E-commerce: getting visitors to buy

You generate traffic on your e-commerce site. You’ve understood how to make your visitors aware of your products. Your visitors express an intention to buy your products, but they just don’t make it all the way to checkout, or not enough. Typically, they may browse your site, land on a product page, sometimes even put a product in a cart, but they don’t go to the final validation of the transaction and leave by abandoning their cart.

This article will seek to achieve two goals: First, helping you get your visitors to buy and convert on your online store. And second, we’ll be providing some ideas for how to retain your customers. Because let’s not forget: the hardest part is getting a customer to buy from you the first time.

In one of our previous articles we described the first two stages of the conversion funnel:

• Step 1: Find a place to educate your audience about your products.
• Step 2: Make your visitors consider your product offering

We’ll now take a look at the next steps and advise you on how to optimize your web pages so that visitors make purchases, and how to retain them.

How do I trigger a purchase decision on my e-commerce site?

You’ve attracted interested visitors to your merchant app and convinced them to take action with an email containing persuasive text. They may have added a product to their cart or wishlist. All they need is the final push to close the deal.

Make the prospect’s life as easy as possible. And provide them with the most enjoyable navigation experience possible. You must spare prospects that are in the purchasing decision phase of possible interruptions and, above all, ensure that you give them a little help so that they finalize their purchase.

Site posts and emails will be some your most useful tools at this point.

Let’s see how.

1 – Each message you communicate on the site is important in the purchase decision

All visitors are different.

Some will make a purchase in their first session when many others will have to go through all phases of the funnel to ultimately buy from you.

That is why you need to distinguish between:

• First visitors,
• Returning visitors.

Create special campaigns that target each of these two groups better. You won’t want to speak to a new visitor in the same way you would to a visitor who has come back to your site several times to consult additional information, and who is making up their mind, reflecting, comparing…

With cart abandonment rates hovering around 70%, you can’t afford to take all of your visitors for granted. Rather, you should try and engage them with posts on the site and gently encourage them to come back if they decide to leave.

By sending an email telling them that their basket is still pending on the site and that you can give them a little help in making their decision to buy, with a promo code for example. Hand them incentives for conversion via email discounts.

2 – Encourage and guide them towards placing the order

Your checkout page is the last component that stands between you and your visitors.

At this point, you can turn them into (loyal) customers or lose them forever.

A well-designed payment page contains: several payment options and compelling CTAs.

But there is always something more that can be done to entice visitors to checkout:

Use the power of free shipping

Free shipping is a great incentive to turn prospects into customers and encourage them place an order.

Imagine a visitor facing the payment page who is still hesitating to take out their bank card: “Hey, the delivery costs are free, buying here seems really worth it…”

Give them extra gifts during checkout

Another way to encourage visitors to complete their purchase is to offer them freebies during the process.

Just like free shipping, free samples can also increase average order values and revenue.

Estée Lauder and Clarins, which provide high-end cosmetic products, offer customers several luxury samples to choose from during checkout.

These brands are using free samples as an upselling tool and that’s brilliant!

How to retain my customers and make them keep coming back for more?

That’s it, you’ve managed to bring your prospect to the end of the funnel: they bought your product on your e-commerce site for the first time. Now it’s time for the fun part: how do you get them to come back and buy again?

With an effective customer retention strategy, loyal customers will be the primary drivers of your bottom line.

Studies show that repeat customers are 9 times more likely to convert than an initial buyer and have a higher average cart value.

Let’s take a look at some actions that can promote customer loyalty.

1 – Optimize your thank you page and make the customer want to come back

One of the most recommended actions is to optimize your thank you page that’s displayed at the end of a transaction.

There are several ways to optimize Thank You pages based on your conversion goals:

• Ask the customer to submit a comment,
• Carry out a satisfaction survey of the purchasing experience,
• Give a promo code to encourage the customer’s quick return,
• Highlight products similar to those purchased by the customer,
• Offer to receive news by email,
• Etc.

Promotion on thank you pages is an effective way to give customers a reason to come back to your e-commerce site.

The end of a transaction is the perfect time to get these messages across. You have the full attention of the buyer, who will be especially attentive at this moment in order to verify that the payment has been made and that the order has been placed. You can use this moment to create a feeling of exclusivity and belonging within your client.

2 – Use referral marketing

Referral marketing is a concept that leads to the acquisition of new prospects through customer referrals.

Make use of your long-standing or even recent customers and ask them to review and assess their satisfaction with the product purchased, to leave a comment or even a testimonial.

Recommendations can do wonders for the business of e-commerce sites. 84% of consumers said they trust recommendations from people they know.

With referral marketing, happy customers will bring you back many more with them.

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