e-Commerce 2.0

Successful website owners, including online business owners, know that every nook and cranny of your website matters.

The very first thing a person notices when your site has loaded (after the amount of time it takes for your website to load) is the visual appeal. This is a combination of your layout, images, graphics, and so on but the content is also very important.

You should never intimidate a visitor, because your competitors are only a few clicks away.
Instead, everything about you should be friendly and inviting… encouraging your valued visitor to read on, or to browse your catalog.

And, of course, you want to collect information from your traffic. This information can be used for email marketing and other methods of building lasting relationships… without spamming anybody. But this is where many website owners make their biggest mistake… costing at least 5 times the relationships you could be building.

To find out if you have been making this mistake… then all you need to do is answer the following question:

Is Your Shopping Cart Drop Rate Higher than Your Bounce Rate?

If you answered yes… then I have good news for you! You are well on your way, and a few more adjustments are all it takes to improve this slight error.

The problem is that the action of making a purchase should never take too long… and it should never feel like it is taking too long. Think of when you are standing in a store, in a very looooooong line… and all just to buy a candy bar. It takes a very short amount of time before you are analyzing whether that candy bar is worth it… and not much later you will be putting that candy bar back and leaving the store.

Shopping online is even worse. There are no long lines, but there are long processes. If you are required to make an account, provide all of your contact information, personal information, favorite colors…

Well, this is all it takes for a potential customer to “give up” and change their mind. You not only lost a sale, you also lost a relationship.

Your mistake?

Requiring an account to be built before a purchase is made will not only lose potential members, but also increase your shopping cart drop rate.

The smarter, more effective method is to give opportunity (and not a requirement) to open an account after the sale has been made and processed quickly. If you don’t already know the “secrets” of gaining permission to send newsletters and other benefits of being a member… then you should reflect on the most basic trick of attraction marketing there is…

Do You Offer Valid Benefits that are Not Self Serving?

If a visitor has already made a purchase, then they might be interested in making more down the road as well. This is good news for both of you, but there is no need to instantly push another sale.

Certain convenient capabilities, such as the ability to view prior orders and to save items in a shopping cart before purchasing at a later date… these are real reasons that a person would want to provide their information and become a member.

If you offer something useful, something worth signing up for, then you should have no problem lowering your shopping cart drop rate, increasing sign ups, and building lasting relationships with ongoing customers. And while you’re busy exerting effort in increasing your cart rate, you may consider outsourcing your customer support service to companies like http://live247support.com so as not to overlook this aspect of your business.

Remember, one should never compromise the power of quality customer service for this is the strongest weapon one can ever have in this tough competition.

Happy Shopping :-)!

Gabriel Taylor