Any eCommerce store owner wants to know what influences online shoppers to buy from one particular store over another. Even more so how to get customers to buy from YOUR store over ANOTHER store. We’ve taken a look at five of the most important influencing factors that cause online shoppers to convert.
1. Ease Of Use – Site Speed & Usability
We’ve talked about the importance of site speed a lot – in regards to user experience, in regards to SEO, and in many other contexts over the years! Site speed is one of the single most important influencing factors on your customers, and the first one they will encounter. The first impression a customer takes away from your site is how fast it loads. If your page takes a long time to load, then the chances are that customer will look elsewhere for the product they want to buy. Studies done by Forrester Consulting show that visitors will rarely wait longer than 3 seconds for a page to load, making speed one of the most, if not THE influential factor in converting online shoppers.
If your page load times are fast, and customers don’t immediately bounce off your site due to long load times, the next immediate influence is site usability. If your customers find your site difficult to use – for instance, if it is hard to navigate, the search function does not yield the products they are looking for, or the mobile experience leaves something to be desired (67% of mobile users state that they will leave a site if is too hard for them to find the information they are looking for), then you may find your visitors bouncing off your store. If your site is not straightforward and easy to use, then most customers will find a store that provides a fast, simple, shopping experience that they find easier to use.
2. Security
Secure transactions are necessary for any website transmitting payment data and other secure data. With a growing amount of hacking scandals, customers are becoming more and more aware of online security when entering their payment information. The utilization of SSL certificates to provide a secure, encrypted shopping experience is not only a hugely influential factor on customer conversion but a now a requirement for all e-commerce stores. It is also required for your store to be PCI compliant with how it handles payments; the simplest way to achieve this is by using a PCI compliant payment gateway. Several payment gateways natively integrate with Magento 2 including, PayPal, Braintree, and WorldPay.
3. Product Presentation – Photos, Descriptions, and Reviews
Having a fast and easy to use store is only one part of the equation, you also need to present your products in an alluring and tantalizing way in order to influence your customers to convert. It is important to have a strong visual impact that grabs attention. You want to grab the attention of your customers from the moment they hit your landing page. Product pages should be aesthetic, remember your customers are essentially window-shopping at this point. A clear series of photos that shows the important angles and aspects for each product, as well as a description that clearly describes any important features, can greatly influence the decision of a customer to purchase. Allow customers to leave reviews, 88% of customers trust online reviews as much as they would a personal recommendation. You might also want to consider options for being more creative with your product pages, for instance, you could utilize 360-degree image views of your products, or videos of the products so that your customers can really get a feel for what they are buying.
4. Shipping Time & Costs
Customers have always looked for the lowest prices when shopping online, but now fastest shipping is almost as high of a priority. With the fast and affordable shipping options provided by big merchants like Amazon and Walmart, most customers will opt to look for their products at the store with the shortest shipping and handling time at the cheapest costs. Having shipping costs and times that can compete – that is, get products out fast and cheap, is a huge influence on where customers will choose to ultimately shop. Studies show that now less than 20% of people are actually looking for the cheapest item, but rather they are looking for the fastest and cheapest shipping, best customer service and an overall good experience. If your customers get items into their cart, only to find out it will take them 10 days to arrive, when they could get the same items from another store in two days, chances are they will abandon their cart and shop from the store with two-day shipping.
5. Trust Signals & Transparency – Shipping Information, Contact Information, FAQs & More
Smaller, or newer e-commerce stores that are less well-known need to rely on different trust signals to influence customers that they are a reputable and trustworthy store to purchase from. Your customers need to TRUST your website in order to want to buy from it.
Trust signals include various ways customers can communicate with your business such as contact phone numbers and emails, live chat representatives and social media accounts that live people interact with customers on. Having company policies, such as your return policy, and shipping policies clearly posted, having a frequently asked questions page and sending out all shipping tracking information to the customer as soon as items are shipped.
With so many purchasing options for consumers, it is important to take all influencing factors into account if you want customers to convert.
Customer Paradigm can help you optimize your Magento store to guide your customers effortlessly through a sales funnel. Find out how Customer Paradigm can help you! Try us out! Call 303.473.4400 today!