Optimize Your Ecommerce Platform for Higher Sales Conversions

Ecommerce websites have become a popular sales channel for many businesses, from the Wal-Marts of the world to the Main Street small businesses.

In fact, ecommerce's lack of size discrimination makes it a particularly attractive solution for small businesses, as they can have just as successful and sophisticated of a retail website as larger businesses.

But to be able to compete with larger businesses, SMBs must invest time and some money into optimizing their ecommerce website.

Luckily, this does not necessarily require expensive small business software—many ecommerce strategies are simply a matter of website redesign or marketing.

Streamline the customer experience and combat shopping cart abandonment

The fact that every business can be equal on the internet is a double-edged sword—a customer that is not satisfied with your website can easily choose one of another hundred competitors and move on. Therefore, customer experience is one of the most important things to consider when designing an ecommerce website.

Enhancing customer experience usually centers on the checkout process, as studies have shown that difficulties at this stage are one of the primary reasons that customers abandon their shopping carts.

To combat this phenomenon, many businesses are focusing on making their checkout process more transparent and uncomplicated—a recent study by Forrester Research found that 79 percent of online retailers have made improving the checkout process their highest priority for the remainder of 2009.

Improving the checkout process involves displaying tax and shipping costs up-front—customers that are surprised by these costs at the last minute tend to get sticker shock and abandon their carts—and also involves checking the website's checkout pages for any bugs that might prevent shoppers from being able to easily complete their purchases.

Some companies have also implemented programs that incentivize the conversion—for example, some send abandoned customers an email offering them free shipping or another discount, while some send their customers an alert telling them that the item they had been considering is almost sold out.

Maximize the sales conversions

The basis of an ecommerce website's profitability relies on its conversion rates. Unfortunately, consumers are fickle, and this can be an elusive metric for many small businesses.

In addition to the aforementioned customer experience enhancements, websites should also have easy-to-find sales support contact information, to help guide customers if they encounter a problem. Some retailers have even invested in small business software that allows them to have real-time online chats with their customers, to avoid the hassle of calling the company for support.

Another way to improve conversion rates is to display security badges on the website—McAfee recently found that doing so can improve conversion rates by 11 percent.

Furthermore, for all of the benefits that ecommerce websites provide to shoppers, one draw-back is that customers cannot physically view or try on their purchases, making this a common barrier to sales conversions.

To combat this, businesses should invest in high-quality graphics that represent the products as faithfully as possible (customers will notice if the picture does not match the actual item, and will discuss this in reviews).

Generous return and exchange policies are also a must, as customers will be more likely to purchase an item they have not seen or tried on if they know they can return it.

Customer reviews can also make a significant difference in improving conversion rates, as peer testimonials and referrals can help personalize the somewhat removed shopping experience. Much like a convincing friend in the dressing room, customer reviews can make the difference between a customer purchasing an item or abandoning the shopping cart.

Market, market, market

Although the web can seem like the Wild West in that the most successful websites are the most visible, there are ways for companies to increase their visibility.

As previously mentioned, a streamlined customer experience can help generate positive reviews of a website, which in turn builds brand favorability and exposure.

Companies can also invest in search engine marketing tactics, such as display ads and search engine optimization (SEO). SEO, which has been a particularly popular marketing buzzword recently, involves the organic integration of keywords into a company's website, making the website appear higher on search engine rankings.

To determine the most important keywords that draw customers to the ecommerce site, businesses should consider investing in business software that performs website analytics and other market research.

Invest in technology

Finally, the overall website performance is crucial to the company's success—a study from Forrester Research and Akamai Technologies found that 40 percent of customers will abandon an ecommerce website if it does not load within 3 seconds.

While many experts speculate about the extremity of this statistic, it nonetheless underlines the need for high-functioning websites that optimize the customer experience.

Investments in ecommerce are likely to pay off, as many experts believe that it will only become a more important sales channel in the coming years—Nielsen recently projected that the number of ecommerce sales will increase by 200 percent from 2008 to 2012.