Archive for the 'E-commerce' Category

Mobile optimisation is becoming more of a necessity. More and more Australians are becoming the owners of smartphones and using them to surf the net. You can’t get left behind or you site’s traffic will start dropping. We make all of our sites mobile optimised and over the last month around 17% of all traffic on them has come from mobile devices. Businesses just can’t afford to be missing out on that much traffic. Of course, technically a regular website can be navigated on a mobile device although this often results in high bounce rate and low return visitors. You want your site to be simple to use and visually appealing. Businesses need to mobile optimise or they’ll get left behind!

The theme of this month’s blog is ‘new year, new site’. But if you already have a website, how do you know if it needs to be improved, or if you need to get a new site altogether?  By doing your own site audit, you should be able to identify any areas that need to be upgraded in order to make your website a success.  To do an audit of your own website, here are some steps to follow:

1. Make sure you know what business goals you want your website to achieve before you start.  Do you want to be making sales, generating leads or creating a brand identity?  How are you measuring the success?  Do you have realistic targets in place?
2. Once you understand what you want the website to achieve from your perspective, you need to look at it from your customer’s point of view.  Why are they visiting the website?
3. Start from the beginning of your customer’s journey.  How do they find your site?  Do you show up in search results for relevant search terms?  Do you know what your audience is searching for when they come to your site? Do you have links from your social media pages to your website?
4. Once you reach your website, remember to think like a customer.  Navigate through the site.  Look for specific products or services.  Fill out an enquiry form.  Try and find your contact details.  Make a purchase if you have an ecommerce store.  What is your experience?  Can you find all the information you think you need?  Is it easy to get specific details that would make your customers feel at ease – sizing information, shipping costs, delivery times, phone numbers, and office / store locations?  This list of what people are looking for can go on and on, but you should know what you customers want.  And if they can’t find it on your site, they will look elsewhere. Remember, it only takes a few seconds for a potential customer to move to your competitor’s website.
5. List everything that you weren’t happy with, or found difficult, on your site.  Ask family, friends and colleagues to go through the same process and see what they come back with.

Once you have identified any areas that need to be fixed, changed, deleted or added, you need to weigh up whether your current site structure will be able to provide the necessary functionality.  I often meet clients who want to build on their current site as they have already invested in it, which is understandable.

However, sometimes the resources required to build on existing sites can be much greater than the resources required to start again.  This can be for a range of reasons, such as the site using an old or ill equipped platform, old coding practices or poor site structures.  While having out dated development techniques on a website is not always visible from the user end, it can seriously delay new developments and can hinder any SEO activity.

So if you are looking to move your online presence forward in 2012, start by doing your own website audit.  You will then be in a better position when talking to a website developer or digital agency.

By now, I think it is safe to assume that most of our blog readers have their own website, or work for a company with a website.  So with 2011 coming to an end, it is the perfect time to start thinking about what you can do to improve your current online offering – it can be the perfect way to start the New Year.

1. Test your site

It constantly amazes me how many sites have broken functionality.  It only takes a few minutes to go through a site to test forms, check links and ensure all navigation features are working.  Yet it seems so many people don’t bother.  Websites aren’t something that you can ‘set and forget’.  They take ongoing maintenance if you want to be successful.  Obviously in the perfect world, nothing would ever break.  But even if everything is functioning as it should, there are still improvements that can be made.  Which takes me to my second point…

2. Remember your customers

It’s important that you love your site and find it easy to use, but it is even more important that your target market does as well.  When developing a site, your target market should always be kept in mind to ensure they have a positive user experience.  You should also be undertaking regular website audits to ensure that this user experience remains positive.  You often see sites that were great to begin with, but with content additions, changes in product offers or new marketing campaigns, they have become messy and confusing for customers.  Spend some time going through your site from the perspective of your customer and see if any changes need to be made.

