Ecommerce being the only trillion dollar industry growing at a double-digit percentage each year, there are more than 2,00,000 online stores actively running on Magento alone – one of the biggest ecommerce platforms across the globe with 26% marketshare. But online retailers are facing tough competition to survive in this highly competitive market despite choosing a platform that offers best-in-class functionality & features. Very often, while consulting online merchants for Magento ecommerce solutions, both Magento Community & Magento enterprise, clients ask me – “Why we’re not selling? How can we convert visitors into buyers? Are we missing something?”.
So, in this blog, I decided to share some important conversion tips you shouldn’t miss in your checklist while launching & optimizing a Magento online store. Not just the tips, wherever possible I have also included the – How to do this section to let you know how you can execute a particular task
Mobile devices now account for nearly 50.3% of all ecommerce traffic and mobile commerce is now the default way that people shop online. Still, I come across so many Magento stores that look horrible on my smartphone. Adopting a multi device approach by using a responsive design is not only recommended by Google itself but also ensures easier upgradability & allows you to use only one digital strategy for everything – may it be marketing campaigns, optimization of keywords or URLs. As an example of a responsive design, you can checkout one of our client sites – Petsworld that we did in Magento Ecommerce. Also, focus on giving best user experience to your mobile customers by customizing the layout of your store & the size of your “Buy”, “Add to Cart” etc buttons according to a minimal size that visitors can easily click with their fingers & thumbs.
How to go responsive – To convert your existing Magento shop into a mobile ready shop, you can use extensions like Couchcommerce and Tenfoot or if starting from scratch, you can use a good responsive theme like Argento or Magento Mobile HTML 5 Themes but don’t forget to customize it.
Each online store is unique, sells different type of products and targets different customer’s demography. Hence, from marketing perspective, a custom Magento design converts better than a free Magento theme. Here are my 4 solid points that should give you enough reason not to go for a free theme design
Brand Image: A potential buyer might have seen that design before sported by any other brand because free & even premium themes are used by numerous online stores. This will give your visitors an immediate red flag not to buy from you as they’ll doubt your authenticity and may hesitate sharing their credit card information with you. This is why, I always advise my clients to hire dedicated ecommerce magento developers and get a custom theme design that can represent their corporate identity and build a unique brand image with their target audience so that buyers remember them and keep coming back.
Technical support – Free Themes don’t provide any technical support. If something goes wrong, you can’t count on anybody for help. Choosing a reliable Magento ecommerce company to create a custom theme for your store will help you to fix any potential problems in future.
Upgrades – Magento is an ever evolving ecommerce platform that constantly upgrades a no. of times and incorporates new features. Free themes might start showing errors or you may not be able to take advantage of cool new features that roll out in future. This is why when my Magento ecommerce development team designs a custom theme; we always focus on integrating themes that are easily upgradable.
Functionality – You might want some unique features or additional functions in your store which is not possible to achieve with a free theme. Whatever theme you may pick up- Free or premium, you would require professional Magento development services from an experienced Magento ecommerce development company to support you in making the best online store and provide solutions to your problems.
When a customer arrives at the shopping cart page, you already win half the battle. All you need is to prompt your visitors to click on the “proceed to checkout” button as soon as possible and make the transaction. By default, Magento theme uses a design that is not at all optimized for conversions. As I already told you in the above point to get a custom theme, also ensure you optimize the shopping cart page for more conversions. Change the size and color of the “Proceed to checkout” button on the shopping cart page, change the layout to one that pleases customers to shop and incorporate more effective call to actions like “Go to checkout” .By doing all these things, you can almost fetch double the amount of sales in your online store.
Research shows that upto 15% shoppers abandon their shopping cart for each page they’re required to fill in while checkout. The default Magento Checkout Page ruins all the online shopping experience of customers with its lengthy checkout process. If most of your customers are abandoning shopping carts without finishing orders, then there are high chances that you’re losing sales because of a complicated and long checkout process. To avoid this, you need to simplify the checkout and reduce it to minimal steps for faster order processing. Also, pay attention to all the segments of your checkout page from layout to content and navigation to usability.
How to do this – Make sure to get the Magento extension One Step Checkout Booster installed when you’re creating your online store or rather I would suggest you to go for a completely customized online store from a professional Magento ecommerce development company who will do everything for you. Here I have shared a screenshot of One page checkout booster below that quickly does everything in one go.
If you’re selling your products globally, then it is very important to make your customers understand that you offer international shipping also. To do this, you can simply use an IP identification method and then redirect your customers to a Magento storeview in their language, say for E.g. A customer with a US IP goes to www.your-magento-store.com/us
It is extremely important to optimize the product pages and the product search for better conversions. After optimizing, don’t forget to check the accuracy as well by trying it out yourself.
How to optimize your product search – When users search for same products in singular or plural – like dog foods or dogs food or dogs foods, the search result should be same. If your correct product is not showing up in search result, you should add product tags in your online store by using
Magento backend –>Catalog -> Tags-> Add a new Tag and then fill the search tags and place it to the required product.
How to optimize your Product Pages for higher responses – Use only high quality product images so that customers can easily get a clear idea about your product. Make sure your default image i.e the base image should be of highest quality. Also try to show more than one image in different angles below it, design a nice background and if possible, use product videos for best selling products. Don’t forget to write a good product description that people can easily understand and make the content SEO friendly.
Waiting is the worst thing that a customer wants to do in online shopping. Don’t kill the shopping experience of your customers. Optimizing for high performance not only ensures a better SEO but it helps in gaining an edge above your competitors. Every page should be as fast as possible, especially the checkout if you want your customers to buy from you. If you don’t know how to do this, read below or to know about this in detail, go through one of my previous blogs on Tips to enhance the speed and security of a Magento website.
Strategies some unique selling points that cut through the mental barriers a buyer goes through while shopping & make way for higher conversions. For example – offering Easy Returns, Free Shipping, and Price Guarantee, Risk Free Shopping or the count of Facebook can be great USPs.
Show your Facebook Likes or Twitter followers count and Product reviews so that visitors can take the buying decision instantly
Whatsoever may be your ecommerce business model; the bottom line is closing sales and fetching more revenue for greater ROI. Hence, creating a beautiful online store & launching it on the web isn’t just enough. Optimizing your Magento ecommerce shop to achieve optimal sales also becomes an extremely important aspect to consider if you’re truly focused on growth. I hope you’ve enjoyed the blog and will start implementing these tips as soon as possible for better sales. Please throw in comments below if you also have a good tip to share with us.
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