Fill These 3 Needs and Online Shoppers Will Love Your Business!
With so many people venturing into virtual stores each day, we as online retailers and business-people cannot afford to be unaware of any tips or advice that we can use to bring more customers to our websites. But what more can be done?
Most of you who read this post are likely engaging in various types of internet marketing, have an SEO campaign running, etc. In essence you are aware that you should be making an effort to engage and draw in customers…but what if you were missing out on something you could be doing just because you didn’t know what it was, or weren’t giving it much attention? What can you be doing, or be doing better?
1 – Ease of Use
How easy is your shop to use? Can visitors easily browse, add items to their carts, remove them, etc? People expect to be able to use a shop without much effort. When visitors abandon a shop, it is most often because they could not find the product they came looking for!
To meet this need, many businesses are including a comprehensive menu somewhere in their shop and then linking to it in an obvious way from every page, i.e. a button or link in the navigation of the shop that reads “Full Product Catalog” or similar. This way a visitor can search on their own if they choose and if they cannot find what they are looking for or just want to skip ahead and find what they need right away, you have given them another option!
2 – Convenience
People have more demands on their time now than ever before, and this is a large factor that influences whether or not someone will give you their business online. Is your shop easy to use? Can they find what they need in a minimal number of clicks? Is your site optimized for use with mobile devices? How easy is it to check out? Answering these questions will let you know if there are any areas of your site that you can improve. You can also:
- Make your shop easy to navigate by including a sitemap, having clear navigation, and an uncluttered and intuitive layout.
- Make your products easy to browse through and select. Can visitors compare products? Do you have a gallery for each product with images?
- Make checkout as painless as possible. Don’t force anyone to register in order to make a purchase. Give them the option to register, or check out without registering this time.
3 – Assistance & Information
Buying anything online poses a certain risk, and you can bet that your visitors are aware of it. There is no way for them to know for sure what they are buying; they cannot touch it or otherwise view it in an immediate way before buying, so they are relying on your information and assistance to reassure them that they are making the right choice. You can help by providing several ways for people to contact you, offering customer reviews, and make several high-resolution images of each product available. Providing detailed easy-to-understand descriptions of each product will also go a long way towards reassuring potential customers!
These are only a few of the basic needs of customers, but if you can implement and perfect these three things you will likely notice an improvement in customer satisfaction very soon.
Comments:
Which one of these things do you think is the most important?
