Learn How These 18 Leading E-commerce Brands are Optimizing their Stores to Take Their Sales to the Next Level

As an E-commerce brand, you are aware that how your customers and prospects see your store determines your sales results. When compared to a physical store, you will have to put a lot of effort into attracting your visitors and encouraging them to purchase from you. From the visitor’s point of view, the online store needs to make them feel comfortable and confident enough to ensure they can proceed onto the next step.

Knowing this is a process that needs security, simplicity and efficiency to be completed successfully, E-commerce brands are focusing on the optimization of their stores to take their sales to the next level. What can your business do to reassure your potential customers to purchase from you? How can you optimize your store so there is no miscommunication or technical errors which could tremendously increase your bounce rate and negatively affect your sales results?

To give you an idea on how to optimize your E-commerce site to attract more customers and close more deals, we’ve compiled a list of leading E-commerce brands which successfully optimized their stores and enhanced their sales that way.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Publishing reviews
2. Adding customer testimonials
3. Improving navigation
4. Focusing on the product
5. Publish user-generated content
6. Including complementary products
7. Including customer behaviour information
8. Creating a sense of urgency
9. Adding video content
10. Incorporating visual mobile search
11. Optimizing for mobile-first experience
12. Automating sales
13. Connecting store with Instagram
14. Focusing on blog
15. Using influencer marketing
16. Having a simple checkout
17. Clever product filters
18. Trending products

1. Publishing reviews: Amazon

Having your customer reviews displayed right next to the product a prospect is looking at will significantly increase the level of your trustworthiness. If your potential customers see how many people have already purchased this particular product and how they feel about it, they will be encouraged to purchase from you. Customer reviews make your store more engaging and they are an excellent feature for search engines as well. One of the greatest E-commerce brands, Amazon, publishes the number of their reviews and the average score right below the name of the product, so their customers can have all the information they need in one place to make the purchase right away. This is also one of the most common ways to place customer reviews onto your site.

2. Adding customer testimonials: Highrise

Reviews are fantastic and effective if your potential customer is already somewhat certain of its purchase and just needs a confirmation that buying this product is a good idea. For prospects who need more reassuring, customer testimonials are your tool for successful optimization and, of course, conversion. A customer testimonial is more personal than a review as you can include a photo, quote, and other relevant information from your satisfied customer. At Highrise, a company that provides CRM software, they used a customer testimonial to demonstrate all the benefits of their solution for their target audience.

3. Improving navigation: ASOS

Once your potential customers enter your website, it should be very simple and quick for them to find what they want. Start by deciding on the number of your product categories as too many of them might confuse the visitors and make them stop their search. See if some of your products can be a part of a bigger category so your prospects can find it with just one or two clicks. Keep in mind that your menu items are one of the most determining factors for purchase. Asos, a well-known fashion brand, decided to have two main categories (women and men) and several subcategories for each of them to simplify it for their website visitors.

4. Focusing on the product: Trunkster

Of course, your E-commerce brand doesn’t have to sell hundreds of different products. There are plenty of online stores focused only on a small niche. You can create a special website just for one product and display all the features and benefits to encourage more prospects to purchase it. In the end, what’s more powerful than a product photo and its strengths described next to it? That’s exactly why Trunkster decided to create a separate page for one of their suitcase models and they even included a call-to-action button with a text ‘Buy Now’ to make the purchasing process as simple as possible.

5. Publish user-generated content: Vanity Planet

You can also increase your conversion rates by adding user-generated content on your E-commerce website. Adding content from one of the social media platforms can be an excellent way to attract more customers. Not only that this tactic shows all the purposes of your product, but it also confirms its quality and, consequently, increases your brand awareness. Vanity Planet added it to their product pages so naturally to ensure the prospect is not overwhelmed with information.

6. Including complementary products: Ikea

If your website visitors are looking for a certain product, why not recommend them a complementary one which will provide them with an even better experience? This method works with both B2B and B2C E-commerce brands as every business can guide their customers to an expanded customer journey, after the first purchase has been made. It can be an upgrade to a better pricing plan that unlocks more features for the purchase software solution or a jacket that goes great with the purchased jeans. IKEA, a famous Swedish brand, recommends their prospects what else they should consider buying if they are looking, for instance, for an outdoor table.

7. Including customer behavior information: Walmart

As an E-commerce brand, you have one valuable advantage that your counterpart, a physical store, doesn’t have — insights. With website analytics, you can get impeccable details about your customer’s behavior that can help you optimize your store better. One of the ways you could use it is to reveal to your potential customers what others who’ve searched for the same product also checked in your store. That way, you can provide them with alternative solutions if this particular product didn’t meet their needs. Walmart uses this method with its website visitors where they display these products in a section called ‘Customers also considered’.

8. Creating a sense of urgency: The Musicians Guide

If you really want to encourage your prospects to act right away, you should consider creating a sense of urgency. You can easily do it with a limited time offer of your products. In other words, offer prospects discounts for particular products or even for your entire store. Some E-commerce brands create this type of offers during special occasions such as holidays or anniversaries, but you can actually do it anytime you want. The Musician Guide created a sense of urgency which was highlighted with a countdown timer on the top of their page and a strong call to action below to make their potential customers act fast.

