It takes a clear, actionable strategy to get ahead in ecommerce nowadays, but how do you get traffic to your site in the first place? And how do you improve the likelihood of conversions?
We’ve outlined some key features that, when implemented correctly, can lead to increased growth and conversions. For tips on how to ensure your ecommerce site is a success, keep reading!
SEO for ecommerce websites
Organically appearing first in the SERPs and ranking highly for relevant keywords are all part of the SEO game. Even with a paid ads strategy in place, implementing basic SEO foundations is vital. Although the results might not be as impressive as paid ads in the short term, focusing on increasing organic traffic is a blueprint for longevity. SEO and paid ads work hand in hand to maximise your traffic, creating an effective inbound strategy. You can get started implementing SEO best practices by searching for digital guides that cover the basics, and resources that dig deep into optimising for specific search signals, like Core Web Vitals.
Improving local SEO should also feature in your marketing efforts. To name a few strategies, you can optimise your Google My Business listing to feature in the ‘local pack’, obtain citations from local directories, and receive backlinks from local companies in your niche. Although it might take initial leg-work, the results will be worth it when your site gains authority, and is dispersed in relevant SERPs.
Lastly, if you're in the ecommerce world you'll need to get familiar with schema markup. Using structured data to give Google specific information about a product will help you obtain rich snippets in the SERPs. As a byproduct, these more engaging results should drive an increase in your site's click-through-rate.
SEO is not a quick fix; you won’t see results overnight. The emphasis here is on longevity and consistency. The more effort you put into your SEO strategy, the sweeter the rewards you’ll reap (and the rankings you'll achieve) further down the line.
Good UX for a smooth buying experience
If your site has poor UX, you'll likely see sales plummet; you could have thousands of website visitors, but if your customers can’t easily navigate to the checkout, they’ll leave without a moment’s thought.
Good UX is multi-faceted, so you need to have an in-depth understanding of what your users want and need from your site in order to tick all their boxes.
Trends come and go in the UX world; some features are intuitive enough to stick, like the ones our Head of Design, Sam Cranwell, outlined in his blog post around UX features to look out for. However, the best UX practices you take on are the ones that delight your customers and lead to an increase in sales.
But what if you don’t know where to start? What do you do if you're unsure how to genuinely make user experience better?
That’s when an experienced UX design team can step in. Developing personas, reviewing your site design, and scrutinising website architecture will clarify what users need from every corner of your site.
Maximise cross-selling opportunities
The function of cross-selling is to provide additional value to a previously purchased product.
For example, bought a table? Great, you’ve got a surface to work with... but how are you going to comfortably commune around that surface?
You’ll buy chairs.
Cross-selling should be a consideration to increase your Average Transaction Value (ATV) and get your customers hooked on more of your products. The products you choose to cross-sell should be similar to the original purchase and compliment user intentions.
You’ll need to put the right product, in the right place, for the right customer. This is why featuring related products during the checkout process and within personalised email campaigns works so well; they catch the customer at the right time in the buying journey with the right products.
Personalisation to grab your customer's attention
In a report, Epsilon found that 80% of consumers were more likely to use a business that provides a personalised experience.
As individuals, we want to feel like we’re the only customer that matters. Personalised content, recommendations, and communications tie into that narrative.
Personalisation can come in all forms; it can look like:
- a targeted email with a personalised discount on an abandoned basket
- product recommendations during the checkout process
- AR functionality that allows customers to virtually ‘drop’ products into their surroundings using their smartphone camera
Showing your customers that you understand what they want by personalising on and off-site experiences will go further than a generic monthly newsletter.
Benchmark your current metrics and track your progress
Analytics feed into every single point mentioned above. The more informed you are, the easier it’ll be to make site-level and strategic decisions to improve the overall digital experience.
You can use tools like Google Analytics, Microsoft Clarity and HotJar to understand your customer’s intentions, how they get to certain pages and where they tend to drop off. Without this data, it’s easy to fall into the trap of making ad-hoc changes based on your own preferences, or making no changes at all and allowing your site to stagnate.
Regularly reviewing your analytics data will help you make better-informed decisions to get more users shopping on your site!
Successful ecommerce sites aren’t made overnight
It goes without saying that all of these strategies take time to reach their full yield. Making small, incremental changes will allow you to monitor and review the impact as you go, so you can tweak where necessary for optimal results.
If you want guidance on how you can implement the above strategies, drop us a message with your project details and our expert team will get back to you as soon as possible.
Want to know more about us? We're an Oxford-based digital agency that helps solve technical issues with intelligent solutions. We help businesses of all sizes with their digital projects, from voice experiences, to complex web projects. We’ve been the go-to digital agency for a large portfolio of clients since 2009, so if you need support with a digital solution, get in touch to see how we can help.