onlinefreedom September 17, 2020The end goal of your E-commerce Business is to generate sales to earn more profits. From website/platform design to item listings to product description, everything is intentionally designed to boost up sales revenue.
Given that there are so many components to a successful e-commerce website, the margin for improvement is also incredibly huge. The job of optimization is to get rid of inefficiencies in your online business so you can have greater profit margins.
The formula for greater profits is not a complicated one; it is driven by two key factors:
- Reducing costs by removing inefficiencies and redundancy
- Increasing sales by improving marketing strategies and smoothing customer experience.
Now that we know what optimization may look like, let us get down to the real task of building a framework of how we can achieve the aforementioned goals.
Reducing costs
Most expenses accumulated by an e-commerce business are because of, fulfillment and marketing costs. Thought these expenses are essential for operating in this industry, there is always redundancy that can be removed.
a) Control Product Returns
One of the costliest problems for an E-commerce platform is product returns. As you have to fulfill an order that gives you nothing in return. To cut down on product return try to write accurate and elaborate product descriptions, offer longer product return times, and not targeting high-risk customers.
b) Negotiate with Supplier
You can also negotiate better deals with your suppliers to bring down your product costs. A high priority for suppliers is the timely payment and order size. If you can accommodate on that end, they might be willing to accommodate you on product prices. You can also reduce fulfillment costs by removing redundancy from your packaging, making it lighter and cheaper to ship.
c) Analyze your Marketing Expenses
When it comes to marketing, not all fingers are equal. Always keep a keen eye on return on investments for your marketing expenses. For example, you could be investing a lot of money social media advertising with low returns in comparison to marketing on google. You can always cut down on such expenses by keeping a close eye on what is beneficial and what is not.
Increasing sales
Before you start, you need to be clear about your end goal. Where exactly is it that you are lacking. When it comes to sales, there can be two possible culprits:
a) Fewer visitors coming to the site
If your site is getting fewer visitors, then the problem is most like with your SEO. SEO is in short, ranking of your site on a search engine. Simply put, when does your site appear on the google search. This is an important metric because most of the internet traffic is generated through search engines like google and if your SEO is not good then, you are likely to lose a lot of internet traffic and thus visitors.
You can improve your SEO by making sure that your site uses the right keywords, is trusted and safe, and generates good quality content. If you are running an Amazon or Shopify store and also plagued with the same issue, then the problem is most likely the same.
Keep in mind that SEO on Amazon or Shopify works far differently than it does on a conventional search engine. You can optimize your items to rank higher on such search with: Accurate and concise product descriptions, precise backend key tags, and search query optimized branding.
b) Low Customer conversion rate
One of the biggest problems an e-commerce site struggles with is converting its visitors into customers. This metric is commonly referred to as CRO (Consumer rate optimization). This problem has a multitude of causes that cumulatively contribute to low sales on your E-commerce business.
A good starting point would be to look at your page design. If your page design is not user friendly or is technically bad, i.e, your page loads very slow. Then visitors are likely to immediately leave your site after being directed to it.
A good indicator of this problem is your sites’ bounce rate, number of visitors who immediately leave your site. You can get this data from google analytics. You can improve this problem by making your page user friendly, with a clear and concise presentation of product, easy to navigate website design and minimal disturbance by ads.
After that comes, product comparisons, sometimes visitors can be unsure whether you are offering a good price for the product, and whether your product is of good quality or not. When these queries are not addressed in your site, then visitors are unlikely to make a purchase. You can improve on this problem by offering organic content on your site about the products, writing accurate and precise product descriptions, incorporating user testimonials on your site, and offering a live chat option if your visitors want to discuss the products in detail.
As a general rule of thumb, the greater the engagement available on your E-commerce site, the higher the chances of your visitors converting into customers.
c) Cart Abandonment
The final hurdle in CRO is cart abandonment, that is that your customers have shown the intent to purchase, and even began the process, but never completed it. This problem is so common that it is estimated that the cart abandonment rate is calculated to be at about 69% for an average e-commerce site.
There are numerous ways to address this problem. For example, many customers abandon their purchase because of surprisingly high shipping costs which can be addressed with free shipping by adjusting the nominal cost in your product line.
You also need to make sure that the cart is visible to the customer as the difficulty of finding the cart option on the site is also a reason behind the abandonment.
Once you have your E-commerce platform optimized by generating visitors first and then turning visitors into customers, you are on the track to generate more profits.
