It’s one thing to get people to visit your website. When you run an e-commerce business, learning to master this distinction and optimize your conversion rate is essential if you ever wish to generate a profit. So how do you improve your conversion rate and build a strong base of loyal customers? When selling consumer products, your goal should be to speed up the sales cycle. You may not need a B2B-style landing page when you run an e-commerce store, but many landing page best practices can equally apply to your own conversion optimization efforts. Invest in site security. As you try to improve your conversion rates, it can be tempting to give your site a major overhaul all at once. With incremental changes, you can better identify what is helping (or hurting) your conversion rates. The only way you’ll truly learn which changes are improving or hurting your store’s conversion rates is by measuring outcomes. As you use the above techniques to learn what you need to do to optimize your store’s lead generation strategy, you’ll be better positioned to convert potential customers who arrive at your site.
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It’s one thing to get people to visit your website. It’s quite another to attract qualified leads who will ultimately turn into paying customers. When you run an e-commerce business, learning to master this distinction and optimize your conversion rate is essential if you ever wish to generate a profit.
The thing is, running an e-commerce store isn’t the same as other entrepreneurial endeavors. Networking and other popular B2B sales tools aren’t as applicable when trying to reach the everyday consumer.
So how do you improve your conversion rate and build a strong base of loyal customers? Here’s a closer look at some of the things you can do that will help you learn how to best optimize your efforts.
1. Narrow your target audience.
Far too many e-commerce entrepreneurs fall into the trap of trying to be all things to all people. This makes it hard to bring qualified leads to your site, because many of the people you end up targeting aren’t actually a good fit for your products. Instead, you need to narrow down your niche so that lead generation dollars are only spent on individuals likely to buy.
2. Examine the sales funnel.
Understanding how the sales funnel works for your product niche is essential for conversion rate optimization. Ultimately, your store needs to develop a scalable (and ideally, repeatable) sales cycle that will help you grow your customer base.
Some products and customer groups have a surprisingly short sales cycle — after all, most people don’t need to do a lot of research when deciding which 10-dollar T-shirt to buy. More expensive purchases (such as tech items) will typically involve more research.
When selling consumer products, your goal should be to speed up the sales cycle. Understanding what it takes to get your specific target audience to move from the awareness phase to making a purchase should guide all conversion optimization efforts.
3. Master web design basics.
You may not need a B2B-style landing page when you run an e-commerce store, but many landing page best practices can equally apply to your own conversion optimization efforts.
Just consider this advice from Clearleft founder Andy Budd: “A good landing page needs to effectively answer the core sales objections the user will have. That could [include]…
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