A conversion can take a number of different guises based on the nature of your website. For educational or informative sites then signing up to a newsletter might be classed as a conversion. For charities then a donation is most likely to be the ultimate goal, whilst for ecommerce websites, a sale is always king. Conversion rates can take a lot of tinkering to improve, although ultimately it is well worth it as just a couple of extra percentage points on your conversion rates can lead to a large increase in the turnover of ecommerce websites.
So, as promised, seven top tips to help you increase the conversion rates of ecommerce websites:
- Quick page load times – internet users are notoriously impatient and unforgiving. Brand loyalty does not exist on the internet as it does on the high street, so if you want a customer’s money, you can’t keep them waiting around.
- Don’t use Flash – although Flash can deliver some spectacular looking sites, it does not mix particularly well with ecommerce, so it’s best to be put to one side.
- Usability is the key – navigating ecommerce websites should be simple and straightforward. People will become quickly frustrated with a site that makes it difficult to find the information they are looking for and will swiftly take their business elsewhere.
- Take the time to craft your copy – customers are looking for important messages when making purchasing decisions. “Sell the sizzle not the bacon” is a phrase banded around by some professional copywriters, and although we’re not entirely convinced by slogans, this one does carry some weight. By focusing on the benefits of a product, rather than the features, your sales are likely to experience a boost.
- Ensure ecommerce websites are viewable on the most popular browsers – by focusing on only one browser you are instantly fragmenting your target market. Play the numbers game. Ensuring ecommerce websites can be accessed and viewed on all of the most popular internet browsers will maximise your number of conversions.
- Make your pages scannable – instinctively we read web pages differently to books. Users scan ecommerce websites for important information. If it’s not there they’ll move on. Ensure your main points are emboldened, or bulleted, with those selling points that resonate most with customers at the top of the page.
- Use graphics prudently – pictures are extremely important on ecommerce websites as they show customers the products they wish to buy. However, graphics which are not needed should be avoided at. Not only do they distract a customer from their objective, which is of course to spend some money, they can also increase your page load times.
Increasing the conversion rates on ecommerce websites can involve a lot of tweaking and testing, so don’t expect results overnight. Make a change and leave the site well alone so you can accurately assess the effect on conversion rates. Making multiple changes at one time is futile as you will not be able to track which of the changes had the impact.
If you’d like to talk to an experienced team of developers with dozens of successful ecommerce websites under their belt, give us a call here at Designer Websites on 0845 272 6813.
We have just launched a new website for Inklusive who are a specialist ink cartridge replacement company. If you are looking for a ink cartidge replacement then we thoroughly recommend taking a look at this website.
Earlier this month we released a couple of pretty simple ecommerce websites for Air Swimmers Flying Sharks and Flying Nemo fish. These sites are doing tremendously well already and are we outrageous fun to design and develop, which was helped by the fact that were given a couple of these flying fish to play with! We are glad to hear that these guys are doing well and we are looking forward to completing more projects with them in the near future, hopefully with equally exciting products.
If you fancy a flying shark or a flying nemo then surf over to these 2 sites..
Air Swimmers Flying Sharks and
Air Swimming Flying Nemo
We have just launched a new promotional clothing ecommerce website for My Garment Factory based in Cardiff. The promotional clothing specialist provides a wide range of clothes for businesses, schools, universities, sports clubs etc. and wanted a full ecommerce website to be able to take orders online.
The My Garment Factory for Cardiff can be found here: My Garment Factory Cardiff
To pair up with the flying shark website we have just launched the flying Nemo ecommerce website. The website is ecommerce but it's pretty basic as far as ecommerce websites go. It uses Paypal in a pretty simple format to sell items, rather than use a traditional shopping cart method and online payment processor, but it does the job nicely, and it looks great we think. The flying nemo website was based on the
flying shark website and the products are from the same supplier. The website is linked to Facebook, Google+, Twitter, You Tube and Paypal.
We were provided with an air swimmer flying Nemo to play with for the week, which was great fun for the gang.
Why not get yourself a flying Nemo from the site:
Air Swimmer Flying Nemo Fish.
We've just launched a new website for air swimming flying sharks, which is a pretty simple ecommerce website. The website was fun to do and involved shooting a little video, taking still photographs, developing a flash animation and of course designing and building the ecommerce website itself. The website is linked to Facebook, Google+, Twitter, You Tube and Paypal.
We were given an an air swimming shark to play with for the week, which was good fun for the gang, the only trouble is that now everybody wants one for Christmas!
Get one of the flying sharks for yourself at
Air Swimming Flying Sharks.
We have just launched a new website for a flooring specialist company. Floomaker sell laminate flooring, solid wood flooring, cork tiles and engineered wood flooring and all at very competitive prices.
The company approached Designer Websites for an ecommerce website that would give them flexibiity, scalability, a great image online and most importantly they approached us for an optimised ecommerce website, for which we have a reputation which is second to none. The ecommerce website that we created not only looks good but has a bespoke content management system, is integrated with SagePay, has a bespoke product review system and a very functional and bespoke product filter system. All-in-all the website is precisely what the company were looking for and provides the carefully considered buying journey that they wanted for their potential customers.
The website is brand new at this stage but we expect it to do extrememly well in the near future. Take a look for yourself.. Flooring Supplies
We have worked with Gift House International for over 5 years now and recently we have developed a new website for them which features an improved design, an improved buying journey for their clients and an much imporoved bespooke content management system. Gift House International are a wholesale specialist selling gifts, gadgets and novelty items, many of which are exclusive items. The company have a very high profile in the wholesale gifts and wholesale gadgets industry and wantedthaeir new website to refelct that, especially as the old one that we built 5 years ago was looking tired and very dated!
