An important word to remember is, Stickiness = How long the average user spends on your site.
The longer people stay on your website the more likely they’ll be to buy something from you or take some form of action. Each website has its own level of stickiness. Facebook for instance is much stickier then your banking website.
Although stickiness is not the primary factor in having high conversion rates, it definitely helps.
Getting Customers To Stay On Your Website
The best way to have customers stay on your website is to offer them interesting and original content. You can write reviews for your products or create videos demonstrating how to use them. You can also provide a chat or forum for people to ask question and discuss your niche.
Another option is to setup a forum on your site. Forums are difficult to make busy so you’ll have put some effort into it and participate in your own forum as much as possible to start.
Your website should always be getting new content in order to keep it fresh.
If you have posted some good content, make sure you allow customers to write comments and their own reviews of the products. User generated content can help tremendously.
Creating Original Content
Your website should always be changing even if it is only minor changes.
If a user sees that nothing has changed and they’ve read all your content, the user has no need to stay on your website. Even though you want to focus on the user buying your items you can still provide content that will push them in that direction.
If your website becomes full of content you can consider removing older content to make room for new. If you have written as much as you can, try providing videos is a great way to keep viewers interested. If you realize that you have run out of things to provide, you should cycle your information.
If you have changed various site features and have no other ideas, try and change special sales and promotions and add/replace new items to the front page.
User Generated Content
User generated content is a cost effective way to get new content to your website. User generated content is when the users of your website write articles, comments or reviews for your site (for free).
There are a ton of websites that offer free content for other website. Check out the following websites:
- www.articlesbase.com
- www.ezinearticles.com
- www.goarticles.com
- www.isnare.com
Giving Customers What They Want Before They Know It
Having a successful business is not only about giving the customers what they want but also anticipating what they “will” want. Anticipating your customer’s needs can make you a lot of money since you’ll be one step ahead of your competition.
You have to study the trends in your market and supply products to meet those trends. Watch carefully for what your customers are asking for and try to give them what they want before the masses want it. Usually it will be a small minority of trend setters asking for something before the masses start asking for it. Pay close attention to what the trend setters are doing.
Always pay close attention to what your competition is doing, you don’t want to be left in the dust while your competition is offering the newest product and stealing your customers. Look for the “next great thing”.
Also, sometimes there is more hype for a product then is actually warranted so be cautious.
Watching Your Customers Every Action
Web analytics and logs allow you to see which page your customers frequent the most and what they buy. It is important to keep a close eye on what your customers are doing as it may indicate to you many things.
If customers are going to one product page often but not buying, it may indicate that the product is priced too high, code malfunction, or the review and sales pitch is weak.
You may notice that 80% of your sales come from 20% of your products. This is often the case in most businesses. Focus on those products and push them harder.
If you find that the customers are only buying a select few items you may consider offering more products like that.
Making Your Website Buyer Friendly
Online shoppers look for a few things before deciding to purchase from some they’re looking to know:
- What your website is about.
- If you’re professional.
- If you’re trustworthy.
- If you have common purchasing systems with a variety of payment methods.
You must convey as much trust and professionalism on the first page of your website. Users will decide if they’ll ever purchase anything from you within the first few seconds of being on your website.
Users are also looking for simplicity and ease of use. Purchasing an item shouldn’t take too many steps to complete the order.
Everything on your site should make sense and the navigation should be understandable by everyone.
If your sell products your website should have a way for customer to access their shopping cart and account from every page of your website.
Amazon.com is perhaps the best example of how you should allow customers to buy items from you.
Avoid using too many bells and whistles. The shopping experience should be simple and easy and not cluttered or distracting with sound files, video files and annoying flash banners…. KEEP IT SIMPLE!
Simplifying Shopping Experience
According to studies, 50 to 90% of all shopping carts are left without purchasing the items inside.
The biggest deterrents to the customer buying are:
- The high cost of shipping and handling.
- Their unsure on how to complete the order (they can’t find the right buttons or it’s not clear).
- They don’t feel the site is professional or trustworthy.
To get more buyers considering taking the following actions:
- Make the buttons clear and easy to find.
- Make it obvious what the next step is for the customer.
- Allow the user to access their shopping cart from any page.
- Allow customer to add or remove items to their shopping cart.
- Offer FAQ page and make it easy for users to find.
- Use an SSL socket to protect their data and make it obvious to the customer that you use it.
- If you use a third party to handle the credit cards an SSL socket is not important.
- Let customers know you protect their data.
The Dangers Of Assuming What Your Customers Want
Just because your website looks good to you doesn’t mean your customers will like it. Everything should be designed and created with the user in mind and any of your decisions should be based on research and not assumptions.
Never assume that something will work without proper research to back your assumptions up.
Finding Out What The Customers Really Want
Finding out what customers really want may sound simple, but there are a few things you should be aware of. You should ask for feedback from your customers but never take that information at face value. Customers will usually say one thing but mean another.
The results retrieved from focus groups and feedback letters are not completely accurate and should only be used as guidance.
If people say they’ll buy something in a focus group and are then offered the product immediately after them saying they’d buy it, 99% of them will refuse to buy the product.
The best way to find out what the customers want is to offer them products and see what they buy the most.
Feedback can be used to see trends and to give you ideas for what to sell next, but never assume that just because a lot of customers request an item that they’ll actually buy it.
Customers Come First
I’m sure you’ve heard “customers come first”, but naturally you will be more focused on what you want. One important point to make here is , don’t always pick products “you” like.
Your store is not about what you want; it’s about the customers and what they want.
If you’re passionate about your type of business and the product you sell, you may know a lot about what good and what’s not, but the customers may feel differently and they’d rather go for the inferior product.
Converting Viewers Into Buyers
If you don’t tell the viewer to take action and buy, they won’t. Always make it clear to the customer what they should do next. In order for them to take action they may need a little motivation.
Offering them deals, promotions and special sales is the best way to get your customers to take action.
Deals And Promotions And The Power Of Scarcity
Deals and promotions make the purchase appealing since you’re adding more value to the product (artificially).
By limiting the deal or item you are making it more scarce which makes the customer much more inclined to buy.
The three most common methods to create the illusion of scarcity are to:
- Limit the length of time for the offer.
- Put a limit on how many people can take advantage of the offer.
- Limit the supply of the item being sold.
The following phrases are common way to create scarcity:
- “Order now while supplies last”
- “Supplies are limited! Order now”
- “Sale ends in 10 hours!”
- “Offer ends on July 1st “
- “Offer only available to the next 100 customers”
If the customer always thinks the offer will be there, then they won’t be motivated to act right away.