Identifying Key Areas for Improvement
I Believe imagine you’re rushing to get dressed for work in the morning and you grab your favourite shirt, only to see it has a coffee stain from last week’s night out. In that moment, you have to make a split second decision; spot clean or change shirts. For many online business owners, identifying areas for improvement can be a similar feeling - where do you look and what do you change.
With that scenario in mind, it’s important to look at your website and ecommerce strategy with the same critical eye. Where is arguably your business leaking revenue. What little things could be changed to enhance the user experience. Are there any glaring holes in your overall process.
When identifying your own areas for improvement, consider starting with data. It’s easier said than done but looking at analytics will help you spot trends and know exactly where your potential customers might be falling through the cracks. More or less. Maybe your images are quite a bit blurry, maybe a product description needs updating, maybe checkout takes too long.
Either way, identifying this information is the first step in making positive changes. Now that you've got a checklist of areas for improvement, take each one step by step. Small incremental changes are easier to implement and they're easier for your customers to digest too.
Don't focus on redesigning everything or overhauling your entire process; focus on taking little steps towards creating a more functional website for both you and your end users.
Leveraging User Feedback for Quick Changes
Ever wandered around in a mall and just kind of drifted into a shop on a whim, only to find something that caught your eye. I feel like that’s what good eCommerce sites are trying to replicate. Sort of.
But online, you do get more opportunities to gently nudge people along a certain path because you can alter that path based on what your users are saying. See, the advantage with eCommerce sites is that unlike physical retail spaces where changing the layout or arrangement can be costly, online stores can be tweaked without having to commit resources for an extended period. This is where reviews, short polls or even the feedback forms you send out after purchases come in handy. Because feedback systems let you hear from a section of your customer base what their pain points are.
And if customers feel comfortable enough to leave suggestions about certain aspects of your site, there’s no shame in making changes based on repeated suggestions either. I mean user experience teams exist for a reason right. No one wants to have anything to do with process or product improvements while sitting in stuffy boardrooms but it does make sense to have someone from customer support, who receives feedback firsthand present while discussing how best the site could change for the better (based on consistent themes they’re hearing from customers).
What I’ve noticed though is that while some sites create polls and popups asking consumers for opinions, they rarely act on this feedback. The way I see it, it’s almost as if asking for feedback is just another marketing step (i suppose technically it is) but it should be more than that. At least monitoring trends and tracking what features users interact with makes sense when trying to get ahead of their preferences.
If there’s one thing most consumers hate about shopping online these days its probably companies who don’t read their own reviews and respond mindlessly when there’s criticism (or seem not all that interested in making any real changes). Feedback loops were invented so businesses could thrive despite how different individual consumer experiences might be - I'm not sure why more eCommerce brands don’t use them more enthusiastically.
Optimizing Product Pages for Better Conversion
Now if you’re anything like me, you might find yourself endlessly scrolling through an online shopping site, a tad overwhelmed by all the clutter of information and not being able to find what you need. You know you want to get something specific but they’re hard to find or even harder to make decisions about, so you just end up abandoning your shopping cart altogether. This is precisely the sort of behaviour that businesses need to be on the lookout for and optimise their platforms for—product pages are where the money is spent and conversions need to happen. And this isn’t always achieved by simply having as many options as possible.
You see, it’s all about making it easy. Optimising your product pages to make sure that your customers feel like it’s easy for them to decide to spend their money on your product is often what leads to conversions. If they have no trouble at all in finding exactly what they want and can get all the necessary information they need about it in one place, then that means you’ve optimised your page perfectly. This is pretty much one thing that most high conversion rate ecommerce platforms seem to have in common—their product pages have been iterated on time and again through both A/B testing as well as customer feedback until they work almost seamlessly.
The way I see it, the best way to improve conversion rates on your product pages is by following a few core principles. It starts with comprehensive product information, clear CTAs, and a smooth checkout process.
Your customers should not have any trouble figuring out how much something costs, how much shipping will cost them, how long something will take to be delivered, etc. The more details available, the less apprehensive your customers will feel about hitting the purchase button. It might also be worthwhile considering the overall aesthetic appeal of your website or product pages because if they aren’t pleasing enough, people won’t want to spend money there. The key here is making people feel safe and comfortable parting with their money.
