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5 eCommerce Hacks to Boost Your Sales and Win New customers in 2022

Details: Published: Monday, 21 February 2022 09:45

People are getting busier every single day, which means that the attention span decreases, and it is even lower than that of a goldfish. Isn’t that surprising? Whether you are in an eCommerce business or otherwise, you have to do anything possible to grab the attention span of customers to improve sales and win new customers.

So, let’s dig into that! We are going to talk about the practical steps to boost your sales and win new customers in 2022.

Social Proof Works Wonders

Social proof like reviews, feedback, images, and pictures that the existing customers share on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok inspires online shoppers TikTok inspires online shoppers, and that is what we call user-generated content. Promoting user-generated content on a regular basis gives your potential customers confidence to buy your products.

When making a purchase in person people often love to touch, see, smell the items that give them the confidence to buy them. However, when buying online they rely on social proof. They want to hear about it from a fellow buyer who made a purchase just like they did.

So, let’s get to this example.

If you are buying perfume in person, you can actually try a tester in the store. However, if you want to order from an online store you would check the reviews from customers, the experience they have shared on the eCommerce store or on social media.

Display social proof notifications on your eCommerce store

A great way to make the process more efficient is displaying the social proof pop-up on your eCommerce store using an app like FOMO. It works well for those who are non-millennials out there because they have the ultimate fear of missing out. So a social proof like ‘Sam just bought perfume in the New Hemisphere” will do wonders. It works well for the location targeting since it will help customers in the New Hemisphere to buy with confidence.

Display Smart Trust Badges

According to Statista, 17% of cart abandonment during 2021 was due to trust issues which means that you can retain a significant percentage of the customers by placing trust badges on your eCommerce store.

When you place a trust badge on your eCommerce store it instills trust. It is often placed on the checkout page, and it’s been quite a while when most of the retailers and eCommerce experts place it on the landing pages as well. The core reason to have them on your website is, to boost sales and increase customer satisfaction.

The science behind these trusted badges is complex. There are several security features behind these trusted features that keep the credit card information and personal information safe & secure. SSL is a complex system that encrypts the information that is sent over the web. You will only get these trust seals when your security systems incorporate all the standardized security protocols.

Your technical team should be responsible for taking care of everything and placing trust badges on your landing page or the checkout page. And, your sales will improve significantly.

There are several kinds of trusted badges including:

Safe Checkout badges

It indicates that the checkout process on your eCommerce store is safe, and any information that a customer shares on the website can not be stolen. It ensures all the personal information shared is encrypted.

Accepted Payment Badges

Honestly, nothing is more relieving than seeing an accepted payment badge on an eCommerce store. It instills confidence among the customers.

Money-Back Guarantee Badges

It gives the customer confidence that he is not going to lose anything even if he doesn’t have a great experience. You can ask your graphic designer to create a money-back guarantee badge that you can place on the landing page.

Free Shipping and Returns Badge

I think it’s a must for an eCommerce store. Extra shipping or returning costs are one of the major reasons for cart abandonment, so if you place a badge like this, you can earn and build customer loyalty.

Use Exit-intent Popups

I’d call this, saying goodbye but with love so that the customer returns back instantly. Here’s how the Exit Intent Technology works:

It precisely detects that the customer is going to leave
Quickly interrupts a customer’s intention to exit
Offers a great call-to-action like “Subscribe” or “Get and offer a giveaway, sign up request, a product-specific discount, etc

An exit-intent popup helps the user to return back to your website using an advanced predictive algorithm. The technology quickly detects the user’s activity by incorporating the cursor movements and its velocity to take him back to the store.

It helps you save a second chance to take your customer back to the store to improve your conversion rates. So, if it’s not efficient you will lose your chance. Try to design creative popups that are user-friendly, quick, efficient, and interactive. It acts as a ‘safety net’ once you are successful in bringing back your customers, they will spend more time exploring and might buy that is more incentivized.

An exit pop-up strategy helps you build an incredible email list for your email marketing. So, why not kill two birds with one stone? You can then use an efficient email marketing strategy to send them customized emails that are tailored to their needs. As a result, you will have a higher chance of a conversion.

Cross-sell and Upsell

If you have an Economics background, you’ll be able to better understand how cross-selling and up-selling strategies works. You can offer your customers complementary things, related things on the checkout page, the cart page, or the product page that entices the customers to buy the product due to its complementary nature.

Cross-selling and upselling had been doing wonders in the past. You can use tools like Bold Upsell to set your upsell and cross-sell strategy.

