If you have an online store, you know how difficult it can be to get your visitors from a product page through the entire checkout process with no hiccups. Because it’s so easy to click away from a page or find another online retailer offering similar products for similar prices, it’s vital that you give your customers a reason to shop online with you.
One aspect of your website you can work on improving to get a leg up on your competition is your online purchasing process. With so many websites complicating this matter, having a simple, user friendly, and intuitive purchasing process, available through software like Dharma Merchant Services, can really put you ahead. To help you get your purchasing process where it should be, here are three tips you can implement today.
Create a Clean and Clear Cart
The best way for your online visitors to make purchases is to place their items in an online shopping cart. While this seems like a simple process, there are some websites that are so set on getting the sale that they make their cart almost impossible to work with, actually turning users away from your products rather than toward them.
To help encourage your customer to have a positive online shopping experience with you, Stoney DeGeyter of Search Engine Land suggests for website owners to make it easy for visitors to view cart items, change the items in your cart, and update or adjust your cart items before purchase. By having these options available in the cart and not require them to navigate to a different page, you increase the chances of a positive purchasing experience.
Make it Easy To Buy Using Mobile Devices
With the amount of online shopping that takes place via mobile device, not having a mobile-friendly website is just sabotaging your success. However, not all mobile-friendly sites are created equally, and that goes for their purchasing and payment processes as well.
When working with the purchasing process on your mobile site, Rosa Fattahi of Windsor Circle shares that streamlining the paths to purchase is essential. This means doing all you can to help facilitate an easy and successful purchasing process, including making the buttons clear and easy to reach as well as only requiring a few clicks in order for the entire purchasing process to be completed on a mobile device.
Give Your Customer Options—But Not Too Many
To accommodate the largest number of people making purchases through your website, be sure you’ve covered all your bases when it comes to the many options for buying. According to Kostas Papageorgiou, a contributor to KISSmetrics, these options should include various payment methods, purchasing as a guest and more. However, keep in mind that too many options can be overwhelming, so don’t go overboard.
For someone to make a purchase from your website, they shouldn’t have to jump through hoop after hoop. So to have the most successful purchasing process possible, use the tips above to create an intuitive and user friendly purchasing experience for your visitors.
Originally posted on October 27, 2015 @ 8:16 am