8 Marketing Strategies Before Designing An Ecommerce Site - Did you know your web design could generate you more leads if only you had the perfect plan? Well, the average percentage conversion that a general ecommerce website could earn is approximately 1% per day. If you make a proper plan before you get down with your designer, then you could generate approximately more than 1% per day. Of course a website designer would know what to do. You would have to sit down and discuss with him regarding who your target audience would be and which things you would like your e commerce site to focus on more. That is called hypothesis, – jotting down your ideas as to which part of your site you would want to focus more on and how would you want your customers to react. The successful gateway to making a good web design is when you know what marketing strategies would convert your visitors to customers. Here are some well researched tips which you can follow and check whether they are in your TO-DO List – #1. Give Your Website Home Page A Fresh Look A web designer could design the home page any way he/she wants to but there is more than one way to utilize this page. You could optimize the home page using the slide show banner. The slide show banner is used mostly to upload pictures of some of their popular products, activities or even advertisements. In this way, a customer can never get tired of looking at the same home page, now that it has different versions for people to see. However,make sure not to overload this space with multiple images. Designers recommend using a maximum of 3-4 slides and not more. That could lead to negative effect on your customer’s eyes. #2. Show Your Products But With Minimum Options Showing your products involve two factors:- you should make them easily visible and you must not provide too many options. Your website would be visited by many people. Some would want to have a look at the entire website,while some would only want to know what products you have to offer. Staying between the line would help you to cater to both of them. Have a separate ‘Products’ page where people, who are more bothered about what your services are, can directly go to. However, that does not end there. Your product page needs to be utilized based on the importance of your products. Which products would you want people to see more? A friend of mine (who is also a designer) wanted to test whether she could display 14 biscuit flavors and have the same conversion result as compared to a 6 flavor display. So she did a little bit of A/B split test. The results showed that 40% conversions were being generated from the 6 flavor-display instead of the one with 14 flavors. This shows that too many options might de-motivate a buyer from purchasing. So, the best solution is to put your highlighted products at the top and at the center of your product page. #3. Specific Call To Action Contents Your specific call-to-action features must be proper. An ‘Add To Cart’ will generate better conversions than a ‘Buy This’ button. Doubt this statement? Try it out yourself. In addition, a proper product description is also necessary if you have an ecommerce site for electronic appliances. This is true. The nature of your business depends on whether to concentrate on the content as a whole or whether to concentrate just on the image. When a customer visits an on-line retail store that sells furniture or maybe garments, they would look at the picture more than at the product details. This is opposite in the case of a website that sells appliances. Buyers want to know what are the features that would come with the product. When they are satisfied, only then do they go for the ‘Add To Cart’ button. Speaking of this, here is one secret of a customer’s choice that I can share with you – they look for special offers. The reason why most sites are turning to on-line shopping is because there is always an opportunity for offers like discounts or gift coupons. So, if you are not providing your customers with something good, then the loss is yours. Warning note: Do not allow a registration form to pop out of your page when your viewer is busy browsing or buying your product. That distracts most and some don’t like this. It is best to leave it as an option for those who would want to register with your site. You could try providing seasonal offers to make your customers register but leave it up to their choice. #4. Make Better Use Of Your Images This is not making a particular suggestion, rather an advice that when you upload pictures on your website, use high quality. Most of the time, 90% of the visitors only browse through pictures. The way you use them is what depends how traffic conversion is influenced. Usage Note: Use large size images as they influence the eyes more. It is essential to know that image captions are the most read content for anyone visiting a website. Recent observations show that when a person visits a website, it is the picture that captures their attention first and then the caption. Having captions containing some good punchlines help a lot to grab attention. It is also observed that people having a ‘line of sight’ draws more attention. Viewers would turn to staring at the same place where the expression of an image is leading them. Using such an image involves some creativity. However, that you can leave it to the web designer you hire. Another thing that searchers have found out is that inserting images in the site’s search bar could increase conversion rate by 100%. #5. Your Site Must Be Trustworthy To A Viewer This is important. If a viewer is not able to trust your site, then he/she might choose some other site over yours. You might be losing a potential lead to your competitor even if you have better offers than them. A testimonial from your client can instil a feeling of security. Readers would see that there are other clients who have worked with you and are satisfied too. There are customers who look for some kind of proof. Having a notable press name on your website or maybe when a press mentions you on their on-line article, can increase your conversion percentage. You could also mention some interesting information. There are some websites who have such information mentioned on their home page for instance – “Over more than 4 Million emails have been processed last week”. #6. Using The Right Color Combination For Your Website Color is an important part to understand human psychology. Why do you think health care websites use blue and green colors? Why pink is not used for most of the websites whose target audience includes the female population? Why some websites prefer keeping large white space? These are some points that needs to be studied. Did you know that having white space in your content allows the reader some rest. This also makes the content feel aerated and not give a feeling of being cramped, which could cause fatigue to the eyes. Your web designer must know who are your target audience before he starts designing your ecommerce website. By the way, blue is the color of trust and pink is not preferred by a majority of the female section. #7. Make Your Content Visually Appealing Speaking of using better quality images, another thing that has come to attention, is that your content must appear to be visually appealing. You don’t have to worry about that if you hire a good content writer who has the right skills. The next thing that involves is playing with the content font and color. Font size can navigate a viewer’s attention from one page to another page of the website. When reading on-line, readers don’t enjoy reading lengthy paragraphs. The best way to grab a person’s attention is break the content using catchy headlines. Breaking the paragraphs causes one to read faster . In addition, increase the font size – the average font size of a headline could be 14 – 16 pts. For the rest of the copy, you could choose a font size of 12 pt. When you read a line having a smaller font size, you will observe that your reading pace becomes slower. On the other hand, lines having bigger font size could be read faster and are easier to understand. Also, if you have a step-by-step strategy to write, use bullet points to mark it. Another point that falls under this category is using small lines for writing. I will use this example while I am writing. What you need to do here is make a voluntary observation. Are you able to read a little bit faster than before? I think yes you are reading a little bit faster than before. Using small lines accelerate the reading space. The best way to motivate readers to complete reading your lengthy content is by first starting with a short sentence that finishes within one line length. The use of font style is also important. Though most designers feel that Serif font is applicable for print and Sans Serif is for the web, there are many sites,which have beautifully used Serif font for their web page design and are working well. #8. The Concluding Point I always advise my clients to not completely leave everything up to a web designer’s hand. What if the hypothesis, which you wanted the designer to follow, failed your final mission? Therefore,web designers must always try out the A/B split test. By conducting such a test, you would be able to identify how much of a percentage of traffic conversion you are making, compared to your well decided hypothesis. Split test your ecommerce web design and only then decide which final version to upload live. 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Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 19:04:02 +0000
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