Let’s look at the example on Amazon. The customer wants to buy an exercise bike machine with a great resistance bike and Amazon offers the buyer a heavy-duty equipment mat. It is because the seller is sure that other similar products in the same niche would interest the buyer.

Use Accounting Software

When you know where most of the money comes from you can create a better sales strategy for your eCommerce store, and that’s why accounting software helps you. eCommerce store owners struggle with bookkeeping and they face difficulty to manage the accounting with each new sale. The fact is when you don’t have an in-depth idea about your current sales you are not able to prepare an efficient sales strategy for the future.

To overcome this issue eCommerce stores can use simple and smart accounting software that offers solutions for small, big, and large eCommerce giants. Using these expense management software, you can take an in-depth study of the data, study multichannel sales and extract specific types of information like conversion rates. As a result, you will be able to get information about the number of items sold, and the number of transactions that occurred. Plus, you will know how many products are highly sold, so that you can gear your efforts towards that product in order to improve sales.

You can take the following actions:

Promote all those products that were not so popular among your target audience.
Identify and work on the products that have the highest potential of upselling.
Find out all those items that have the highest marginal profits
Track if the discounts you have been offering performed well, and recognize if the spend management is efficient.

So, there you have it! Five incredible eCommerce hacks to boost your sales and win customers.

What are the eCommerce hacks that you incorporate into your business to boost your sales and win new customers in 2022? Let us know in the comment section below.

Growing Your Business through Hiring the Right Employees

Details: Published: Wednesday, 02 February 2022 10:45

You can achieve business strength and success by hiring the right employees. However, hiring can be a stressful and tedious process, especially if you do not know where to begin. So, to ensure that you don’t waste any resources on hiring the wrong employees, you need to be thinking about what needs to happen to get the right ones on board.

Decide What You Need from Your Employees

You do not just want to hire an employee because you need to make up the numbers. You want to hire employees because you need them to fill a specific role or responsibility. So, to ensure that you get this right, you need to truly decide what you want and need from your employees. For example, are you looking for new employees to fill existing roles or new roles? Are you looking to fill temporary employment gaps? Or are you hiring to help your business grow? As well as thinking about what you need from your employees you also have to think about what they need from you. You want to encourage a positive culture within your business and employee needs are often intertwined with your business needs.

Contact HR Professionals

You need to ensure that you are always conducting the hiring and onboarding process for employees correctly, and to be sure that you are you need to enlist the assistance of HR professionals. There are of course many rules and regulations in place, and getting to grips with them all can be challenging and time-consuming, and this is where good human resources come into play. For instance, in certain states, you have to consider unions for employees, and you have to follow the guidance of a right-to-work states map which can be problematic to your recruitment and hiring, especially if your business is based in several states.

Create a Recruitment Strategy

You know that you need to hire, and you know how many employees you need; however without a recruitment strategy your efforts could be thwarted. To get the most out of recruitment you must have a strong strategy in place. When you create and set out a recruitment strategy you establish what you want to undertake, achieve and when. Following a recruitment strategy will ensure that your hiring periods are targeted, productive and beneficial to your business.

Employee Roles, Responsibilities and Reviews

When you hire any new employee, you of course want to be sure that you get the most out of them. To ensure that this happens, you need to lay down expectations from the start. Establishing employee roles and responsibilities is beneficial for both your business and future employees too. If everyone knows where they stand, and they know what is expected of them, then there will be little doubt and little room for disagreement. As well as establishing (and setting out) clear rules and responsibilities for employees, it is also important to ensure you regularly review what you are offering. When you review new hires and existing employees you can quickly see where changes need to be made. These changes can then influence your next round of recruitment.

A Detailed Guide on Ecommerce SEO

Details: Published: Friday, 21 January 2022 06:41

Online retailing has always been a challenge. Especially for those who have just entered the business.

The first thing that comes to online resellers' minds is advertising. You can create an ad and boost the number of sales up in a blink of an eye.

But it requires a solid budget for this kind of business growth. If you don't have money for the ads, you should explore other ways to stay afloat.

How to solve this issue?

SEO is your solution.

In this guide, you will get detailed information on how to optimize your eCommerce site.

Keep on reading!

What Are the First Steps to Take

SEO for an eCommerce site embraces all standard stages as non-eCommerce website optimization. And the first step you should take is to run keyword research.

Why do you need keyword research for your eCommerce site?

It will help you attract product-related customers that boost up the number of sales.

However, keyword research for an eCommerce site has its specifications. Let's review them:

You will have to list all the pages on the site
It requires finding and mapping appropriate keywords for each page

One more thing you should keep in mind. Any eCommerce website has two types of pages - category and product pages. And when it comes to keyword research for these pages, you will have to take a slightly different approach.

