ECommerce Ideas To Get More Sales

E-Commerce websites need to do more than just present content to users to maximise sales. Plain old content - loads of products, images and information - just doesn’t cut the mustard anymore. E-Commerce websites have become ubiquitous and there is often little reason for a customer not to jump to a competitor’s website to find a lower price.

If a website is to engage a customer it needs to talk to them directly, they need to feel special or have content delivered to them that they are likely to be interested in. Luckily this can be done easily with a bit of smart programming.

Take a photography store where a user is spending 70% of their time looking at cameras and perhaps 50% of that time looking at Nikon cameras. Given the user’s habits, the home page of this website should show 70% cameras 50% of which are Nikon to this user. This view of the home page should last between site visits and that's easily achievable by storing a cookie on the user's browser to remember who they are then adding some code to do the rest.

A great technique for getting users to click on that "add to cart" button is to present them with automated inducements. Often shops show specials but don’t target those specials to what a customer is interested in buying. So if a user is looking at a camera, present them a give-away or special for that camera. If the user is looking at Nikon cameras, offer the user the same inducement but only for Nikon cameras. To create the impetus to buy, the specials and give-aways should have an expiration date that depends on when the user first saw them.

If the user has bought from the site before, the home page should show accessories that are relevant to what they have bought. There is no need for the user to login for these specials to appear. By using browser cookies the E-Commerce software can be modified to show relevant accessories for past purchases. The accessories could be combined with the give-aways to induce a quick buy or you could offer limited time specials on the accessories.

These techniques can be placed in existing E-Commerce software like Magento or they can be built as custom software components via E-Commerce integration to enterprise resource planning systems.

It’s worth thinking about, a few custom E-Commerce integration improvements can improve conversions significantly.