eCommerce marketing can benefit your business by bringing in more traffic and converting it into quality leads. Thanks to simplified eCommerce platforms and the ability to sell most products online, eCommerce is within reach for the majority of today's businesses. In the U.S. alone, eCommerce is growing at 10% each year, and this isn’t expected to slow down.
Benefits of eCommerce Marketing
Here are just a few of the benefits to adding eCommerce to your sales strategy:
Distribute your products to a larger geographic region.
Sell more products than what you could fit in your physical store.
Keep up with the competition.
Attract new customers.
Establish an online presence.
Save on operational costs.
Boost brand awareness.
Drive conversions and sales.
Whether you’re looking to boost your eCommerce website design, or you’re venturing into eCommerce sales for the first time, there are some important points to keep in mind to maximize your chances for success.
Most users do not convert when they visit a website for the first time. Typically, only 2% of shoppers convert on their first visit. It's possible that they did not find what they were looking for or they could not get in touch with the company to ask a question. Retargeting is one way to stay after the other 98% of shoppers, but what if you could improve your conversion rates just by providing visitors with a better user experience.
In this post, we are going to talk about two crucial factors that will help you to turn more traffic into sales: using a call center and offering top-of-the-line product search functionality.
Call Center
The convenience of online shopping shouldn’t erase the need for attentive customer service. Shoppers are placing more importance on a positive user experience and choosing brands that offer good customer service.
Yes, there is a shopping cart available to make a direct purchase and maybe a live chat operator for customers to ask questions and get a quick response. But what if the customer wants to talk to a live voice? Some customers prefer to speak with someone one-on-one or need to have a better explanation than what they can get online. The stumbling block to having phone service for many eCommerce businesses is that they don’t have the staffing to handle the calls. That is why some eCommerce websites don’t display a phone number in a prominent fashion. They actually want to discourage phone sales.
This obstacle can be removed by outsourcing to a call center that can take orders 24 hours a day seven days a week. Having a call center to take phone calls strengthens the user experience, enhances customer service and closes more sales. A quality call center will also provide reporting to enhance your ability to make sound decisions about the advertising you are doing and the products you are promoting.
Search Functionality
Taking steps to improve your website’s search functionality increases conversion rates because people can more easily find what they want. On-site search caters to prepared or “ready-to-buy” visitors. These customers know what products they are looking for, and will convert into a buyer if they are able to find them.
However, many of the standard eCommerce website technologies don’t have that great of product search functionality. By taking steps to enhance the product search functionality, customers will find what they’re looking for, enjoy a better user experience and be happier shoppers overall. Plus, satisfied buyers are more likely to return to your site and recommend it to others.
Additional benefits of having quality product search functionality include:
- Improved bounce rates, time on-site, pages viewed, and overall search revenue generated.
- Fewer calls to customer service.
- Lower product return rate.
- Improving customer service because customer service representatives can more efficiently find products and relevant information on the website when speaking with customers.
To ensure that you’re meeting customer expectations, ask yourself these questions:
- Is the search box obvious? Or does it blend in with the rest of the website? Placing words like “enter keyword” or “search” tells users what to do.
- Does the search function allow for filterable options?
- Can the search function handle long-tail semantic searches?
- Are you saving shoppers time by offering an autocomplete feature?
- Do you offer a breadcrumb trail that allows users to check, uncheck, clear and refine their results?
These are just some of the features that make for a well-rounded search functionality on your eCommerce site. If you don’t want to take the steps to modify your existing search functionality, there are several third party suppliers that offer this service.
For more information about setting up an eCommerce site, strengthening your existing eCommerce marketing strategy, or any of our other digital marketing services, give WSI Star Web Solutions a call at 888-853-4449.
