If you tuned in last week, welcome back you go-getters! If you aren’t up to speed, fear not. You can check out Part One of this series to catch up on the basics like selecting an e-commerce platform and researching your audience. Then you can read Part Two, where we discuss all of the nitty gritty working parts you should put in place to have a functional online business.
This week we’re finally getting to the fun part. You are creating an online store. Not a physical store where people can touch, listen, smell, taste, whatever it is they need to do to make a purchasing decision. You want to make sure that when shoppers come to your site, they feel good about spending their money. You wouldn’t open the doors of a physical store if the aisles weren’t swept, your staff wasn’t trained and your products were still sitting in boxes, right? Well, you shouldn’t open an online store that is subpar either. So this post focuses on building a store that will wow your shoppers and turn them into buyers.
Make your products irresistible
(Product deliciousness brought to you by Tiny Pies.)
No one wants the skinny version. Do you know what I say every morning at my coffee shop? “Yes, include the fat please.” You need to embrace this mantra for your online store too. When it comes to painting your potential customers a vivid picture of your products, don’t give them a tasteless watered-down version. Serve them up a large serving of the real deal, providing all of the juicy details surrounding your product or service.
Give them their cake by writing solid product descriptions
This is an area a lot of merchants neglect when building their store. They either phone it in by briefly stating what the product is or they copy and paste from their manufacturer. (Never copy and paste! It is almost certain to harm your ranking with search engines. We’ll talk about this in my next post coming this week.)
Yes, product descriptions should describe your product, but more importantly a good product description will sell you product or service. Not sure where to start? Here are a couple of key components that you should keep in mind:
Answer the important questions. Start by addressing the big six: who, what, when, where, why and how. They may not all apply, and the end result may not be entirely what you envisioned, but it’s a surefire way to jumpstart the process and uncover important selling points. Josie Maran literally lists out and answers these question in her Argan Oil product description.
Highlight the features but don’t forget the benefits. Features are properties of your product and benefits are what the buyers gets out of your product. If you are selling something that will save them time, make their lives easier or magically give them back their youth — by golly tell them! EzyDog does a great job of this by pointing out the features of their shock absorbing Cujo leash while explaining why those features benefit you and your dog.
Engage and entertain. Your product copy is a great place to bring your brand to life. Is your product wistful, romantic or bold and decisive, decadent and delicious? Embrace that and create a unique voice for your store. Stupid Cancer, a non-profit that empowers young adults affected by the disease, has an irreverent yet inspiring description for their awesome Cancer Card.
Talk directly to your shopper. Take engagement to the next level by addressing your ideal buyer directly and personally. Refer to your shoppers as “you.” Ask and then answer questions as if you’re having a conversation with them. Use the same words they do or write in a way that appeals to your target demographic. The amazing product description on Man Crates are hilariously spot on.
The great debate. Bulleted list or paragraphs? You are going to find a lot of competing theories about how to structure your product descriptions. My word of advice, the most important thing is the content itself, and you can always combine approaches to get the best of both worlds.
The don’ts. PLEASE DO NOT USE ALL CAPS and please make sure you or a favorite English major checks your work for proper spelling, grammar and punctuation. I mean really!
Slather on the icing with great product photography
Whether you are selling a physical product, downloadable product or a service, you’ll want great photos on your store. High-quality product photos provide your customers with the context they need to make a purchase without the in-person shopping experience. Recent studies have shown that 67 percent of online shoppers consider product photos as “extremely important.” They can increase your sales as well as reduce returns or exchanges, which saves you time and money while indicating your customers are happy with their purchase and more likely to come back for more. No doubt about it, great photography saves you time and makes your money.
So that means means product photos that are fuzzy, pixelated, have a tinge of fluorescent lights, the blinding glare of the flash or a distracting backgrounds are all a no go. The good news is solid product photography doesn’t need to be as expensive or complicated as you may be envisioning. You can shoot your own fantastic product photos on a budget, we promise!
