There are lots of online shopping platforms popping up each day, but the challenge that remains for all of them is to convert online visitors to actual buyers. The true secret, however, is often what lies behind the curtain.
Let’s look at 5 ways that content can help drive and convert your online visitors into buyers:
1. Compelling Landing Pages
The passion that companies and organizations have for their products is often reflected in their website landing pages.
Take Apple for example. When a potential customer is browsing through the Apple website, they enter into a world of great visual images, bold statements highlighting the features of their products and the details which explain why the products are great and why you should buy them.
The Apple model is great if your organization sells just a few select products. There is a popular saying that goes “The first image is the lasting image”.
2. User Generated Content
Allowing reviews in your e-commerce store can help you boost sales in several ways. First off, they can help get customers to your website from search results. Best Buy, for example, beats out Amazon and even Insignia with search results that stand out based on reviews. They also help popular items stand out in the online store as well.
If you have a variety of products in your e-commerce store, you shouldn’t have to worry about bad reviews. As a matter of fact, a bad review for an inexpensive item could lead to the sale of a more expensive product with a good review.
Most of the major shopping cart software platforms offer third party apps, extensions, and plugins that can turn your static e-commerce product pages into constantly updated pages with reviews. Be sure to look closely at your platform to see which integration will work best for your customers.
3. Personalization
One of the best ways to encourage more sales once a person has logged into his/her member account is through personalization. Amazon does a great job at this by turning the page you see into a list of recommendations based on the last items you purchased, browsed, or placed in your wish list.
Using this approach, when customers visit your e-commerce store, they will be greeted by the products they are most likely to buy. It may require some configuration on your end, based on your shopping cart software, but it is well worth it, if you can get more sales by simply reminding people about the things they want.
4. Shopping Cart Abandonment E-Mails
Many retailers struggle with conversions because conversions don’t always happen on your website. The marketing technique that has the highest return on investment is automatically triggered shopping cart abandonment e-mails.
First, this technique gives potential customers a visual of the product they left behind in their shopping cart.
Secondly, it lets potential customers know they can have their desired product shipped immediately.
Thirdly, it has links to the other main areas of the e-commerce store allowing potential customers who don’t want the selected product anymore to buy something else.
You can implement this functionality (based on your shopping cart software) by encouraging customers to register for an account and encouraging them to sign in on each visit to your store.
Platforms like Shopify offer several solutions to prevent or reclaim shopping cart abandonment. Be sure to look into the options you have for your shopping cart software to tap into this profitable strategy.
5. Retargeting & Remarketing
This is an ad structure that businesses use to target visitors to their websites. Staples, for example, has a retargeting ad on Facebook that will show a product in the sponsored sidebar ad on Facebook, if you looked at that specific product on the Staples website.
The beauty of this advertising method is that it can be used by any business, large or small. The more your website visitors are reminded of the product they browsed, the more likely it is that they will return to buy it. Retargeting brings the second highest return on investment, right after shopping cart abandonment e-mails.
Also note that retargeting is not just limited to Facebook. You can also tap into all of the sites that display Google ads by taking advantage of remarketing on Google AdWords.
