3 tips to build an online sales experience that makes your company more money
Disclaimer: I am a C# .NET developer, so for many of the suggestions below, I’ve been able to build them myself. If you don’t have programming skills and can’t hire a developer to help you, you can still apply these principles as you customize off the shelf e-commerce & web software.
Over the last 3 years, I’ve generated $1.36 million in sales almost all online.
Below are 3 lessons I’ve learned that can help you make more money online.
#1: Every page on your website SHOULD load in 3 seconds OR LESS
According to 2018 research by Google, 53% of mobile users leave a site that takes longer than three seconds to load. [1]
According to Kissmetrics, if your e-commerce site is making $100,000 per day, a 1-second page delay could potentially cost you $2.5 million in lost sales every year. [2] Or $25,000 per year if you’re a smaller business making $1,000 per day.
Here are a few tips to get pages on your website to load faster
Reduce the size of images on your website to 90 kilobytes or less when possible
It might surprise you, but grainy image quality is LESS of a problem than SLOW page load times.
In my experience, I’ve seen little-to-no drop-off in conversion rates when reducing image quality to reduce page load time.
You’re better off using JPEG image compression at a lower quality to get under 90k than to use full-quality images that take a long time to load.
Consider offloading your web assets to a CDN
This is an easy optimization that shouldn’t require completely re-building your website.
Personal story: For one of my websites, my customers were all over the world. Customers in Europe, Asia, and Africa experienced more lag because my servers are based in the United States. So, I implemented a CDN via StackPath. Afterward, I saw a bump in conversion rate. Unfortunately, I no longer have the exact numbers. But Kissmetrics, Google, and others have crunched the numbers to show how page load time and conversion rate relate.
Invest in page and site caching tools if you’re using a CMS like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, etc. to host your website
CMS’es like WordPress are dynamic. Meaning, they custom generate each web page for each customer.
For many e-commerce websites, this is required. Pages have to be custom generated per customer.
But this comes at a steep cost. Load times are slower. And thus, conversion rates are lower.
If possible, find a caching solution for your platform that can cache as much of your website content as possible.
Note: Caching means that your web server stores a piece of dynamic content as static data. When a customer requests that piece of content, the server immediately returns the static data. That’s MUCH FASTER than the server re-generating the content.
Even better, switch to a static web technology such as using a static site generator (this option may require a software developer).
Personal story: I generally ONLY sell via static websites. It’s often a better user experience. Faster load times. Easier to bookmark. Higher conversion rates. In fact, I built my own .NET static site generator to help me build and deploy static e-commerce websites faster.
In summary, research proves that your website should load in 3 seconds or less to avoid losing money. Even better, aim for load times under 1 second.
#2: Reduce the number of pages your customers have to visit to buy one of your products or services
Each time customers have to wait for another page on your website to load, you lose some of those customers.
As mentioned in point #1 above, one fix is to make sure all the pages on your website load faster. But…
The fastest page load is the page that doesn’t need to load in the first place.
Below are suggestions to reduce the number of steps your customers must take to buy your products and services online
Avoid using a shopping cart if your customers buy only 1 product or service at a time.
A shopping cart adds extra steps to the process. But, if customers are only buying 1 product or service at a time, the shopping cart is adding zero value.
If your website needs a shopping cart, consider adding an “instant buy” option for customers in a hurry
That way, customers who only want to buy a single item can go straight to the payment page.
At checkout, allow customers to choose a shipping option, provide shipping & billing addresses, and add a payment method on a single page
If a customer has to click through 2 or 3 pages to checkout, it will cost you sales.
If possible, combine information about your company, popular products, contact us, and other common information on your homepage
Links in your navigation can then jump to the parts of your homepage that contain the relevant information or show/hide that information.
Again, you get more sales by reducing the number of pages your customers have to visit on your website to answer their questions.
On a related note..,
#3: For any product or service page, answer ALL important questions necessary to complete the sale
We humans buy what we understand. We DON’T like spending precious money while we still have questions or doubts.
Don’t rely on distant pages on your website to answer your customer’s common questions. The customer may NEVER go and view those pages. She may NEVER know that your product or service was PERFECT for her.