Now, let's skim through each step of keyword research for your eCommerce site.

List all the pages on your eCommerce site

To get the list of the eCommerce site's pages, you should use the following request "domain.com/sitemap/xml". Eventually, you will get this:

The next step is to use the Scraper plugin that will help you scrap the pages. Then, use the XPath:

//a[contains(text(),"{yourdomain.com}")]/@href

For those businesses who haven't launched their eCommerce site, you can use the above-suggested way to borrow structure, categories, and products from your competitors.

Make a prioritization of the pages

It is quite important to prioritize the pages of your eCommerce site.

Why?

Because it doesn't make sense to prioritize each page of the site if there are thousands of them.

Instead, you focus on optimizing those pages that drive sales. If you want to figure out these pages, Google Analytics will help you. Use this path to get the data you need:

Behaviour > Site Content > Landing Pages > sort by revenue (high to low)

If you are not aware of how to use Google Analytics, you can explore these pages with the help of the Site Explorer tool from Ahrefs. Pay attention to the "Top pages" report. It reveals pages that drive the most.

Keywords mapping

When you already have a list of priority pages, you can start keywords mapping.

First of all, identify "seed" keywords and long-tail variations to them. You can do this by analyzing your priority pages' URLs with the Site Explorer tool. The report you should draw your attention to is called "Organic keywords":

Next, you need to figure out what pages rank for these "seed" keywords. Click the "SERP" tab and review the results:

This report will help you understand how this keyword is mainly used - for product and category pages or blog posts. If you can see that the exact keyword makes sense, move on to the following stages of optimization.

Find long-tails

Long-tail keywords consist of 3 or more words in a single phrase. And if you already know your seed keywords, it won't be difficult to explore long-tails. You will need to use the Keywords Explorer tool with the "Related terms" report.

Don't forget to apply the "Word count" option requiring 3-4 words included.

Finally, get a list of long-tail keywords that you can use to optimize your eCommerce site.

Move to On-Page SEO Practices for Your Ecommerce Site

An eCommerce site should have an excellent design to attract potential customers. But there is a necessity to make your site visible in Google's eye.

How is it possible?

You can do this by implementing on-page SEO techniques.

What are on-page SEO elements?

On-page SEO elements are meta tags, meta descriptions, meta titles, and h2's.

Let's review how you should optimize your eCommerce site with on-page SEO.

Optimize meta titles, meta descriptions, and h2's

Go to Google and see a few examples of eCommerce sites. You will notice that these sites are optimized with a template approach.

If you look at these examples closer, you will see that they are not optimized properly. For instance, meta descriptions are truncated.

However, if your eCommerce site has hundreds of pages, it is quite hard to optimize each page.

How to solve the issue?

Figure out the most important pages and optimize them. Write individual titles and meta descriptions. Rest of the pages you can optimize using a "templated" approach. But don't use the same template for each page.

How to write a unique meta description?

First and foremost, any meta description should include a target keyword. Besides, enrich the descriptions with long-tails. Don't forget to apply action words - buy, click, etc. Mention USP (free shipping, free delivery). And optimize for CTR.

Keep in mind that h2's should be one per page.

URLs optimization

It is important to make sure all the URLs on your eCommerce website are readable. Here are suggested URL formats you should take into account:

domain.com/category-name (category page)
domain.com/category-name/subcategory-name (subcategory page)
domain.com/category-name/subcategory-name/subcategory-name (sub-sub category page)
domain.com/category-name/subcategory-name/subcategory-name/product (product page)

To optimize URLs perfectly, you should consider a few tips:

Avoid writing long URLs
Don't forget to include a target keyword
Create a clear hierarchy and context of the pages
Use hyphens to separate the words
Don't draw too much of your attention to URL parameters

Work on creating unique descriptions for product and category pages

A page description gives Google a clear understanding of what the page is about. Hence, when you create unique descriptions, it provides potential customers with information about the products they want to buy.

What are suggestions to follow?

Base the page's description on the target keyword
Use long-tails, LSI keywords, and synonyms
Write easy-to-read descriptions
Use description as the tool to communicate with the customers

Video content can be used to improve your search engine ranking. Create product demo videos to help consumers experience products before buying.

Apply schema markup

Have you ever noticed this type of search result in the SERP?

It has far more benefits compared to standard results you can see on search engines. Such a product page attracts lots of potential customers. It provides people with additional information about the product. What's more important, it positively impacts your branding.

