Even before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the global community in early 2020, eCommerce was already gaining much traction. But now more than ever, businesses, notably SMEs, need to have an online store to drive more sales as a more considerable percentage of the population prefer shopping online.

Well, getting a website is important, but making it successful and capable of driving more sales is critical. For comparison, we can liken an e-commerce site to an NBA team. For the team to perform well, it needs top-talented players, a good coach, better training, improved benefits; you get it. Likewise, your online shop website needs various optimizations for it to materialize on all its potential.

Whether you’re new or you want to overturn your existing eCommerce site, check on these 5 top-rated tips.

1. Improve UX Design

Since your prospective customers won’t physically come to your store to see items before a purchase, it’s vital to make the website accessible, enjoyable, and friendly to interact with. Research shows that shoppers are likely to leave and never return to a site if they can’t find what they’re looking for quickly (poor experience). Below are key areas that can help improve the user experience (UX) of your site.

• Make navigation of your site as easy as possible with clear menus.
• Check your page load speed. Most users will wait only three or fewer seconds for a page to load before exiting, so it’s important to have your website load speed optimized.
• Declutter the site. Use graphics like quality images to pass the message. Avoid long paragraphs that contain unnecessary information, especially on your landing pages. And finally, use themes and colors that your site visitors find comfortable, enjoyable, and relatable to what you’re selling.

2. Mobile Responsiveness

More than half of the online shoppers are already making purchases using their smartphones or tablets. At the same time, mobile e-commerce is tipped to grow by 68% in 2022. So, any online shop with a site that breaks on mobile devices is already missing a lot. Therefore, enhancing your e-commerce website to work smoothly on mobile devices can overturn your sales and conversion like magic.

Additionally, Google considers the mobile-friendliness of a site when ranking it on SERPs. You don’t want that to be the reason you don’t appear on the front page of search results.

3. Develop Your Website for SEO

If your potential customers cannot locate you, you’ll experience lower sales and conversions. Search engines need to rank you higher for your site to receive substantive organic traffic. Search Engine Optimization, at its basic, is all about quality content and keywords. Create blog posts with both local and product keywords in your industry. Your landing pages also should contain content that search engines can use to determine what your business is about. In addition, the internet giants, Google, are lately also using the user experience as a benchmark to rank search results.

4. Create Social Media Presence

Any successful e-commerce website is backed by an excellent social media strategy. Most people will know about you through social media like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Sharing your products and relevant posts through social media is a great way to drive traffic to your online shop site and increase conversion and sales. You can take it higher by leveraging social media advertising such as Facebook Ads, which help you target your ideal audience or specific demography. If you want to learn more, consider these reasons why you’d like to advertise on Facebook.

5. Optimize Checkout and Call to Actions

How fast can the user locate a “contact us” or “buy now” button? Does it take decades for a buyer to finish the checkout process?

Call-to-action buttons should be included on every page or section. Including multiple of them enables the site visitor to locate one quickly instead of having to click through a series of menus. Also, the CTA buttons should be focused enough to look different and more appealing from the other parts of the page.

Furthermore, streamline your checkout process by making it as less painful as possible. Remove unnecessary form fields and/or autofill some that you already have data for, like user email, address, and phone number.

Final Thoughts

Building a successful eCommerce website is not a one-time event but rather a progressive process. Therefore, you need a website expert partner willing to walk with you through the journey a step at a time — an agency that can help you design/develop a high-quality e-commerce site and aid you in bringing the right traffic. If you’re looking for something like that, Atomic Social is committed to helping businesses grow. Get started today to learn how you can overhaul your online sales.