Revamping your online store can make a huge difference on your conversions. It can increase customer trust, loyalty and conversion rates. What are the most important things to revamp? How can you make sure the new version of your website is truly effective?
Designing Above the Fold
The most crucial part of the revamp is the first screen someone sees when they land on your website. Everything that is above the fold is what will determine whether or not someone will decide to stay on your site.
What Should Go Above the Fold?
Most successful ecommerce stores put their most popular products on the front page, as well as any particularly good deals. Make sure your USP is clearly visible on the front page as well. For example, when Domino’s Pizza ran their “If it’s not there in 30 minutes it’s free” campaign, it was clearly visible on their website. If you have a user login system, another proven strategy is to use their recent purchases to determine what else visitors might be interested in.
Fewer Steps to Checkout
The fewer steps someone needs to take to get to the checkout process, the better. Instead of having someone fill out a lengthy registration process, make it as short as possible. Make it optional. Some of the most successful websites have only a two-field registration process: the email and the password. Everything else is just pulled from the credit card entry process. Make sure your “Add to Cart” buttons are clearly visible on every page. On every step of the purchase process, it should be crystal clear to the reader exactly what the next step is.
Optimize for Trust
Trust is often the most important factor for determining whether or not someone buys. Certain colors such as blue tend to work best to increase trust. It does make a difference what industry you are targeting and the age range of the visitors, however. Getting BBB, HackerSafe and SSL certifications can also help increase trust.
Adding Features and Products
Ask your customers what they want to see more of. Is there a product line they want you to carry? Is there an improvement or a feature they want added to your website? Although website owners are often very intuitively aware of what their users want, they can’t always come up with the perfect solutions for their customers on their own. User feedback is critical to building a great business.
In short, start your design with the above the fold impression. Make sure it creates a sense of safety and trust, as well as conveys why your site is special. Put your best products up front. Reduce the steps to check out and make the process as streamlined as possible. Finally, continually ask your users for feedback, feature suggestions and product requests.