How to compile a powerful schema markup?

Review six important attributes your schema markup should include:

name
image
description
aggregateRating
offers > priceCurrency
offers > price

Apply schema markup for your product pages and see your eCommerce business growth.

Off-Page SEO techniques

Off-page SEO is all about building backlinks to power up your site's backlink profile. For your information, Google considers backlinks as a ranking signal. Thus, the more backlinks your eCommerce site's pages have the more chances to see them ranking in the SERP.

Link building for your eCommerce website has the same approach as usual.

Start with analyzing your competitors' backlink profiles to figure out what backlinks they have. To help you with this use the tool called Link Intersect. The only thing you need to do is to grab a couple of your competitors' pages and analyze:

The tool suggests a list of the sites that link to your competitors. Review the report and acquire these backlinks for your eCommerce site.

To Sum Up

SEO is the only way for your eCommerce site to crush the competitors and get customers organically. It will allow you to save your budget and avoid using paid advertising.

However, you should remember that SEO requires some time to show positive results. Hence, be patient and wait.

This guide suggested basic SEO tips to use to optimize an eCommerce site. Nevertheless, you will gain results by applying these SEO tips for sure.

If you believe this guide lacks more pieces of advice regarding eCommerce SEO, don't hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments.

6 ways to improve the UX of your company's website

Details: Published: Monday, 17 January 2022 05:22

Providing a great user experience (UX) with your website is vital to running a successful eCommerce business. A good UX can boost your SEO, increase customer loyalty, and grow your sales, among other benefits!

In this article, we’re going to outline how you can improve the UX of your company’s website for the best results. Let’s get started.

Ensure your website is accessible so anyone can use it

You want to ensure that anyone who wants to use your website is easily able to, even if they require special accommodations. Not only is this a good business practice, but it is also often an Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requirement for eCommerce businesses.

Here are a few different steps you can take to make your website more accessible:

Add alt text to your images so they can be described by a screen reader
Transcribe your videos
Make your content accessible on all devices, such as both mobile and desktop

If you’re in the United States, your website may be subject to the regulations under the ADA. If you’re not sure where to begin, check out the ADA Compliance Website Checker from Siteimprove. They can help you identify accessibility issues and resolve them.

Make your checkout process quick and easy

A poor checkout experience is one of the biggest reasons that shoppers abandon their carts. A Barilliance study found that having to create an account, encountering unexpected shipping costs, and finding a checkout process confusing were a few major reasons customers decided to abandon their carts. So, you’ll want to put some time and effort into ensuring this last step in the buying process doesn’t put your customers off.

Here are a few tips for ensuring an easy and straightforward checkout process:

Use a single-page checkout
Don’t require mandatory account sign-ups
Make your forms quick and easy to fill out
Offer a service like Klarna that lets people pay through installments

Let’s take a look at an example of a business that has a quick and easy checkout process for inspiration.

NYX, a cosmetics retailer, makes their checkout process very easy! As you can see in the image above, the entire process can be completed on a single page. Plus, a user doesn't have to create an account in order to make a purchase, and it’s clear how much longer the process is going to take. This gives a user a better idea of when their purchase will be completed so there’s no concern or confusion, which will help people to have a more enjoyable experience on the site.

When setting up your own checkout process, take notes from NYX. Limit the number of pages the user will have to go through and be sure they don’t have to create an account in order to checkout. This will help to keep the process simple, improving your UX and reducing the risk of your customers abandoning their carts.

Publish content you know your audience needs

Publishing content on your website’s blog is a great way to market your eCommerce business. It can help you promote your products, build loyalty with your customers, and draw in the best traffic for your business.

To determine what type of content your audience needs, start by checking in with your customer service team. See if there are any common questions or concerns they frequently get asked. If you base content on these questions, you can address common pain points without people having to get in touch with a service rep.

Next, conduct some keyword research. Keywords are the words and phrases that people plug into search engines in order to find the products, services, or content they’re looking for. To find the right keywords, head to a tool like Google Keyword Planner and plug words and phrases related to your business into the tool. Google will then provide you with a list of keywords based on their competitiveness, or how hard they are to rank for, and their average monthly search volumes.

Many of the keywords Google shows you will work as topics for content, or can simply help to give you some inspiration. If you weave these keywords into your content, not only are you more likely to rank higher on the SERPs, but you’ll also help to ensure that the content you produce is actually what your target audience wants, improving their experience of using your website.

Let’s take a look at an example of a business that has great content on its website to get some inspiration.