There are some huge advantages to developing the skills and investing in the equipment to shoot your own photos, like flexibility and long-term savings. However, you can also probe local art schools or photography group for talent. You may be able to find an eager hobbyist or student who will shoot for free or cheap. Just make sure you take a look at their portfolio and have a clear vision for your photos before hiring them. Honestly, hiring a pro for full price can be the best thing for your store in the long run, so considering budgeting for that if you need the help.
Here is a simple photo checklist you can follow whether you are doing it yourself or hiring someone:
Go high quality in every way. You need to provide the clearest pictures possible, both figuratively and literally. Product photos should be sharp, action photos should be clear and lifestyle photos should reflect your brand. Mamoo does a fantastic job of this with their line of bags for adventurous kids.
Have a photo for each option. Color, size, whatever. Don’t make your shoppers use their imagination. Hoop Culture shows each color variation of their Tres V2 shirt.
Include multiple perspectives. Do your best to recreate the in-person experience by helping shoppers explore the product or envision the results. Yubo puts a new spin on the classic lunch box, and their photos do a great job of showing customers what that means.
Enable zooming. As a shopper, you want to be able to bring the product right up to your nose so that you can carefully examine it. Air Plant Worlds lets you see all the intricate details in their terrarium kits.
Be consistent. Use the same backdrops, lighting or creative direction for showcasing what you are selling.
Sprinkle in some great videos
Videos can make a huge difference on several levels. There are tons of mind blowing stats and success stories out there around the impact video can have on your store — Zappos sees sales increase up to 30 percent on product pages with video demos, equestrian retailer Ariat found the visitors who viewed product videos converted at a rate 160 percent higher than those who didn’t, a recent Invodo study found that half of all online shoppers are more confident in their purchase after viewing a video and more.
Video can still be significantly more expensive than still photography, so don’t be afraid to try it out with your own equipment first. Anyone can make a video that will help sell their products. For those of you who don’t think you have something that is worthy of a video, believe me, you do! One of our favorite client examples is BikemanforU, who has created over 900 rad bike maintenance and repair videos for his popular YouTube channel and continues to put out fresh content every single week.
If you do have some budget, just like photography, you can hire a hobbyist, student or even a professional to shoot video for you. Apply the same suggestions of looking at work samples and doing some test runs before you commit. A wallet-friendly powertip from Two Guys Bow Tie is to hire a pro but skip doing a voiceover to avoid the high costs around audio editing. As you can see, the video can still be quite powerful with just a music track.
Whether you DIY or pick a pro, here are a few tips and tricks for product videos:
DO get up close and personal with what you are selling. Provide the full 360 perspective of your product. Handle it, flip it over or even take it apart. For example, if you watch a Yeti Coolers, you know exactly what you’d get.
DO walk through the how-tos of assembling or using your product. Shoppers shouldn’t find any surprises when they open the box.
DO go into both the features and benefits of your product. Kbands does a fantastic job of putting their products in context. Maybe you can even get some of your happy customers in action or describing their experience.
DO seriously consider showing your face and telling your story.
DO show your items being made or crafted by you. If you have a physical store, consider giving your online visitors a tour.
DO know that the options are endless, so don’t be afraid to get creative! Dog-e-Glow’s super fun product video went viral.
DON’T have so many videos on your website that it actually slow your site speed and distract potential customers. Stick with the whole quality over quantity concept you will be heading in the right direction. If you plan on doing a series of some kind, like teaching your customers how to use or care for a product, think about creating a YouTube channel and embedding or linking those videos. The added bonus is you’ll get a robust new social network.
DON’T have videos set to “auto-play.” That feature can really increase your site’s bounce rate. Do you like it when you go to a website and music starts blaring? What do you do when you accidentally land on one of these sites? Panic and close it, right? Right.
