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Doesn’t matter if you’re selling delicious food, nifty gadgets or trendy clothes online, these are 5 must-have elements you need when fine-tuning your website.
They also are the first 5 elements I incorporate to the beautifully-designed websites I create for my clients at Jankosoft.
I’m talking about key features that can convert random website visitors to paid customers for your business…which happens to be the crux of an e-commerce business anyway.
Now if you’re serious about letting the power of the internet do all the hard work of selling for you, while you sit back and monitor your business with peace of mind, read the next 5 points closely.
(But if you’re super serious about getting your website to get sales for you, especially if you’re in the retail or F&B industry, click here now!)
(UPDATE: When I initially wrote this article, I found it a tad bit too long for me to put all 5 steps, and actionable content, in just one post. So to make sure that the info remains bite-sized, I’m splitting this article to 2 parts. Be sure to catch the follow-up to this article with the last 2 elements!)
1) An Easy Log-In Process, The Faster The Better.
Have you been turned off the notion of buying something when you were smacked by a long sign-up form that takes forever to complete?
Bothersome right?
That’s exactly why it’s important to simplify the account creation, logging in and password recovery process on your website.
This makes the time taken to purchase something shorter and easier for your customers.
So how do you shorten your sign-up forms?
Just ask what you need to get them started immediately.
I call this the “primary information”.
Anything else becomes secondary, meaning you can collect it later just before or after they purchased from you.
Here’s a short list of primary information (which you should collect up-front) and secondary information (which you can collect later) if you aren’t sure what you need:
Primary Information: First name, email address and password.
Secondary Information: Last name, phone number, delivery address, permission for email notifications and other personal information (such as birth date, interests, etc.)
Alternatively, you could get customers to sign-up with Facebook to make it even easier to get started.
Here are some good examples which you can implement on your site:
Keep in mind that you want your customers to get to your product page as soon as possible for them to place an order…
So make as slippery as a water slide for them to log in and start placing orders by simplifying the sign-up process.
2) Make It Easy To Place An Order
Now that a potential customer has created an account and are checking out your products, it must be easy for them to place an order on your website.
Here’s where the position, design and colour of your “Order Now” and / or “Cart”’ button matters.
And the reason is rather straightforward really.
If it’s going to be difficult to find them, it’s also going to be difficult to get more sales from your website.
Here’s a negative example of buttons gone wrong.
This might be an error in the scripting that affects certain browsers but still, the cart icon and log-in icon has been skewed due to this.
Here are some good examples that I personally like:
To get started with creating your order button, here are some measures you can take to make sure it converts better for you.
It’s common practice to put the “Order Now” button on the top right when first loading up the site.
Most F&B businesses use do this to get more orders online.
Like what McDonald’s did, you could also do a step-by-step picture guide or a video tutorial showing how to place an order on their website.
Simply by making your ordering process mind-numbingly easy for anyone to understand, you’re increasing the chances of people clicking it and making a purchase.
(If you want this done-for-you on your website, check this out now!)
3) A Clean-And-Simple Cart Management System
It’s important to have an intuitive cart management system for customers to remove, add and edit orders on their cart page just before they check out.
This further helps to minimize hiccups in the final stages of placing a completed order.
In addition, add in a follow-up email or pop-up when someone tries to leave your site with items in the cart.
You could spend hundreds (if not thousands) setting up a cart abandonment sequence but there are a lot of CRM and email automation tools out there which you can look at to do this by yourself.
Lazada is one example of an e-commerce site that does this well.
Recently, on their 3rd birthday mega sale, I added one of their cool shirts to the cart, but left the page when my wife came in (she thinks I’m spending too much money shopping online).
Almost immediately, I get this email:
In the end, I went back to buy it from their app which I downloaded through this email and got myself brand new shirt which I stash secretly in my car! (wife hasn’t seen it yet thankfully)
So anyway, that’s why it’s important to have a highly intuitive cart management system that minimizes hiccups and maximizes sales for you on your check out page.
But here’s the thing.
What if you could take it one step further, in terms of following up with a lost opportunity with current customers online?
I’m talking about an automated system that even sends out emails to your current database of customers, reminding them to come back to you, not to miss on your crazy promotions, and buy more from you without sounding spammy or salesy.
Would be great right?
If only there was such a system out there…
(There actually is.)
At Jankosoft, we’ve hit breakthrough with our systems and now we’re able to do exactly that.
All you need to do is set a schedule (say maybe after 1 week, 2 weeks and a month) for the emails to be sent out to existing customers, reminding them to buy from your website again.
Pretty exciting stuff for us to be able to bring this to our existing clients, and further adding value to the systems we’ve done for them.
Now if you’re keen on having these elements (and much more) done for you, check out our online ordering system for retail and F&B businesses here: www.ninjaos.com
PS: As I mentioned earlier, to keep this article short and sweet, I’ve split the 5 elements into 2 posts. Be sure to catch the last 2 elements in the next post soon!
