Ecommerce | AltusHost

Running an ecommerce store can be quite challenging, since there are a lot of factors you need to consider in order to ensure a smooth shopping experience for your prospective buyers. Every online shopper seeks the best possible online shopping experience, but can your ecommerce store provide them with such an experience?

Before you answer that question, take a look at this fact for a moment – the online shopping experience your ecommerce store offers to your customers greatly impacts your conversion rate.

When your customers feel valued and respected, not to mention confident in your brand, the chances of them making a purchase at your store can very easily hit the fan. Therefore, you must ensure that you optimize your ecommerce store in order to improve your site’s user experience and do everything you can to keep increasing your conversion rate. Here are some quick tips to help you do that.

Include Trust Factors on Your Product Pages

The content you provide on your product pages can help you build trust with your customers, so you should always add user-generated content that will make your ecommerce store stand out from your competition and ensure your customers build confidence with your store.

Including trust factors on your product pages can help you do just that and the best choice for implementing them is displaying them near the add-to-cart button, since they can influence your customers’ purchasing decisions that way.

Trust factors can include a free shipping offer, shipping information, return policy, money back guarantee, customer service information and phone number and credit card logos. Including all of these factors can help your customers know exactly what to expect before they go to your checkout page.

Additional trust factors that you should consider adding to your product pages are live chat and customer reviews, both of which are very important for increasing your ecommerce conversion rates, as they promote customer trust.

Optimize Your Checkout Process

Once your customers arrive at your checkout page, it’s your job to lead them towards actually completing their purchase. Something that can help you do that is featuring customer reviews and ratings on your checkout page.

People’s purchasing decisions are highly influenced by the experiences of other buyers, so adding social proof to your checkout page can help your customers build trust with your brand.

So, how can you optimize your checkout page to ensure that your customers proceed with their purchase and that your cart abandonment rates are reduced?

The best way to accomplish that is to remove all of the header elements on your checkout page, so that your customers can complete their purchase without any distraction. This simplifies the online shopping experience and can even double your conversion rates.

Optimize Your Shipping Offers

Shipping costs can very easily scare away customers and the most common reason for cart abandonment is exactly that; shipping. Therefore, you should optimize your shipping offers, as they can greatly influence your conversion rates.

You can consider offering free shipping, but if you cannot afford such an option, you may consider offering it at a certain threshold. For instance, you can offer free shipping for orders over $30. What’s important about this is to have it displayed on every page, so that your customers know what to expect while navigating through your site.

You can also add a free shipping countdown to your cart, informing your customers that, if they reach the exact value you have provided, they can get free shipping. Something like this can not only increase your conversion rate, but also your average ecommerce order value.

Another thing you can do to optimize your shipping offers and both increase your conversion rate and reduce your card abandonment rate is to use flat rate shipping. You should display it in the header of your site, so that it shows your customers the exact shipping cost for every product from the very beginning of their online shopping process. If you use flat rates, your customers are not likely to abandon their carts once the shipping fee appears, but are instead very likely to actually complete their purchase.

Conclusion

Increasing your ecommerce conversion rate is not a one-time job. It is something that you should constantly work on and you will manage to achieve your goal by thinking about your customers and their needs, instead of only thinking about the numbers. After all, they are the reason why your ecommerce store is thriving, right?

Pick the Right Platform

The platform would be the basis of your business. This is where it all starts. Therefore, going with the most secure platform is key. Luckily for you, there are several to choose from, like Magento or Shopify, which are among the best. Also, the platform can be hosted or self-hosted, depending on the type. If you choose the self-hosted type, you should find a web host that would service your store and maintain it for you. Go with someone that can be trusted and who is highly professional.

Furthermore, when deciding which platform to go with, make sure you get everything out of it. For instance, check if you can change the design to suit your brand, and if it would look pleasing to customers. Additionally, make sure that the platform has all the features you want to employ for your store, and that it functions without any glitches and bugs.

Have Your Website Monitored Regularly

Hacks can occur out of nowhere, and sometimes, it could take you hours or even days to notice them. That is why you should have regular, daily security checks. You can even have real-time checks, which would allow you to follow the behaviour of the visitors and quickly pinpoint suspicious movements.

In addition to regular control, your website should also have several layers of security. Have your hosting provider add layers like search queries, firewalls, and contact forms. Plus, demand from the customers to create strong passwords, which are tougher to crack. However, just in case a hack occurs, you should create a crash plan for the website. This would allow you to quickly recover and go back online.

Lastly, you could put the website through extensive testing, such as seeing how easy it is to break the code and hack the site. Also, finding vulnerabilities is a good idea, too. Knowing where you lack security could save you from a lot of trouble.

Don’t Store Sensitive Customer Data

Sensitive data is what hackers aim for. All the credit card numbers, CVV2 numbers, and other related information are at risk of being exposed and used for stealing from numerous bank accounts. Obviously, there is no need to put your customers through this. So, abstain from keeping all this data on your servers. First of all, it would be risky. Secondly, it would be against the law and PCI standards.

Use SSL and Comply to PCI

Speaking of PCI (Payment Card Industry), you must always be in compliance with the set standards. If you get breached, you would be marked as someone who does business recklessly by putting your customers in danger of being robbed. These security standards were specially made for merchant businesses that work with sensitive credit card information. Therefore, if your ecommerce website violates these rules, the customers have every right to report you, which could lead to hefty fines.

On top of that, make sure you also use SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) authentication during the communication process between your site and the customer. This would ensure that the data being shared is secure and protected. For instance, by using the SSL certificates, your site would be labelled as secure, with the green address bar and an SSL security seal. These details let your visitors know that the site is safe and legit.

Clearly, there are many risks when it comes to online shopping and sharing private information. Your visitors risk being robbed, or even having their identity stolen. In order to stop this from happening, your ecommerce website has to be an impenetrable fortress. Just remember that you are doing this for both your sake and your customer’s sake, as well.

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