You thought that if you built it, they would come — and for a while, they did.
But now your eCommerce website’s sales are starting to slump in a big way and you have to turn the tide before it’s too late. Figuring out why your online sales are down can be tricky and may ultimately require the help of a trained eye, but before you pay a professional consultant, check out these four potential issues carefully:
Your products aren’t coming to life. Sometimes, people will buy products regardless of bad photography or descriptions, especially if the stock numbers match more costly items on other sites. But after a while, your competition may catch on and lower their prices to match yours, making it harder to compete with poor photos or descriptions.
If your photos don’t fully illustrate the product’s size and give a three-dimensional impression, you need more and better pictures. Product descriptions that are just a few sentences long should be expanded to help a potential customer imagine how they’d use the item in their daily lives.
You’re not rotating your stock. Stock rotation is vital to the life of your online store. Check your site analytics as well as the data provided by your 3rd party logistics or 3PL partner and find out what products just aren’t selling. Discount those items to make room for something new – customers love to find new products in your catalog and it’ll give you a way to freshen up your front page with new offerings.
The competition is offering something you aren’t. When it comes to eCommerce fulfillment, it seems like offers are changing daily. If you’re not providing free shipping and your competition is, it may not be hard for your customers to stay loyal, so find a way to keep an eye on what’s going on in the wider eCommerce world.
If you can’t afford to offer free shipping with every order, offer free shipping on orders over a certain dollar amount. Most customers will happily accept this compromise and spend their dollars with you.
Your site isn’t mobile friendly. According to the 2015 UPS report, Pulse of the Online Shopper, up to 53 percent of Smartphone users are using their devices to make purchases directly from vendors. If your site isn’t mobile friendly, it’s time for a tune-up. Customers want to be able to move from their PC to their tablet or phone to pick up their shopping where they left off. If they can’t do that with your site, they’ll find a site where they can.
With a few easy touch-ups, the site you’ve built can easily become everything you ever dreamed it would. Try to imagine yourself in the place of your customers and ask yourself what you’d want to know when designing product pages. Make sure to test your site with your Smartphone and tablet so you know it’s easy to navigate on any type of device your customers might use.
