Picture this: A venture has a website that they made when they began their business. At first, when they started they stayed pretty up to date with the system. Kept their site new and poured all of their heart into it. The venture hired editors and various people to handle their social media handles as well as the website and when they got the attention they needed and ended up becoming a quite successful business nationwide they stopped focusing on their website and started investing more in the outlets.
Their sites were a little outdated and didn’t work as quickly as they used to previously and even though they had so much content in terms of videos and pictures they just didn’t have time to focus on their website as much.
Now imagine this venture who spends a larger part of their profits in beautifying their outlets finds out that there is a nationwide shutdown and everything has to be moved online. What necessary steps will they have to take?
List of the problems:
- Their website is working slow and takes a little bit of time to load.
- Secondly the fonts and the images displayed on the website are a little old and need an update as quick as possible with no proper usage of heading tags.
- The site is very wordy and has paragraphs upon paragraphs that people don’t want to delve into.
- There is not any proper navigation and the user can’t properly understand how to shift to checkout or how to go back to shopping.
- Contact information displayed on the site is old and/or inappropriate.
These are a few problems from many that the website is observed to have and it quickly needs to be solved to encourage the customers to scroll through the website and enjoy their shopping experience.
Problem solving ways:
- Contact information: Since the system is now working online make sure that the contact information is proper. All the emails and numbers that are mentioned write should be working and have customer representatives responding to all queries and questions asked. Although we all live in the era of smartphones but people still appreciate their questions answered properly by having a conversation over the phone.
- Make sure the website isn’t sluggish: Don’t we all hate a slow website which takes hours to load and even if it does load the written content one has to wait another minute or two for the videos/images to load. Remember once an individual tastes the sweetness of high-speed internet, she/he will not want to wait so make sure the site provider is very reliable and the coding language that is made use of is clear.
- Mobile optimization is very important: In today’s world there are very less people who would open a website on desktops. People using smartphones like to quickly get access to websites through their phones so they can easily scroll through. So a website needs to be optimised to the needs of a smartphone because you don’t want the customer to be zooming in every 2 seconds or clicking on wrong buttons. This would annoy them and make them close the respective website.
- Good content is key: The videos or the images that are displayed in stores to attract customers into getting the products should now be utilised on the website this way customers would easily be attracted and since it’s just a click away they wouldn’t waste a lot of time and would much rather get it.
- Include reviews: Include the reviews of other satisfied customers because this acts as an eye opener and shows how important a customers opinion and happiness is for the brand/business and website.
How helpful will the above measures be:
A website experience should be as good as an in person experience is and it is narrowed down to one reason which seems valid here that is to encourage sales. Now at this one ponders over the fact that how a brands sales is interlinked with how their website looks.
- When the website of any respective business will have good quality content including videos and images and other digital means people will be attracted to it quite quickly. At this point, you as a brand have to make sure of the customers’ weakness that is the product that is displayed is just a tap away. Make it look as desirable as possible so the customer thinks less as compared to what he/she would do as an outlet and instead immediately carts the product and checks out.
- The role of reviews in online shopping is very important. Let’s just say you are selling reusable straws. Unless a few people don’t talk about it how will you be able to successfully sell it? Bloggers need to talk about it, people need to applaud your eco-friendly product. This will get you customers that would want to get hands-on your product as soon as possible.
- The website acts as the strength of the business. If the visitors observe amateurish design and a very painfully low speed, they will move onto the next best website even before you have made your pitch. Research says that by the time your site takes up to four seconds to load you lose up to 25% of your potential customers. This fact is what your business needs to focus on while spending time and resources on the site.
- Email campaigns are another way to grab the attention of the targeted audience. Emails notifying customers of sales and new arrivals gets them into clicking on your website very quickly.
- One of the most important issues that can encourage a business’s sales is recovering the lost items from shopping carts. A problem quite a businesses face. If a business is able to find a way around this they have successfully earned a place for themselves.
So, don’t economize on the outing out a good use and up to date website. Work with a good team of people to make your website pop and then see how the orders come rolling in!