There is a lot to think about when you have your very own e-commerce website. You want your potential customers to have the best possible experience so they decide to part with their money for your product or service. But how do you know if your website is performing well, and how can you improve it? There are a few tips you can use to get the best out of your e-commerce site…
Use analytics
The first thing you can do is to install analytics tracking code on your website (you might need to ask your developer to do this if you don’t know how to). Google Analytics is easily the most popular as it is free to use. Once in place, you’ll be able to see how many visitors come to your website, how they landed on it, and if they came through the search engines, what phrases did they use? Once you have this information you will be able to calculate how well your site converts visitors into buyers (this is known as a conversion rate).
Keep records of orders
Of course, this is all made easier if you have records of orders. Many e-commerce websites are built with this in mind, making it easy to feed the numbers into Google Analytics itself so all the numbers are in one place. If you don’t have this and have a simple checkout through a third-party, you can do the sums at the end of every day, week or month instead.
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Implement phone call tracking
If your customers are able to purchase by phone as well, it might be worth implementing phone call tracking software onto your website. Therefore, when anyone calls you during their visit to your site, you’ll have the data you need to see the bigger picture. There are clever software solutions that will even show you what a phone caller typed in on Google before they called you.
Ask for feedback
A cheaper alternative could be asking your customers for feedback about your site. This can be done when someone calls you or as a simple pop-up box on your website. You could also send out an incentivised email if feedback is important to you; one example being entering people into a prize draw for a gift card when they submit their reply. This is a good way to reduce the number of negative reviews about your website elsewhere online as your customers will feel like their views are being heard and considered.
Make changes where necessary
Now that you are rolling in feedback and data, do some analysis and find out where to make changes. If lots of people are leaving at the final checkout stage, see whether you’ve surprised them with high delivery charges or unexpected fees. If people aren’t adding anything to their basket, see whether your content or imagery needs to be updated. Hopefully, you’ll soon see your website conversions increasing, alongside your revenue!