After all, that’s what conversions ultimately boil down to—how likely are people going to buy from you versus someone else. If they know what they’re getting into with as little ambiguity as possible because of how easy you’ve made it for them with a frictionless product page experience, then there’s no way you’re not increasing conversions incrementally at least each time.
Streamlining the Checkout Process
We've all been there. You see a dress on Instagram, click through, add it to your cart and by the third page of the checkout process you’ve decided you didn’t want it that much after all. It’s either taken too long, your card wasn’t at hand or the site kept crashing. The way I see it, if a checkout process is clunky and complicated, you’re likely to lose a sale - or several.
It seems like a fairly obvious fix but it’s shocking how many ecommerce stores drop the ball at this crucial point in the buyer journey. It takes years to build a loyal customer base so make sure your store can handle those sales smoothly when they come in. One way to do this is by reducing the number of steps required to complete a purchase.
Do you really need their address twice. Or if they’re going digital. Is there a way for them to save their information safely and securely for future purchases.
Or can you show them exactly how far they have left to go so they stick it out. Another way is by providing customers with as many payment options as possible. In countries where mobile payments are popular, Apple Pay or Google Pay can be big boons.
Some shoppers prefer Paypal while others like cash on delivery - so give them what they want. The more seamless your payment experience, the more likely you are to close a sale. A streamlined checkout process isn’t only about creating less friction for your shoppers but also about nudging them towards finishing their purchase. By removing distractions (like headers or pop ups), providing reassurance with details like shipping times, cost and refund policies and enabling customers to shop without creating an account are ways in which you can make sure that if someone makes it as far as checking out, they do actually check out.
Enhancing Mobile Shopping Experience
I always have a laugh whenever I whip out my phone to shop online and the screen looks like a game of Where's Wally. I Suspect it's happened to all of us. And nothing turns me off a brand quicker than a chaotic or poorly designed mobile interface.
The last decade has seen e-commerce morph into more than just web experiences. What with smartphones being glued to our hands, it's not surprising that online stores are seeing more people shopping with their phones than on a browser. With this shift comes a demand for creative thinking and technical prowess to keep customers shopping.
I've been shopping online long enough to know that the less appealing something looks, the more likely I am to completely abandon my cart. Or window. It seems like or whatever it is gen zers call them now.
It seems like this is why having well-designed, functional, seamless mobile experiences is so important for e-commerce businesses today. The easier it is for your customers to find products, pay for items, and get in touch with support on their mobiles, the more they're going to buy from you. And that - at its core - is what makes or breaks an online store these days.
Utilizing A/B Testing for Incremental Gains
You know those moments when you’re convinced everyone thinks the “add to cart” button should be neon green – yet the designer swears it looks garish, and the CEO just wants to see more sales. That’s where simple, head-to-head testing swoops in to save everyone from a prolonged creative arm wrestle. Sort of. Because in online retail, we’re all after those small tweaks that quietly add up.
Thing is, pitting a couple of variations against each other is still one of the simplest ways to eke out a win. You can serve up slightly different experiences for your customers and watch who clicks what.
It’s not always about some dramatic overhaul or a new homepage layout – sometimes it’s just moving the placement of trust badges, or making “View Details” an actual button. It's often these small changes, which you can even run on autopilot thanks to a raft of good tools now out there, that nudge your numbers up bit by bit. More or less. I’ve noticed people sometimes get a little too hung up on testing massive changes – probably because it's exciting and you expect instant fireworks.
But A/B testing works best when you’re tweaking things that have enough traffic or influence to get clear results (like main banners, forms, checkouts), and then you leave them alone long enough to see how things settle. Also worth mentioning: test one thing at a time or else you won’t know what’s making the difference. Seems obvious until you have two teams vying for homepage real estate. Over time you get this nice layering of wins, because almost nobody nails conversion right away.
The point is just to keep at it, keep learning about what visitors are drawn to and what makes them run away. Sometimes it’s surprising – like adding a smiley face next to a call-to-action can bump clicks in some markets but completely bomb elsewhere. Or swappable hero images for weekend versus weekday shoppers converts better than static content in some segments. The beauty is a bit that once you see how much each little test helps (or hinders) revenue, it gets easier for everyone to agree on change without much fuss or debate – because the numbers do all the talking for you.