Optimize Your Online Store for Maximum Impact

Posted by Jacob on Dec 29, 2011 in e-commerce | 1 comment

There are many things you can try to squeeze every last sale out of your online store. You hire out a talented copywriter to create the text for your landing page. You target your marketing efforts to hone in on likely buyers. You craft every element of your site to maximize impact and convince the buyers to say “yes.”

Yet, there are some areas that aren’t as intuitive as others when it comes to online store optimization. Things like security and aesthetics often get set aside as more overt and obvious concerns take hold. If you’re not creating a comfortable, secure experience for your buyers, you’re going to lose sales.

Here are a few hints to help optimize your online store and get the most possible conversions:

Create a truly secure transaction environment

A secure online store not only protects your customers from fraudulent transactions, it prevents you from dealing with chargebacks. More than that, however, a secure online store increases customer confidence and thereby boosts sales.

Here are some of the advanced security measures your online store should have in place:

SSL – Your customers know how to check whether a website is using SSL. Yet, you’d be surprised just how many online stores aren’t using SSL today. SSL pays for itself a thousand times over in increased sales.
Advanced verification – There are a couple of verification services worth using – Address Verification Services (AVS) and CVV (card verification value) services. These insure that the person making the purchase really is the cardholder.
PCI compliant cart - Most cart software or plugins are PCI compliant. Make sure yours is. If not, your merchant account is in jeopardy of cancellation and penalty fees.

Let your customers know your online store is secure

All of that security doesn’t help nearly as much unless your customers know about it. While they know to watch for “https” in the address bar, they won’t know whether your shopping cart is PCI compliant. Create a privacy and security page, and link to it as a pop-up from your shopping cart and payment confirmation pages.

Use buyer-friendly aesthetics

There are some important things you should do in order to convince your visitors to buy, beyond simple graphic design. These include:

Watch for visual noise - If you have pictures in your catalogue page, consider keeping pictures to a minimum in your header or sidebars.
Make buying visually intuitive - The biggest buttons and links that draw the most attention should be the purchase and add-to-cart buttons.
Make buying clear – Label all of your links and buttons appropriately. There are plenty of opportunities to be clever (such as with your copywriting or image choices). Don’t let your button labels be the time you decide to get creative and obscure.

Ultimately, your online store’s success is driven by the customer’s experience. Provide an experience that’s clear, secure, comfortable, and interesting, and your site will achieve maximum customer impact and maximum sales.

Guest Author:

David Rodwell is a seasoned writer in business and economics, taking a particular interest in credit card processing. You can find more of his articles located at CreditCardProcessing.net.