Professional Ecommerce Strategies – Part 2

Order by Price

It can be a good idea to sort products on list pages by price descending by default (that’s highest price first). Research has shown that showing the highest priced items first makes the relatively lower prices seem more attractive as they start falling the further down the user scrolls.

Just make sure the user can re-order by lowest first, as most will want to do this. The point is to get that top figure in their head first and then every price seems relatively low.

Full Product Page

If an item is complemented by an accessory or other item in your store this could be suggested on the full product page in a ‘Recommended Items’ block to encourage cross-selling.

Multiple product shots and high-detail, zoom-able close-ups of the product can also help customers see the detail of what they are buying. It might just be enough to swing a browser into a buyer.

Delivery

Online shoppers love free delivery, but be careful if you’re planning to just lump it on the cost of your items. You customers will most likely be shopping around, so go checkout your competitors’ sites and see what they’re doing.

More often than not the best policy on delivery is to charge a modest delivery fee that reflects your costs and be up front about it before the customer gets to the cart.

A big proportion of checkout dropout rates are due to the customer discovering inflated delivery costs. Tell them about it quick, so there are no surprises when they’re getting their card out.

A free delivery on orders over £X amount promotion is an affective tactic to encourage low value purchases to meet the minimum order amount needed to qualify.

You could also try charging for the largest/heaviest item and sending the rest in the same box.

Shopping Cart

Suggest that gifts could be wrapped. ‘Do you need this gift wrapped?’ – a reasonable fee for a descent gift wrapping service can be a nice add on… you’re putting it in a box anyway so why not earn an extra few quid by wrapping it nicely.

The cart is also another opportunity to present more products to the user within a ‘Did you miss?’ block. This time with similar products to those in the users Shopping Cart.

Why not try split testing by displaying products the user hasn’t viewed yet and then products they have viewed. You might find you get different conversion rates.

You could try showing a picture of a broken product (preferably one that’s in the cart) and offer insurance. If you can’t act as an insurance broker, moving this banner to the Checkout Completion page and linking to a broker for commission could achieve a similar new revenue stream.