Ask every e-commerce store owner what their issue is, and they’d unanimously say, “… Want to Increase e-commerce sales”. Ashley Rosa — a freelance writer and blogger who’s passionate about technology, commerce, and business has a few tips for you on how to increase e-commerce sales by decluttering your e-commerce store.
Take it away, Ashley 🙂
25 years ago, we did not know about online shopping or the large e-commerce giants Amazon, Alibaba or ebay. Fast forward to today, these brands have become household names and our go to places for shopping at a click of the button.
Amazon today owns 49 percent of the e-commerce market, which translates into 5 percent of the total retail across the US.
What started as a simple bookstore, now sells 12 million products on its platform.
The obvious reason behind Amazon’s success is its reliable customer service, pricing and speed of light shipping. However, the underappreciated factor is Amazon’s user-friendly design, which makes it super easy for anybody to find what they are looking for.
If you look at Amazon’s design from an aesthetic point of view, it is nowhere beautiful. This is because Amazon rather focuses on the simplicity of the process.
Amazon operates by four key principles when it comes to UX: transparency in terms of pricing, the tangibility of product choices, trust, and helpfulness in anticipating people’s needs. Amazon’s UX has changed little since its inception, which is what makes it relevant to Gen X and baby boomers.
Amazon’s success story highlights the importance of good web design for an e-commerce store. When it comes to generating sales on an e-commerce store, speed is of crucial importance.
Research shows 39 percent of the people will stop engaging with a website if images take too long to load and single added second of page load speed will negatively impact sales by 27 percent.
Hence, you can safely say that good website design is directly proportional to sales. Also, a professional logo can help you grasp the attention of your target audience.
The one thing that will help you out in maintaining a fast and a simple website is de-cluttering.
A lot of clutter slows down the website and makes it annoying for people to find stuff. Here are some ways you can make sure your store remains decluttered.
1. Focus more on visuals than text
When you walk in brick and mortar stores, you immediately pick up the products, check how they would look on you and then buy them.
You don’t spend time reading all the banners and standees for information. An online store is similar.
Although you do need some information about the material, you need to see how the product looks.
The best way to reduce text clutter is to add more white spaces to the page. Instead of cramming everything within the width of the page, utilize the length of the page. Leather skin shop, an online leather jacket store, has done an amazing job with its store design, which is minimalistic and easy to navigate.
The best way to avoid putting in a lot of text is to incorporate videos or slideshows. This is especially helpful in the case of technical products; your consumers would rather watch a video than read a whole essay about how the product works. Nine Line hoodies does a great job in explaining its product within 30 seconds without saying a single word.
2. Get rid of old stuff
Decluttering also involves deleting all the stuff that you no longer need. Your website will surely have images that are obsolete, and there might be products that are no longer manufactured.
Hence, you need to clear your database.
Clearing your database can be a daunting task when you have thousands of products listed on your website. The best way is to have a naming mechanism and keep an updating schedule in order to avoid deleting a whole lot of pictures at once.
According to Gretchen Roberts, CEO & chief inbound strategist, most websites are a goldmine of old, forgotten content that can be consolidated, updated, repurposed or even deleted to create a better user experience and actually boost your SEO rankings and on-site conversions.
3. Don’t overdo ads
A lot of websites incorporate third-party ads. If you use this strategy for extra money, then be careful with the number of ads that you are placing; always keep an eye on the ad to content ratio because Google does that and it negatively affects your ranking.
Too many ads make the site look cluttered and take away your customers’ focus from the products that you are trying to sell.
There is no secret formula to determine the optimum ad to content ratio. However, you do need to keep in mind the simplicity of designs, and straight forward call-to-actions are what boost sales.
4. Work on link building strategy
Link building is important for SEO and ranking on Google. However, if you do it just for the sake of it, then it will lead you nowhere.
On one hand, you need these links to provide you with the search engine juice and promote your products.
However, with too many links — especially the ones that lead visitors away from your website — you run the risk of distracting your customers away from your site and products.
5. Update your product descriptions
There is a difference between having too much content and having the right content. Product descriptions are no doubt necessary. However, the keywords change over time.
Hence, you need to update and refresh the descriptions regularly, otherwise, they are just clutter that is of no use to you.
Conclusion
When designing a website, keep in mind the end goal. In case of an e-commerce store, your objective is to sell rather than educate or engage; hence, you should design it accordingly.
Also, plan your content strategy; thoroughly search for keywords and instead of cramming your website only use the ones that are relevant.
Acquiring customers is a hard task, but retaining them is even harder. For an e-commerce store, customers judge you from your website. Hence, it should exude professionalism, which means a well-designed logo, a user-friendly experience, and good speed.
These are the ingredients to success; once your customers enjoy their shopping experience, they would want to come back.
One glitch and you risk losing them forever.
About Ashley Rosa: Ashley Rosa is a freelance writer and blogger. As writing is her passion that why she loves to write articles related to the latest trends in technology and sometimes on health-tech as well. Â She is crazy about chocolates. You can find her at twitter: @ashrosa2.