Ecommerce Optimization Techniques: Generate More Sales Effortlessly

How’d you feel if you have been sending heaps of targeted traffic to your ecommerce store but no one is buying?
It is no less than a nightmare.

When visitors don’t buy, you have a conversion issue. You need to optimize your store for conversions so visitors don’t leave without buying.

Ecommerce optimization isn’t always about converting visitors into buyers. There are several types of conversions that take place on an ecommerce website like email sign up, account creation, adding a product to a watch list, adding a product in the cart, and of course buying a product.

The important question is: How you can optimize your store for generating sales by persuading a decent percentage of visitors to buy?

Following ecommerce optimization techniques will help you generate more sales without spending heaps of money.

Let’s explore.

Live Chat

Live chat is known to boost conversions. It provides your customers with an instant way to contact you, have their questions answered, and get help with decision-making.

Forrester research shows that 44% of customers are of the view that live chat is one of the most important and helpful features that a website can offer as it helps getting answers to their questions by a live person immediately.

Prymaxe is one of the many ecommerce stores that use live chat to increase conversions and sales. As soon as someone visits their store, an auto-message is used to greet the visitor and help is offered.

When there is no live agent available, the chat doesn’t start automatically but the chat box stays there. When the live chat isn’t available, visitors are asked to leave a message. This helps The Iconic generate leads on complete auto-pilot. Instead of losing customers, it is always a great idea to collect email address so you can contact them later.

This means you can use your chat box to chat live with visitors and it can serve as a popup on demand that will collect leads for your store when live chat is unavailable.

Here is what makes the above live chat box a perfect way to boost sales:

It is always active: Visitors don’t have to click Contact and find a live chat option. It is available on all the pages and posts.

Proactive approach: All the new visitors are welcomed and asked for a deal.

Short form: It has a clean and short form with three fields. No hurdles. No unnecessary fields that might turn potential customers away.

Social registration: Users can sign in with their Facebook or Google Plus account when sending a message. This makes it even easier to find help.

Here are a few tips and tricks to use live chat as an ecommerce optimization technique:

1. Chat box should be available on all the pages throughout your store so anyone who is looking for help or have a question can contact you.

2. It is best to have a live agent available throughout the day.

3. When a support agent isn’t available, don’t hide the chat box instead let visitors fill a short form and submit their message. Respond them quickly before they buy from a competitor.

4. Don’t use chatbots. They will do more harm than good.

Popups

Popups are considered game-changers that have the potential to convert visitors into customers. Popups can increase email sign ups by a whopping 1,375%.

They work.

Why?

Because popups help you send right offer at the right time that visitors cannot resist – and thus, convert. You can use a popup to send a coupon to first-time visitors with Welcome Mats popup or you can send a customized coupon to abandoning visitors who have at least one item added to their cart.

Popups don’t let you lose visitors as long as you know what to offer so they don’t leave your store without buying.

Heels, for instance, uses a welcome popup to collect the email address of first-time visitors and, at the same time, it sends them a 10% off first order coupon.

This is a perfect approach to boost ecommerce sales because:

1. Heels is collecting the email address of the visitor. This allows them to push visitors to their autoresponder for further engagement.

2. The coupon encourages visitors to place their first order to grab 10% discount.

3. A short form that only asks for email address.

There are several ways to use popups to boost conversions and sales. Here are a few actionable techniques to make the best use of popups:

1. Use personalized cart abandonment popups that offer a discount to the products added to the cart or on total cart price. This won’t just help bring abandoning visitors back but it will help you generate sales.

2. Use exit popups to conduct a quick survey and ask visitors why they’re leaving without buying. This will help you fix issues with your store that restrict visitors from buying.

3. Collect email address by offering free shipping, a welcome discount, newsletter signup discount, or any other offer that visitors cannot reject. Once you have their email address, you can contact them in future.

4. Use simple language, powerful CTA, power words, a killer headline, and make sure your popups are responsive.

Guest Checkout

There is a well-known $300 million button story that increased a stores sales by 45% amounting to $15 million in the first month and a whopping $300 million in a year.

The store switched to guest checkout and made registration optional.

As much as 35% of customers will leave an ecommerce store if it asks them to create an account. Letting your customers buy without creating an account means you can increase sales by 35%.

Looks simple, right?

Guest checkout makes buying easier. Customers can continue as a guest and skip registration. Here is how Walmart offers its customers to continue as a guest and save time.

Customers, generally, don’t like getting registered on a site. If you’ll force them to create an account, they prefer leaving your store instead of creating an account. So your best bet is to offer a guest checkout option to boost sales.

You have three options to choose from when dealing with guest checkout:

1. No user registration at all. Go all in with guest checkout.

2. Allow customers with optional registration when they’re almost done with their purchase usually after they have made the payment.

3. Allow customers with optional registration before checkout.

Joseph Joseph clearly explains the benefits of registration without making it compulsory. Users can use guest checkout if they don’t want to register.

When users opt for registration, don’t make it a lengthy process. Keep it simple. Reduce form fields. Only ask what’s necessary.

Here is registration form used by Bellroy.

It is a perfect registration form for several reasons:

1. It only asks what’s really needed. No unnecessary fields.

2. Everything is visible on a single page that makes it look dead simple.

3. The steps are clearly numbered that tells users what they’re supposed to do next without leaving the current page.

4. The ship to the same address checkbox is a real time-saver.

Conclusion

Ecommerce optimization needs some serious testing and tweaking. I hope the techniques discussed above will help you improve your store’s conversions and boost sales.

The best part, these three techniques don’t cost you a heck of money.

Get started today.