Give your customers what they want from your site and they’ll come back for more!

Attracting customers to buy from your business may seem an easy task. Offer something they want, at a price they’re willing to pay and ensure that they can buy it easily and securely. So when you look at the fact that around $4 trillion worth of shopping carts are abandoned yearly, it’s not as simple as you think.

With over a billion online customers you need to be sure that your site is ready to handle the needs of a consumer who wants their e-shopping experience to be as easy as one, two, three…

So what exactly is a customer looking for when they visit your site to make a purchase? And how can you hit the nail on the head when it comes to meeting their needs?

• Fast loading times.
  Today’s online shoppers aren’t willing to wait around for your sluggish site to kick in. Studies show that the average web user considers anything longer than two seconds to be intolerable when loading your site. This means valuable profits can be lost as people abandon their search in favour of another site which meets their speedy demands!
  Be sure to have a robust web hosting solution which can handle traffic from your online customers. Once your traffic gathers momentum you should be considering investing in a dedicated server, which does exactly what it says by dedicating all of its resources to your online endeavours. Should your site attract global shoppers, investing in a content delivery network is a great way to make sure your site is served to customers in the blink of an eye.

• Optimised websites.
  According to research, over 30% of e-commerce sales come from mobile shoppers now, and that figure will only go up as the world goes mobile. Customers the world over are accessing their shopping sites from their smartphones, tablets and desktop computers alike, and they’re looking for websites to be equally accessible across all platforms.

• Hot deals!
  Black Friday is testament alone to how much shoppers love a sale. Adobe reported that “Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday set new [online] sales records with $1.33 billion and $2.4 billion, respectively.”; a cyber sale seems to be the way to online shopping hearts!
  Don’t be shy with the bargains; even luxury brands throw a sale every once in a while to allow their customers to feel like they’re saving some money. Theme your campaigns to engage with consumers, and be sure to shout about them on your social media channels.

• Easy checkout.
  The checkout experience is key for online shoppers. If getting from cart to checkout and beyond is too tricky then you’ll find yourself with a cart abandonment problem. As we said at the beginning, around $4 trillion worth of shopping carts are abandoned yearly.
  Make it easy for customers to make it over the finish line with a simplified checkout process. Giving users the option to checkout with PayPal will speed things up and encourage people to trust in your site’s credibility, which brings us to point five…

• Trusted payment.
  A secure site can be trusted, everyone on the internet knows that don’t they? The issue of online security is always at the forefront of any detractors of  shopping online.
  Make sure you display your security symbols clearly on each page of your website to build the trust of your customers, and make sure you are clear about what payment methods you accept so the customer knows before they get to the checkout.

 Source: uk2.net