Victoria University Online, a higher education institution in Australia, has great content on its website. As you can see in the image above, Victoria University Online has several articles outlining topics related to their different program offerings. They discuss why these fields are important, how their courses work, and more. By offering these articles, Victoria University Online can help prospective students make decisions about what they should study, improving their UX.

Consider offering articles about a wide range of topics related to your business on your website. Content like this can ensure that people have an enjoyable time on your website and improve your UX.

Optimize your website’s loading speed

No one wants to sit around and wait for a website to load. So, if someone finds your website to load too slowly, they’re likely to leave. Try to keep your page loading speed under two seconds — this will help you improve your website’s UX and increase your conversion rate.

Increasing your load speed can also help you rank higher on relevant search engine results pages. This is because Google only wants to send their users to the best websites possible. If someone comes to your website and quickly leaves because it was loading too slow, this will indicate to Google that your website isn’t useful to searchers. This can then have a detrimental impact on your rankings, which you don’t want.

Here are a few different ways you can increase your page loading speed:

Optimize your images: Images can take up a lot of bandwidth, which might affect your site’s loading time. Reduce their file size using a tool like TinyPNG.
Remove dead links: This will help you avoid redirects, increasing your serving speed.
Limit the number of plugins you use: Plugins like those for commenting and social sharing are often necessary, but be sure they aren’t overloading your website.
Enable browser caching: This allows the server to get files from the cache instead of re-downloading them over and over again from the network. This will increase your site’s loading speed.

If you’re struggling to identify how to keep your loading speed up, check out Google’s PageSpeed Insights. This tool can help you identify problems affecting your loading speed so you can fix them!

Provide an intuitive navigation menu

It should be incredibly easy for website visitors to find exactly what they need on your eCommerce website. If they can’t, they’ll likely leave your website without making a purchase! This means that you need to work to provide an intuitive navigation menu in order to improve your website’s UX and increase your sales.

There are a number of ways you can help people navigate your website. You could have categories broken down by the type of product, the type of person the user is (for instance, a student or teacher), or the type of problem the user is having.

Let’s take a look at an example of a business that has an intuitive navigation menu for inspiration.

The Pokemon Center, the official retailer of all Pokemon games and merchandise, has a very intuitive interface on their website. As you can see above, their products are divided into categories like plush, figures, games, and clothing. Because this company sells a huge amount of merchandise, this is a very effective strategy. Anyone who is looking for Pokemon products — from games to clothes — can quickly and easily find what they need. This helps The Pokemon Center improve their UX.

Consider dividing your menu up with different product categories. If you sell a wide variety of products, this will really help your website visitors to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily, improving your UX and helping to increase your sales.

Make it very easy for people to convert

When people land on your website, you want it to be as easy as possible for them to take the next step with your business. This will increase your chances of making a sale!

Additionally, making it easy to convert is an important step in improving the UX of your website. People value their time, and they won’t want to take a while clicking around your website in order to spend their money. If converting is straightforward, people will be more likely to follow through.

You can help to make it easy for people to convert in a few different ways. Here are some examples:

Offer a clear and straightforward call to action, or CTA
Provide a sophisticated search feature that helps people to find what they’re looking for
Make it easy for people to get in touch with you if they have questions or concerns

For inspiration, let’s take a look at a few examples of businesses that make it easy for people to convert on their websites.

At Loganix, we make it very easy for prospective customers to get started! On our guest posting service page, we have several clear CTAs that make it easy for people to order our services. As the user scrolls down the page, they can also learn more about these services. We outline what we do, how our services work, and how we ensure quality control. It’s a straightforward page that offers all of the most important information without a website visitor having to click around too much. And, with CTAs throughout, it’s always easy for a user to get started. This creates a great UX that ensures it’s easy to make a purchase.

To improve your own website’s UX, offer multiple CTAs throughout your selling pages. Giving people several convenient places where they can get started with your business will let you target different types of people with different needs, making any one of them more likely to click. This will encourage them to make a purchase!

Finally, Venngage, an online infographic maker, makes it very easy for website visitors to convert on their website, too. As you can see in the image above, they outline how their services work, and then have several CTAs that say “Sign Up For Free.” This makes it very clear to the customer what they need to do next, and the CTAs make it easy for users to get started. By offering multiple CTAs and noting that they have free options, Venngage can improve the UX for their customers.

Be sure that your service and product pages outline how your business works, and add CTAs throughout. If you do this, it will be very clear to users how they can get started, making for a great UX!

Summary

Improving your website’s UX is very important to your overall success! In this article, we outlined how you can improve your UX with great content, a fast loading speed, an intuitive navigation menu, and more.