When your ecommerce sales need boosting, it can be hard to know where you should focus, what to change, and how an optimized site should work.

Below is a list of nine things to start with that are sure to drive incremental sales:

1. Clever Use Of Intrusive (And Often Annoying) “Pop Ups”

Many ecommerce sites (and not ecommerce, for that matter) will deliver you a pop-up once you arrive.

Some are required – such as privacy compliance – while others are strictly promotional.

Pop-ups can work well, as long as you follow a few basic common sense guidelines:

• Just because you might have a native mobile app for shopping, doesn’t mean you have to prompt your visitor to download it once they get to the site.
• Don’t ask someone to take a survey once they get to the website. Wait until they complete a purchase or leave without doing so.
• If you want to collect an opt-in email, make it worthwhile to the visitor. Give them an incentive that will bring almost instant gratification to an immediate purchase.
• Make sure you don’t use the types of pop-ups that can cause you trouble. Here is a recent post in Search Engine Journal that goes into more detail on pop-ups.

2. Site Search Precautions

Your visitors tell you exactly what they want when performing a search query on the site.

Make sure you pay attention and act accordingly.

Here are some basics to ensure the site search experience is beneficial to your customers.

• Review queries on a regular basis so you know what the most popular search is.
• Try the search suggestions and subsequent results page for yourself on the top queries (especially when a new product is added to the shop).
• Use search query data to guide your merchandising, promotion, and product decisions. Remember, your visitors are telling you exactly what they want, so respond accordingly and earn.
• For a more in-depth study of onsite search, here’s a recap of a recent Search Engine Journal webinar (plus an option to watch a replay).

3. Cross-Sell Relevancy

This is a big one that is often overlooked.

There is no easier way to increase your AOV (average order value) than to make a relevant suggestion that triggers an impulse addition to a planned purchase.

You will see them displayed in some of the following ways throughout the purchase process:

• People also looked on.
• Customers also buy.
• You might like it too.
• Related items.
• Things that suit here.
• Recommended for you.

If your site is designed to cross-sell items, make sure you always look at the experience to make sure it’s best for your customer. at viewing the data to monitor the attachment rate.

4. Site Speed

This one should be obvious: fast sites = good. Slow sites = bad.

If you use a hosted platform (e.g. Shopify and BigCommerce) for your ecommerce shop, make sure any apps you use don’t slow down the site and always make sure your sizes aren’t harmful during load times. picture.

If you are using a non-hosted platform (e.g. Magento and Woo-Commerce), then your hosting plan will greatly factor in the overall speed of the site.

Make sure you have the right plan, data, and resources necessary to ensure that site speed is optimal.

5. Product List Page

The experience you give your customers viewing the product listing page can be the difference between them adding an item to a shopping cart and exiting the site in full.

Some very important things to consider include:

Default Classification And Available Options

Is the listing page sorted by most recent?

Best to sell? Lowest price?

Most relevant? Featured Items? Trending?

Ask yourself what matters most to the user as the default setting and what other ways visitors would like to adjust your product selection.

Sorting Filters

It’s about making sure you have valid product attributes to allow customers to filter from.

Examples of this include size, color, style, price, rating, release date, compatibility, etc.

The features you need will vary based on what you sell, but be sure to pay attention to how customers view the product.

Keyword research and site search data can provide useful insights here.

Availability and Delivery Timeframes

This is important – especially now.

In the age of supply chain issues and product shortages, availability often plays a larger role than price.

If you have it in stock for immediate shipping, you only increase your chances of getting the sale.

Make sure your ecommerce shop is set up to show stock availability and delivery estimates to customers before purchasing.

Pricing and Promotions

It’s simple: Make your discounts clear for your customers.

If the 20% discount means the price is from $ 53.99 to $ 43.19, do the math for the customer instead of just saying “20% discount.”

6. Product Detail Page

What information is useful to your customer in determining if a product is the right option or not?

Start a list and start implementation.

Here are some suggestions to make sure your product detail page is optimized.

• Use Case scenarios.
• Photos from every angle of the product.
• Ability to zoom in on an image.
• Video overview.
• A/R experience.
• Inventory, stock status, or delivery timeframe.
• Q&A.
• Moderated reviews.
• Detailed specifications.

The biggest takeaway here is to understand what’s important to your customers and be sure to include it.

Take something as simple as a shirt, for example.

Customers may be interested in things like:

• Cleaning instructions (dry clean, machine, hand wash, separate, cold hang dry, etc.).
• Materials.
• Country of origin.
• Sustainability/environmental friendliness.
• Ethical manufacturing.
• Wrinkle care.
• Combustion.
• Sizing chart.
• Dyes.
• etc.

It’s important: The above list for shirts is not complete or applicable to everyone. If you’re selling a cheap t-shirt with a silly slogan, that audience will care about something very different than a high-end top.

7. The Shopping Cart

Think of the shopping cart as a critical point in the buying journey where your customer can finalize the decision and move on, or begin to guess themselves.

Here are some tactics to use to help relieve customer anxiety:

• Make sure you have an easy path back to the product detail page so that the customer can research any details required.
• Clearly and customer-friendly return policy.
• Clarity of pricing/savings. Again, don’t give the customer a math problem to solve.
• Clear and flexible fulfillment options (Example: Send home, send to store, pick up at store).
• Related cross-sells (see #3).
• Set up an abandoned cart program where a logged in customer gets email if a product is left in a cart for X period of time.

8. Checkout Process

Here are some things you want to make sure you have to make sure the customer completes the checkout process after making it up to here:

• Ability to easily make a “guest checkout.”
• Clear checkout instructions so as not to lose or overwhelm the customer.
• Include free/cheap shipping option (even if it’s a “slow boat” option, you want to give the customer a free option).
• Make sure a customer can take advantage of their browser’s auto-fill capabilities to reduce friction.
• Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) options. You might think that your product’s price point isn’t high enough to bother with BNPL options, but you’d be surprised how popular it is with an option for sub- $ 100 orders.

9. Must Have Mobile Web Experience

10 years ago, a mobile ecommerce audit had its own separate checklist.

Now, there is no separate checklist.

Everything mentioned in points one through eight applies equally to the mobile experience.

The action item is clear: Test everything on mobile to ensure a pleasant experience for your customer.

Conclusion

While focusing on these items cannot guarantee success, your ecommerce revenue is more likely to grow by optimizing the areas covered in this post.

If you are just starting out, use this article as a checklist to put you on the path to progress and in a year you will look back and thank yourself.

Good luck!

More resources:

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