mistakes, the more drop-off there is.
Final Thoughts
With e-commerce, there are diminishing returns but only if you get the basics right. That’s not to sound patronising, but there are plenty of stores which have cool gizmos and fancy subscribe features yet don’t sell anything.
Getting your store up and running is the biggest factor in your success. Making it look passable is a good starting point. If in doubt, copy what other stores are doing.
Creating good product pages is the third thing and second biggest thing if you’re planning on sending traffic directly to the page (you should.)
Then getting the ad targeting and messaging right is the next biggest thing. This is where you’re putting money in expecting a return, so make sure you give yourself the best chance and data.
If you do the above four things, then you will have done 90% of the optimisation you need.
After that, you can make incremental improvements and improve your conversions by a few percent here and there.
If you haven’t done that though, you’ll have a store where you’re not sure whether it’s the targeting, the site or the ads themselves that matter.
Get the fundamentals done. Test. Make sure it’s working. Incrementally improve when it is. Scale. Worry about the technical increments later.
See you in the next one.