Put the cherry on top with customer reviews and testimonials
Reviews can give shoppers the last push they need to make a purchase. Studies show customer reviews can and will absolutely increase your sales. Nearly all e-commerce platforms have customer reviews built into the platform in some shape or form, and there are many stand-alone applications you can add if you want more robust features and control.
You can do all kinds of creative things with customer reviews, like actually displaying them on your product pages or evening sharing them on your social networks. (More on social media in the next post, promise!) If you don’t have individual product reviews yet, consider putting together a testimonial page to collect positive soundbites from friends and early adopters, or maybe send samples to bloggers in your space in exchange for feedback.
Help shoppers on their journey
In a brick-and-mortar store, you can have staff running all over the place, answering questions and showing customers around. The online experience is a little different, so how can you get the same results and wow your shoppers with the right information? A live chat feature may be able to help, but there are other ways you can guide shoppers through finding and purchasing the right product. These approaches can help increase conversion rates, turning more shoppers into buyers.
It might sound a little cheesy, but your shoppers are undergoing a journey on your online store, just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. All they need to do is stay on the road (yellow brick or not) you’ve laid out and they’ll get to the right destination. That means you need to think about your customer’s entire journeys, from start to finish, so you can pave a path for them to follow at all times.
This really starts with selecting a good e-commerce platform and implementing a simple, clean theme. We talked about this in the previous post, but I can’t overstate how important it is to take a walk in your customers’ shoes. Run a test order yourself and go through the exact same process as your custome. This will help you to identify pain points, things you want to customize (emails, invoices, checkout process) and give you new ideas about how to manage your business.
You can also send friends and family on a store scavenger hunt for a particular product. They will be able to give you with feedback on the structure of your navigation, how you deliver info and if the got lost. You know you have at least one person out there who would love to poke holes in all of your hard work! But for this exercise, that is a huge blessing, giving you the opportunity to proactively adjust the user experience.
Eliminate speed bumps
All the tips I shared on product copy, photos and video are a great place to start, but there is even more you can to help visitors through the selection and checkout process. These may seem like seemingly small things, but they all help reduce friction in the customer’s online shopping journey.
Enable quick view. Shoppers can take a closer look at a product without loading a new page. If the like what they see, they may immediately add it to to their cart.
Enable a guest checkout. Did you know 14 percent of shoppers will jump ship if they have to create an account in order to checkout? Give that group an additional option.
Enable single page checkout. Rather than having individual pages for billing information, shipping information, credit card information and so on, you should enable your single-page express checkout option.
Enable breadcrumbs. This is much like the tale of Hansel and Gretel. Breadcrumbs on your website allow for you shopper to track every step of their journey so they never get lost.
Feature your best sellers
This is a pretty obvious one, but it is easy to overlook when you are first getting started. If you have a product or service that is popular and people are looking for it, make sure it isn’t hard to find. You can even take it to the next level by featuring those popular items on your homepage with relevant calls to action like “shop now” or “add to cart.” Bam, instant sale!
Utilize internal site search
Do you know what your shoppers really want? As consumers, we have all been trained to get online, type what we want into a box and press “search” to find it. So put a search box on your e-commerce site for your customers to utilize. The added bonus is you can track how people use it. Each time a visitor enters a search term on your website, they’re telling you exactly what they want in their own words. That information is golden. Additionally, it can help you figure out if your site navigation needs a little work. By being able to see what visitors are typing into the search box, you may uncover better ways to help them get what they want.
Properly promote your deals
Whether or not you want to offer coupons is up to you, but I want you to think about the user experience of redeeming an offer. Have you ever decided to make an online purchase because you saw a coupon code? Then, once you’ve selected a product and are checking out, you can’t find that code they were bragging about? I bet you abandoned that order pretty fast. Make sure you clearly display all ongoing sales and promotions, on your site in addition to whatever outlets you used to promote it. And make it easy for customers to enter those codes.
