It’s all too easy to get hung up on the number of visitors to your website. While it’s a fact that you need to attract visitors, it’s particularly important to ensure that as many of them as possible stay on your site long enough to make that all-important purchase.
Monitor your conversion rates
It’s actually harder than most people think to convert online visits into sales. According to an article in Forbes, around half of all shoppers will buy something when they enter a brick and mortar shop: in the online world, that figure plummets to around 2%.
Inc suggests keeping a close watch on control data to monitor the points at which prospective customers leave your site. In many cases, the customer is lost due to a lengthy or frustrating checkout process, which is extremely bad news for your future business prospects.
Available platforms
Very small startups often choose to advertise their products on marketplace sites such as Amazon, Etsy, and eBay, but this solution is far from practical once a business grows beyond a certain point. Sooner or later the burgeoning company requires its own storefront and e-commerce software.
Free eCommerce platforms are available, but these are not always practical or even desirable. Spending part of your budget on professional help is usually money well spent, as expert web designers can build a beautiful and functional site that performs seamlessly to minimize dropout rates.
Vendio, Big Commerce, and Ability Commerce all have features that help small businesses to sell products online, but these are aimed primarily at smaller concerns, often in conjunction with one of the marketplace solutions. Larger concerns are better off choosing Magento, Shopify, or Woo Commerce, which offer customizable skins and a range of add-ons as business levels increase.
Rycoweb, a firm specializing in web design in Newry, offers customers a personalized Magento e-commerce solution tailored precisely to their needs. The company also offers a free downloadable content marketing guide, which helps to shed further light on what can seem an awe-inspiring subject.
Whatever platform you choose, keep a close watch on visitor activity – or request a professional breakdown of the data – to ensure that your visitors are happy with the checkout process. Happy customers are likely to be returning customers.