The website is also highly optimised and the website now ranks on page 1 of Google for terms like wholesale gifts, wholesale gadgets and gift wholesaler.
Anyway the new website looks great so if you are looking for a gift wholesaler then perhaps you should go to the website and fill out an application.
A small ecommerce website for Westco but ecommerce non-the-less; this website was developed very quickly (within 2 weeks) and although primarily it is a brochure website for the flooring giant, it does allow online sales of particular special offers from the homepage. The original requirement was to design and develop, very quickly, an attractive brochure-type website to better represent the wholesale flooring company online. The longer term project is ongoing and thankfully we have more time to develop it; it's an ecommerce enabled wholesale system which will allow their wholesale clients to login and purchase their flooring products via an online ecommerce website. The new much larger system will have integrated wholesale accounts, linked directly to their Sage system, the website will be fully integrated with Sage to enable realtime integration with their sales ledger, stock levels and customer records, including cutomer specific discounts, customer reviews, credit limits etc.
The Westco website was designed, developed and published within a 2 week period and looks pretty good we think, take a look at the flooring website and see what you think.
We have recently launched a brand new ecommerce website for musical instruments specialist Ev-entz Music from Newport in South Wales. Ev-entz approached Designer Websites to assist them to design and develop an online shop for their music instruments; the website also has a hire section for the instrument that they hire to bands and events throughout the country.
The website that we developed for Ev-entz has a bespoke shopping cart system, which is integrated with SagePay. It also has a bespoke CMS system to allow the company to manage their products and hire section through spreadsheet which they can easily and quickly upload into the website.
If you are looking to purchase or hire musical instrument then why not start by looking at this music instruments online shop?
We have just designed and developed a new ecommerce website for a company who provide printed promotional mugs, among other things. The website was developed as part of a fleet of ecommerce websites for the company, including sites for promotional mugs. promotional sashes, party sashes, promotional pennants and embroidered badges.
We have designed and developed the following ecommerce website for the company:
Printed Promotional Mugs
Promotional Sashes
Printed Embroidered Pennants
Printed Embroidered Badges
Party Sash
We have launched a new website for a laptop parts online company called Parts4Laptops. The website is fully ecommerce enabled and integrated with SagePay, it has a product filter system, a bespoke content management and order management system, and has also been optimised for the search engines. The website was optimised for the terms "cheap laptop parts" and "parts for laptops", for which it appears on Page 1 of Google, which given the level of competition and the fact that the website is brand new, is pretty good going!
The website is attractive, user freindly and ranks well in the search engines. The client is absolutely thrilled with the result and has commission further ecommerce websites with Designer Websites.
If you are looking for cheap laptop parts then look no further.
We have just launched a new website for a company called CBC or Cheapest Branded Clothing, these guys provide embroidered clothing and printed clothing for the business market. With an extensive range of clothing from T-Shirts and Shirts to Aprons and Towels these guys offer a superb service to businesses from small to very large.
The cost of the branding is built into the garment cost and the VAT is also included, so that the price you see on screen is the final price for the order you make. You can even use the website to build your branded garments and get a quote; then if you like the price, which you should in theory, you can buy your branded clothing online!
We love the site and have even used it to buy branded clothing for our own company. If you are in the market for embroidered clothing for your company then I would urge you to look no further than Cheapest Branded Embroidered Clothing
We have worked with Golden Finishes for many years and recently they asked us to create an 'amazing branded clothing website', those were the words! Well what we actually created is 'SUPER FANTASTIC' even if I do say so myself.
The website not only allows consumers to buy branded clothing online quickly and easily but also has a huge range of functionality for trade clients.
So consumers and trade clients can hold accounts for purchasing products, and obviously the trade clients get an appropriate discount on their purchasing. However uniquely this website allows affiliates to have a own-branded version of the website, meaning they can earn commission on sales through the website. However the amazing doesn't stop there; this system also allows an affiliate to reverse an order and service the client direct i.e. complete the embroidery or printing on the garments themselves!! So for example the Freeda company have a branded version of this website here.. Freeda Branded Clothing, this website has already taken orders online and earns a regular commission, but if any order come through that Freeda want to service themselves they can reverse the transaction so that they service the job and Golden Finishes just get the commission for the job.
This is a fantastic idea and an outstanding lead generation tool for print or embroidery companies, anywhere in the world!!
We absolutely love this solution, it's fast, it's unique, it's optimised and it looks great too. Take a look a look for yourself.. Branded Clothing by Golden Finishes.
We were approached by Incontinence Direct to create an ecommerce website for their continence products. The website had to be carefully designed given the fact that the audience would be a mixture of medical professionals and general consumers, many of whom would be of an older (pre-Internet) generation. The website had to look tastefull, freindly and above all professional and trustworthy. I think we did a fantastic job of making the site visually pleasing and appropriate.
The website also had to be easy to maintain for the website owner, which we achieved by developing a spreasheet upload facility, meaning the client could manage the products and option in a simple spreadsheet, which could then simply be uploaded to the website. The upload facility would then read the spreadsheet and translate this automatically into the database for the website.
The administration for the website also allows for reporting on the purchases through the website; though the system uses a fully automated system for confirming orders and informing the company of sales. This website is about as automated as this type of system can be and also provides a very slick purchasing system for the user.
Take a look at the ecommerce website here.. Incontinence Products by Incontinence Direct.