Answer frequently asked questions
Depending on your business, you may want (or need) to add an FAQ page and additional documentation to your store. You can proactively answer common questions like:
What is the right way to use this product?
How the heck do I put this thing together?
What does that mean? Don’t assume your customers know technical lingo.
Does it need batteries or additional components?
How do I take care of this product so it lasts?
Can I get this wet? Can it be submerged in liquid or just withstand the rain?
Is there a warranty? If so, for how long and what does it cover?
Is this going to fit me? Having a sizing chart with models can be unbelievably helpful.
If you can, add helpful images or diagrams to your FAQs. Cashmere Hair has extensive resources on how to wear their luxury clip-in extensions, including video and how-to images.
Be honest and upfront — always
In an ideal world, every customers would be happy with their purchase for ever and ever. Unfortunately life happens. So be proactive and completely transparent about your policies. Clearly display shipping prices, shipping guidelines, warranties, guarantees and your returns and exchanges policy. Do not attach strings or bury additional costs. Everything should be out in the open so shoppers can buy with confidence. Keep those buyers happy and they’ll turn into great advocates and dedicated customers.
Build trust and loyalty
Make a connection with your customers. Shopping online can be intimidating for a lot of people because they can’t see the human behind the business. Are they dealing with someone who is honest and believes in their product? Or are they getting scammed? Don’t leave that question open for debate. Put the extra effort in reassure and relate with your customers.
Share your story
There is a reason you’re working hard to start an online store of your own. Everyone has a creation story to tell, and in addition to putting a human spin on your store, it helps customers better understand your product. So take the time to create an about page or a mission statement for your business. In addition to establishing a connection with your client base, and it just might encourage them to become an evangelist on your behalf.
A wonderful example of this can be found at Mountain Dog Chews. Owner Corey Davis was a successful lawyer in his mid-thirties who decided he wanted something more. “And so, after taking a good, hard look at Life – as it should be lived – and those certain truths which I, indeed, hold to be self-evident, I embarked, together with my wife, Michelle, upon a leap of faith … One driven solely by personal passions and values.” Now he and his family run a business that is “defined by our commitment to uncompromising quality and service, respect for and stewardship of the American outdoors and its wildlife resources, and to fostering moments of connection between individuals and their wonderful and selfless four-legged canine companions.” After reading that, wouldn’t you feel good buying from this guy?
Include trust indicators
In addition to establishing trust by telling your own story, you can borrow trust from respected brands. For example, displaying badges from your payments gateways or the logos of credit cards associates your store with those companies. You should also address privacy concerns, either by displaying the appropriate seals or linking to an up-to-date policy from your homepage. These are all trustmarks that will instill confidence in your shoppers
And don’t forget SSL. You know that padlock symbol and the “s” that shows up in URLs? That indicates the site you are using is secure thanks to secure socket layer (SSL). An SSL certificate allows you to offer a safe checkout experience for customers purchasing through your online store. Any personal or payment details will be encrypted before they are sent to your site, giving your shoppers an extra boost of confidence. Some e-commerce solutions will provide you with SSL out-of-the-box, others will not, so do your research.
Also, if you have gained any awards, certifications or other recognitions, be proud and bra a bit! If it is something you’d hang on the wall or put in your window at a brick-and-mortar location, you should display it on your online store too.
Be available
One of the best ways to spot a fraudulent store is they don’t provide any contact information. So make sure that your customers have access to you. I’m not saying you need to give out your personal cell number, but you should certainly has a contact form, a phone number, social media accounts, an email address, coordinate for a carrier pigeon, whatever works best for you. Customers need to know they can get in touch with a human being. By providing a way to contact you, you will instill confidence in your shoppers and establish yourself as a legitimate business.
Heading into the home stretch
Phew, we covered a lot in this post. But guess what? You now have everything in place to turn shoppers into buyers. So the final step is sending those potential customers your way. The last post in this series will show you how to get the right potential customers to your new store. Stay tuned!