9. Adding video content: Tassimo Shop

We all know how powerful video is when compared to other types of content. However, using it to promote your products will bring you even more benefits than you’re aware of. As your prospects don’t have the opportunity to touch, feel and see the product for themselves, video is the only thing that comes close to the experience your prospects would have in the actual store. Tassimo Shop decided to add video content on their product pages where they’re demonstrating how to use a particular product. After all, an educative and informative content has a highly engaging and conversion rate and will definitely bring you more closed deals.

10. Incorporating visual mobile search: Boohoo

We can’t ignore the influence social media has in today’s world and it definitely strongly impacts customers’ decisions about certain products, especially with young customers. Now, customers want to shop a product they’ve seen, for instance on Instagram, right away. However, it doesn’t just stop with social media as customers want to purchase clothing items they see on people in the street. To create a solution for such demand, Boohoo decided to implement a visual mobile search where their website visitors can upload an image to find the most similar products on their site.

11. Optimizing for a mobile-first experience: Merchology

Not only the entire customer journey changed under the influence of technology and social media, but also the way customers shop for products. People now use mobile phones far more than they use laptops and computers. Consequently, the customers have started to purchase products via their smartphones as well. Not optimizing your E-commerce website for a mobile-first experience could cost you a significant amount of customers. An excellent example of a mobile-first online experience is by a company called Merchology which provided their visitors with an impeccable mobile-first experience.

12. Automating sales: Evy’s Tree

Automating sales is still one of the most efficient ways to take your sales to the next level. By automating promotions on your website, you can save a lot of time and money but also increase your conversion and retention rates. A hoodie brand Evy’s Tree provides their customers with a variety of automated discounts which are immediately displayed next to the product instead of customers having to manually enter the code to get a discount. This way, they’ve simplified the process for their customers and earned their loyalty by being transparent.

13. Connecting store with Instagram: ORO LA

Did you know that Instagram is one of the most powerful platforms that have the impact on your customers’ purchasing decision but also on how your target audience perceives your brand? Instagram should definitely be a vital part of your online marketing strategy as the majority of your customers is active there. More importantly, you can connect your store with your Instagram account and help your prospects shop for your products quicker and easier. A fashion brand ORO LA implemented their Instagram shopping strategy to enhance their sales results by promoting their products on their account.

14. Focusing on blog content: Etsy

Talking about the optimization of your E-commerce website would be pointless if we don’t mention content. Having fresh and quality content on your website will bring you more organic traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing, but how to create content that matters to your audience? Start writing blog articles about your products where you provide your customers and prospects with useful information that might help them utilize the purchased product better. Etsy, a global E-commerce brand, is strongly focused on their content strategy as a way of attracting more customers. On a daily level, Etsy publishes inspiring stories about its merchants or goods they are selling, and their audience loves it.

15. Using influencer marketing: Koovs

We already mentioned that social media tremendously changed customer behavior over the last few years. One of the consequences of social media that has a huge impact on the way E-commerce brand promote their products is influencer marketing. A fashion brand Koovs even has a campaign called ‘Koovsxyou’ in which they feature their users who snap photos wearing their products. As their target audience is mostly young, chic people, this campaign has proven to be extremely successful!

16. Having a simple checkout: Fallen Hero

After your prospects have fallen in love with your products through a beautifully designed website, insane discounts and personalized experience, how to ensure they proceed with their purchase? Well, you provide them with a simple checkout. Having a complicated checkout or asking for too many information will reject a lot of your prospects. Instead, make it as simple as possible. That’s what Fallen Hero did with their checkout which enabled their customers to truly enjoy every step of the purchase process. No surprise there, whatever the question, simplicity is always the answer!

17. Clever product filters: Winestore Online

Many of your website visitors will want to go through your products without knowing what they actually want. By giving them an option to narrow their search by choosing among several clever product filters, you will be able to recommend them products based on it. This is particularly useful if your E-commerce website offers products such as wine. As it difficult for most people to choose adequate wine even in an actual stores, product filters that Winestore Online created helps their customers to choose the right wine, from price tag to occasions and even pairings.

18. Trending products: Newegg

The same way some customers are not sure which wine to choose, people tend to visit E-commerce sites without even thinking of purchasing. That’s a fantastic moment for these brands to recommend several great products they might be interested and encourage them to shop anyway. The most effective way to do this is by showing your trending products the same way that Newegg did in their online store. When a visitor enters their website, he will immediately see some of the most purchased products right now and maybe decide to purchase them.

Conclusion

Your online store needs to be engaging, creative, dynamic and simple if you wish to attract more customers who will enjoy purchasing products from your store. By optimizing the store, keep in mind that the optimization should improve the quality of your website layout but also the customer experience. The easier it is for your customers to buy what they need, the more closed deals you store will have.