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Increase sales with eCommerce 2.0
By Nowshade Kabir ©Rusbiz.com
In recent years we are seeing a great deal of interest in eCommerce from
retailers. An increasing number of retailers are adopting eCommerce tools and
getting involved in online business. The influx of large number of new players
has intensified the battle for customer’s time and pocket book. Gone are the
days when you could build a good site and expect a number of visitors to rush
in. Today, websites are using every possible promotional method available to
attract visitors. As a result, web promotion has become a complex and
expensive part of company’s overall online marketing strategy.
However, getting a visitor to your site is just half of the job, even if the
visitor is from your targeted segment of the market! One of the primary issues
that you have to deal with as an owner of an eCommerce site, is to convert a
visitor to a real customer. You have to take a number of measures in order to
increase this odd. Unfortunately, a huge number of prospective customers leave
a site after even placing items in the shopping cart. Most of the site owners
grossly underestimate the number of abandoning customers. When asked, none of
the respondent site owners gave a figure for visitors from this category more
than 30 percent. But, the reality is quite different! According to various
studies, the abandonment rate can be a staggering 67 percent for an average
eCommerce site! So, what do you have to do to reduce this number and increase
your sales?
Some latest web development ideas combined vaguely under the name of Web 2.0
technology can be used to increase functionalities of a website and reduce
shopping cart abandonment rate.
Web 2.0 as a concept has become big in the Internet world, but this phenomenon
has yet to make large impact on conservative business segment like eCommerce.
Over the coming months this is going to change as more and more online
shopping sites are embracing Ajax based technology and other Web 2.0 ideas.
The originator of the Web 2.0 describes the term to define new generation
websites that use collective contribution, social networking, tagging, open
APIs, remix, etc.
Ajax, a short name for a combination of website developing technologies and a
key instrument of Web 2.0 concept, is used to create web applications with
enhanced usability, interactivity and speediness. Present eCommerce sites are
also in a position to reap similar benefits.
Below are listed the primary reasons for visitors to abandon a shopping cart
and possible ways of dealing with it.
- Cost of shipping too high and not shown until checkout.
This seems
to be the number one reason for most of the people to abandon a shopping
cart. The first step has nothing to do with technology. You have to
understand that people are not willing to pay extra on top of the real
shipping and handling charge. People are not stupid! They have more or
less rough idea, how much shipping might cost. That’s why keep shipping
and handling costs really low or make them free for large orders! The
second step which can radically improve your conversion rate is the use
of new technology to keep the shopping cart with all it’s content
visible at the right upper side of the page presently visited. Once a
new item is added to the cart, all calculations will take place right
away without reloading the page or the cart. If you feel that shipping
and handling costs could be crucial in buying decision, once the first
item is added the system will ask for visitor’s zip code and
automatically calculate the final price.
- Changed mind and discarded cart content.
In this case, unfortunately,
you can’t do much! However, if your site automatically saves the content
of the cart, there is a chance that the same buyer might come back and
continue shopping. Analysis of the exit page of the visitor might also
help you determine the reason why she left.
- Comparison shopping or browsing.
Apart from monitoring your
competitors’ sites and keeping your offers aggressive, you should create
a site with better functionalities and contents.
- Total cost of items is too high.
Again, if the cart is constantly
visible with the final price always calculated automatically, the buyer
will be able to take a more informative decision.
- Saving items for later purchase.
The moment an item is added to the
cart, it should be saved automatically without reloading the page. If
the buyer is not logged in, upon exit request the buyer to register with
just login and password, explaining that this way she can come back and
continue shopping on your site.
- Checkout process is too long.
If you have a shopping cart as
described earlier all the buyer will need to do is click to check out. A
simple form with minimum information needed to execute the check out
process will appear. The filling out of this form should be the final
step the buying process.
- Out of stock products at checkout time.
The functionalities of the
cart, as described earlier, will let the buyer immediately know whether
the product is available.
- Checkout requires too much personal information.
The Web 1.0
eCommerce sites collect a lot of information about the customer, which
presumably help get marketing data. These days, online customers are not
willing to reveal more than necessary information for nothing. Avoid the
temptation to ask questions unrelated to check out. All you need name,
shipping and billing address and credit card information. That’s it!
- Poor site navigation and long download times.
With the help of above
mentioned technologies you will be able to increase interactivity, speed
and better navigation experience many folds.
- Lack of sufficient product or contact information.
Your contact
telephone numbers should be always visible. A form or wizard based
product adding system will help you not to forget crucial information
related to an item.
Of course there are other minor reasons why visitors abandon a shopping
cart, but if you make over your eCommerce site with the help Web 2.0
technologies many of these issues will also disappear.
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How to Link to This Page?
To link to this page from your website, simply cut and paste the following code to your web page.
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Increase sales with eCommerce 2.0
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