This quote from Claude Hopkins (one of history’s great copywriters) explains WHY you need to be thorough as you communicate product or service information with your customer:
“When you once get a person’s attention, then is the time to accomplish all you can ever hope with him. Bring all your good arguments to bear. Cover every phase of your subject. One fact appeals to some, one to another. Omit any one and a certain percentage will lose the fact which might convince…one must consider that the average reader is only once a reader, probably. And what you fail to tell him in that ad is something he may never know.” [3]
Remember, your customer has many options besides your product and service.
The customer will tend to go with the company that better convinces her that their product/service will meet her need.
So make sure your product/service pages FULLY answer your customer’s questions.
But how do you know what questions to answer?
The easiest way to figure out what questions your customers have is to note the questions they ask when communicating with your business.
But, don’t post a survey and ask the customer, “What questions did you have when you bought this product?” The list of questions is going to be too general and vague.
Instead, privately note the questions asked by customers when they converse with you or with an employee.
To boost sales, make sure you’re answering those questions on the relevant pages on your website.
In “Making Websites Win” by Conversion Rate Experts, they make this point:
“The best way to understand many customers well…is to sell the product face-to-face.” [4]
In 2003 our founders, Ben and Karl, ran a web business called Mobal that provided cell phones to travelers. Mobal had a large Japanese presence, so Nokia asked Mobal to set up and manage Japan’s first bricks-and-mortar Nokia store. We took on the project because we relished the opportunity for our team to spend time selling face-to-face with our visitors.
Once the store was open, we created a spreadsheet for our team to complete. It contained two columns:
Column 1: Objections. To this column, our team members added all the objections that they heard from visitors. For example, visitors would say, “Instead of buying one of these phones, I will save money by buying a local prepaid SIM card when I arrive in my destination country.”
Column 2: Counterobjections. To this column, our team members added the responses that they found to be the most effective. For example, in response to the objection above, we would reply: “If you buy a local prepaid SIM card at your destination, you won’t know your phone number until you arrive, so your friends and family won’t know how to contact you.”
The spreadsheet of objections and counterobjections became our knowledge base of tried-and-tested sales copy. We incorporated its content into the website, to great success; we more than doubled the conversion rate and the revenue of the business.
I’ve had similar experience.
Personal story: Whenever I first start selling a new product or service, my conversion rates are low. But, I’m not concerned. Launching is only phase one.
Next, I talk on the phone or via email with as many customers as possible.
I want to hear their questions… Their concerns… What is confusing them? What are they unsure about? Where do they have doubts?
Once I learn what their questions and concerns are, I update my sales copy for that product or service.
Usually, it takes only a few rounds of this before I start to see conversion rates double, triple, or better.
The moral of both of the above stories is: Make sure you’re answering ALL key customer questions and concerns on product and service pages. Otherwise, you’re losing sales.
Wrapping it all up
These are 3 tips to help you build an online sales experience that makes you more money!
- Improve the load time of ALL pages on your website
- Reduce the number of pages and steps for customers to buy products and services from your website
- For any product or service, try to answer ALL the key questions on the product or service’s main page
Apply these 3 tips ASAP to boost your conversion rates online and turn more of your website visitors into paying customers!
I hope your business continues to grow, even during these difficult times!
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.
References
1. An, Daniel. 2018. “Find out How You Stack up to New Industry Benchmarks for Mobile Page Speed.” Think with Google. ThinkwithGoogle. February 20, 2018. https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/marketing-strategies/app-and-mobile/mobile-page-speed-new-industry-benchmarks/.
2. “How Loading Time Affects Your Bottom Line” April, 2011. https://blog.kissmetrics.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/loading-time.pdf.
3. Hopkins, Claude. “Scientific Advertising (p. 38). Start Publishing LLC. Kindle Edition.”
4. Blanks, Karl. “Making Websites Win: Apply the Customer-Centric Methodology That Has Doubled the Sales of Many Leading Websites (p. 127). Conversion Rate Experts. Kindle Edition.”
