Top 10 Tips For Maximising Ecommerce Success

Everyone is online now and everyone is trying to sell you something, ecommerce is getting harder as the big guys get bigger and the smaller businesses are left to work it out for themselves. Here's some handy tips for anyone with an ecommerce website.

Get Your Dimensions & Weight Right

When margins are tight this is even more important as an incorrectly calculated postage fee can quickly eat away at any profits on your sale.

Most postage companies work in much the same fashion taking both weight and the cubic measurement of your item into account.

This is the size of your item boxed/packaged, not the size of the item assembled.

If advertising your assembled items is important, simply create new fields for this purpose, in Ecwid you would use the Product Types field(s) for example, or you can simply just add that note somewhere in your description field.

Importantly however,  Australia Post, Sendle and numerous other couriers will all charge at the applicable rate if you set everything up properly. That is, get the box measurements and weight right and the built in API's will take care of the rest.

Make Your Pics Unique

It's the old adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words" particular when it comes to your online store. Your customers will notice your pics first and foremost before anything else.

If you have a unique exclusive product, make sure you take fantastic pics and video, or hire a photographer to do it for you. You may have a great product but a poorly taken photo or photos will still hurt the potential of you selling.

More importantly is, if you import or on sell wholesale products, there's a solid chance the default pics provided by your supplier are the exact same pics everyone else. Nothing will help you stand out from the crowd better than original pics, especially in a Google Search when there is a dozen other pics for your product all exactly the same.

Make Your Description POP!

Just like your pictures, the description will really help your product not only stand out, but more importantly be found on Google.

Customer confidence is also a big factor when it comes to your descriptions. The more they know, the more inclined they are to hit that buy button. In most cases your ecommerce platform will also allow for an "SEO Description" which will allow you to edit what appears in the field when someone searches on Google, capturing your audience right from the get go. It's also known as the meta description.

A quick flick over your description to make sure the grammar and spelling is in tact and any evidence of a copy paste is removed.

Combine Your Products into One Listing Where Applicable

I've seen it in a few places across the internet including a few of my clients, create separate listings for what is essentially the same item just in different sizes or colours. Same or virtually the same description for each. You're far better off from not only a management point of view but especially a Google Search point of view to have your link, the URL, diluted in affect in the search rankings.

Combine them together and maximise your search engine rank with one page and simply have a selection box for the end user to choose their preferred size and/or colour etc, upload multiple pics to allow the customer to see the different options and even list the price difference for each.

Be Consistent With Your Formatting

This one isn't really an SEO type thing like the others, more of a design pet peeve of mine and I'm sure many others out there too. Most relevant with things like titles and headings. Personally I like to capitalise each word in headings and sub-heading, while others are OK with just the first letter being capitalised, then there is some weirdos out there that like to all caps everything.

Whatever method you choose, just be consistent across the site and with your product titles. JUST NOT ALL CAPS 😉

There is of course a certain appeal to aesthetic consistency that when not in sync may send some away from your site.

Utilise The 'Related Products' Feature

It's something that Amazon does really well, you look at one item and it shows others that may be similar or from the same category. It almost guarantees that if that particular product isn't what your customer is after, then maybe there is something similar that is. Either that or simply just display other products at random. It's all about choice at the end of the day.

Ecwid makes it easy as seen below but again your chosen ecommerce platform should have a similar option.

Gab of the Gift Card

Let's face it, sometimes we just don't know what we want, or maybe there is too much to decide on for a gift for someone else. It's not rocket science, you all know what a gift card is and what they're for, but are you using them?

It's an easy one to add to each of your newsletters or email signature as a gentle reminder.

Abandoned Carts Sell More Products

That might seem like a weird statement at first, on average there is nearly 70% cart abandonment rate across all industries. That's why I'm happy to have Ecwid power all the ecommerce for Irez and IrezX websites as they have it down pat! Firstly the checkout process has been made as smooth and easy as possible, and secondly you can turn on notifications so that if for whatever reason your potential customer does leave, they'll get a friendly reminder in their inbox inviting them back to complete the purchase.

Even utilise the stats to target your customer on Google and Facebook with ads if you're running retargeting campaigns.

Conclusion

Hopefully these little tips will help you maximise your potential with minimum outlay, what's more with an Irez powered website you can be confident that behind the scenes we're working diligently to ensure that your site is loading as quickly as possible helping with that extra little SEO kickstart.