3. Update content

While new content additions can ruin user experience if the site architecture is not taken into consideration, adding new content and updating current content is a great way to freshen things up.  People will be less inclined to continually visit a site that never changes, so updates give them something to come back for.  Add a ‘specials’ or ‘news’ section, create content around any new products or services you have or just improve the content you already have.  Not only will this help with repeat visitors to your site, but can assist with SEO as well.  Remember, content really is king.

4. Get social and do it well

Ok, so this point might not improve your actual site, but it can improve your overall online presence. Social media can be a great way to connect with your customers, get your brand messaging across and increase traffic to your site.  However, it can also damage your brand if done incorrectly, and in some cases turn into a total PR nightmare (hello Qantas…).

So before you engage in this step, just take a moment to look at how your target market behaves online and develop a strategy to relate to that.  There is nothing worse than clicking through to a company’s Facebook page to see they only have 4 ‘fans’ and haven’t done any updates for six months.  Facebook and Twitter are always the safe options when it comes to social, and can provide a great way to communicate with your customers on a more informal level.

5. Have transparency

This last point may seem a little dull, but I think it is so so so important, especially if you have an online store.  For a standard website, customers still need to be able to see where you are based, how to get in contact, and information regarding your company.  Don’t hide this information away, as it can make people lose faith in your brand.  I never trust a company that doesn’t have a phone number and address that can be easily found!

For ecommerce stores, the need for transparency is even greater.  What are your shipping costs and delivery times?  What payment gateway do you use?  Is it secure?  What’s your refund policy?  Do you have a sizing chart?  Answers to all of these questions should be obvious to customers, and should be obvious before they need to start looking for them.  Have a shipping calculator?  Well, don’t wait until the payment page to show it to customers.  Put a link to it on the product page.

Being transparent in all of your policies and processes may seem like overkill, but it helps to develop your customer’s trust which in turn means repeat visitors, more enquiries and higher sales.  And that is what we are all after, right?

When I started this article, it was going to be about the usability and customer experience of an e-commerce website, but as I started typing and thinking about it more, I realised what people don’t know is the day to day running of e-commerce websites. Having built them for clients, run them myself, and been an end user of more e-commerce websites than I can count, I thought I had better share my experiences with you.  Whether you are about to start an e-commerce site or you are already running one, here are some points to think about in order to make a better service for your customers, increase trust, and improve sales.

Be contactable and responsive

If it is possible, get a 1300 number and display it in the header of your website.  If not, provide a contact page with a contact form and a landline phone number (optionally).  Once you have these things easily available and not hidden on your website, be responsive.  Emails should be sent to your smartphone so that you can respond easily and quickly. If a customer has a question and they get a quick response, they are more likely to buy your products with confidence. If you have a phone number – answer it.  If that is not possible, have an answering service with a professional sounding message dedicated to that website/business and return those calls ASAP.

Offer support

If you don’t want to be receiving phone calls day in day out, and the contact email form seems generic and unspecific, offer ticket support from your website.  This is particularly good for online services, subscription based models and SAAS (software as a service) models.  It sets an expectation for the customer, and the tickets can be categorised to be responded to by the correct person in your business (if it is larger than a one man operation).

FAQ knowledgebase

By adding items to your FAQ knowledge base regularly, you will increase your chances of customers seeing the answer to their question there before they contact you.  In an ideal world, we could put up a website that is 100% self-service and nobody would bother us with customer support/service questions.  That is just not how it works in the real world of e-commerce, but contact can be reduced if the customer can easily find the answer to their question.  On your contact page and support page, include a search box for the FAQ knowledge base.  Say something like ‘Why wait for us to get back to you? Check our knowledge base for a quick and easy solution.’

Send your products on a regular basis

Having an e-commerce store can often mean working from home. Whether it is full time or part time, make a schedule for sending out your products.  That will create a consistency of service. Whether you are doing it every day or every second day it is a job like any other so treat it like that. Have a schedule for filling orders and sending them.