Advice for leaders who are struggling with eCommerce

Many businesses who thought they would be successful at selling with their online store are struggling and can’t understand why.

I recently had a prospect come to us and say “We paid a company in New York a lot of money to build us a beautiful eCommerce website. I also spent $10,000 on Google Ads and then…” I understood where this potential client was going and told them I had analyzed their business website and could tell they probably only sold about $200 dollars worth of product. The prospect was shocked and said to me “How did you know?”. I explained to them that the website creative was very pretty, however, the eCommerce website itself was not created to sell well online.  It needed to be optimized yet.

There are a number of very key elements that must be included to have a successful business website that produces a lot of online sales and transactions.

1. Trust is the first and most important thing. 
2. Persuasion Architecture shows the information in a sequence which persuades the audience to take action to the next step.
3. Clear calls to action that are easy to follow the steps. 
4. Great UIX provides great user experience, it is achieved by having the above-mentioned items.
5. Sticky Brand by having the right content and messaging on the site.

1. Trust: You can increase consumer trust by making sure the following is present on the site:
   • Correct Spelling: Mediocrity is not usually tolerated.  Make sure the website has the right content and everything is spelled correctly.  Websites with multiple spelling errors usually scream foreign, fly by night operations.
   • Certificates:
     • Associations
     • BBB
     • Certifications
     • Etc.
2. Persuasion Architecture: You can download our Persuasion Architecture White Paper for more information, but basically create a path for the experience the user will have on your site up to the point of purchase.
3. Clear Calls to Action: There must be very clear calls to action. Don’t ask for the sale right away, provide proof they are making the right decision with reviews, technical information, blog stories, and videos of the product being used.  Follow a process to convince the consumer.
4. Great UIX:  If you take care of persuasion architecture and create clear calls to action the UIX will likely be good. To make it great you need to do the following:
   • Test the speed of the website on several devices, such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones
     • iPhone
     • Samsung
     • LG, et¿c
   • Review the rendering on all the different devices.
   • Test it in different operating systems
     • Microsoft Windows
     • Apple macOS
     • Linux
     • Android
     • Apple iOS
   • Test it in different browsers
     • SafariChrome
     • Internet Explorer
5. Sticky Brand: The content of the website must be well thought out.
   • Brand Essence
   • Tagline
   • Content of the website to be consistent with the brand