September 10, 2009
Op Ed By the ZippyCart Shopping Carts Content Team
Owning and operating an online ecommerce store can be a lot of work and the last thing merchants need is for people to abandon the site or shopping cart. Therefore, it is critical to have an online store with a great user experience that makes it easy for consumers to purchase products. Anything that complicates the process will reduce your chances for converting visitors into customers. To ensure your online storefront is optimized for your customers, follow these 3 simple steps:
Remove excess “non-sales” content between users and products – When shopping at an ecommerce site, customers should always have a clear opportunity to buy a product on almost every page of the site. Having a page, for example, that just gives product details is not a good idea as that info should be combined on one product page with all the information a user needs and a visible purchase button. You want customers to easily find what they want on the site and be able to quickly check out without wasting any time.
Make sure to always have product photos – Shopping online is a lot different than the in-store experience because customers cannot see and touch the product so it is best to show your users as many product images as possible. You want them to feel confident that they either found the right product they were looking for, or that what they are buying is of the quality they expect. Do not make your shoppers make an extra click to view photos that should be clearly visible on the product page.
Make sure to clearly highlight all discount savings – When shopping at any brick and mortar retailer you will clearly see how well they promote any sales they have in the store and this should be no different at an online store. Visitors to your site need to know that there are items on sale or discount opportunities so they will be enticed to dig further into your store and ideally make a purchase.
Nick was born and raised in California, but has been working the dot com scene in Seattle for many years. He co-founded ZippyCart back in 2009, and now works here full-time. Nick wears many hats at ZippyCart, including producing content for our Ecommerce News blog. Nick loves photography and the outdoors, so when not working on ZippyCart you can find him out and about in Seattle.
