Your 6+1 measures for a successful online shop
With platforms like Shopify and Wordpress/WooCommerce, it sounds so easy: create your online shop with a few clicks and sell within minutes.
What they don't tell you is that 90% of all online shops fail.
We present you with 6+1 measures with which you can reduce this probability. We won't talk about choosing the right dropshipping partner, the right product or your business plan.
What we will talk about is how you inform potential customers about your products or services and describe them in such a way that your customers say: 'Yes, that's what I need! How can I buy it?'
Your 6+1 measures for a successful online shop
Tell your target group what you offer.
Lead your audience with clear calls-to-action.
Use testimonials and images to show your audience how they can benefit from your products.
Create a content marketing strategy to ensure that your target audience finds you and appears at the top of search engine results.
Use automated email campaigns to regularly remind your customers about your products and services.
Create a referral system to get your target audience to promote you.
Build fast websites to increase your sales.
01 Tell your target group what you offer
Have you ever visited a website and left it again after a few seconds because you were not clear what the company offers and how it can help you solve your problem?
If customers are not sure what you offer, they will go to your competitors.
Many websites or online shops are good at hiding what they do. The result? Users leave your website frustrated because they couldn't find what they were looking for and go straight to your competition.
Steve Jobs did not introduce the iPod by saying it had a 5 GB hard drive. What he said instead was: "1,000 songs in your pocket". The message is clear, everyone understands it, can repeat it and pass it on. That's how it stays in people's minds. That's exactly what you want.
Not everyone is as talented a presenter as Steve Jobs. It's enough to say, "We'll help you create a beautiful website" - users know exactly what they're getting into. No chance for misunderstandings and straight to the point.
If you have lots of competitors doing the same thing, just add a differentiator, e.g. 'We help you create a beautiful website that your customers will love'. Sounds boring? Believe me, customers are really grateful that firstly they don't have to guess if you can help them and secondly you save them valuable time.
Your measure N° 1:
Develop a message that
Clearly communicates what you offer and how you solve your clients' problems.
Easy for everyone to understand and remember
Can be easily repeated by anyone, thus attracting your target group to you
02 Lead your target group with clear calls to action
I have seen many websites and online shops with very well prepared content. Just recently I found an online shop that sells natural soaps. They clearly communicate which products best suit which skin type and easily found what I needed.
I felt they understood me as a customer and was ready to buy. But the post didn't link to any products. They forgot to add clear calls-to-action (CTA) buttons with action instructions like 'Go to product', telling me exactly what to do next.
Even if you have valuable information, visitors will leave if they don't find what they are looking for
I had to go to the menu to find the right product, then got lost, lost time, my frustration grew and in the end I didn't buy anything.
When I ask shop owners why they don't include links to their products, their answer is usually: they want to create helpful content without it sounding immediately as if they only want to sell their products or services. They were afraid that the content would lose its value. They create great content but don't want customers to buy their products?
Make sure your visitors know exactly what they should do next
Every page your visitors get lost on means a potential abandonment. Help them navigate through your shop. Don't let your visitors start thinking, because from that moment on you no longer "control" their action.
Sounds funny, because none of us want to be controlled, but we want to be guided. And that's what you do. First of all, you help them find what they are looking for and secondly, you save them valuable time.
Your measure N° 2:
Review your pages and add ONE clear call-to-action to each page.
Not several calls to action, just one
The Call to Action should be clear and concise
Always use the same style so that your customers learn what your Calls to Action look like.
There is one exception: you can add an additional Call to Action if your first Call to Action is aimed at a purchase. The second one can lead your visitors to more information if they are not yet ready to buy. Make sure that the style is different from your main Call to Action.
03 Use testimonials and images to show your target audience how they can benefit from your products
Many companies focus on what great products they have and forget about the people who buy the products. We just analysed a website of someone who makes high quality BBQ grills. He focuses entirely on the design of the BBQ grill.
It would be easy for him to include a few pictures of happy looking people having a great time around his BBQ grill. An important message that we think would increase his sales.
Images are the best way to convey emotions and show your product or service in action
For example, furniture designers can show a happy family coming together at one of their custom-made dining tables. Give your customers an idealised impression of what it is like to own one of your products or enjoy service. Convey a feeling of joy, comfort, safety, excitement - which fits your product.
Use testimonials to show visitors how you are improving the lives of your customers.
If we are not familiar with a topic, pictures are not enough. We look for reference points and your visitors want to hear or read about other customers.
Anything that helps them build trust in your brand. Testimonials are a great way to tell how your customers felt before and after they used your products and services, and address the exact issues that your other customers have.
Your measure N° 3:
Show your products and services in action, convey emotions and convince your customers of the quality of your products through testimonials.
Show happy people using your products and services.
Compare how customers felt before and after working with you.
04 Create content so that your target group finds you and you appear in the top search engine results
You need to know your target audience inside out and provide them with content they are looking for. For example, use questions your customers ask your service team to improve product descriptions or write your next blog post.
Create new content on a regular basis to keep customers coming back to your website or online shop.
You can only achieve this with relevant content that addresses the needs of your customers. Quality counts instead of quantity.
Imagine you are a manufacturer of charging stations for electric cars and your visitors are thinking about buying an electric car. What they are interested in is how they can charge their electric car. Give them the information they need to make a purchase decision. From how long it takes to charge a particular electric car, to comparing different charging options, to infotainment by entertaining misconceptions.
Write in such a way that your customers can quickly skim the text and find out more details if necessary
People hate reading long texts, except for guides 😉 Don't force your visitors to read them. Don't force your visitors to read. Help them find the relevant information within seconds.
Divide your text into different headings and use the headings to summarise the most important points of the paragraph. It's best to use and answer questions in the headings that customers type into the Google search box. This increases your chances of being listed among the top search results.
And Google loves content that visitors can easily process. There are a few technical details that you need to pay attention to, but the main reason why your online shop appears at the top of Google is that you answer your customers' questions and thus offer real added value.
Your measure N° 4:
Research the questions your customers have and answer them on your site.
Find out what questions your customers have at each stage of their customer journey (from the moment they land on your online shop, they are ready to buy and after the purchase).
Conduct a keyword analysis and find out what your customers are searching for on Google.
Structure your text so that readers can skim it quickly and still get the most important information within seconds.
05 Use automated email marketing campaigns to regularly remind your customers about you
You need to remind your customers regularly about your products and services and an automated email marketing campaign is the best way to do that.
There are companies that offer webinars and once you sign up, they actually send four emails before the webinar starts and I've stopped counting how many they send after that. Our gut feeling is that this is way too much. Yet they do it because the numbers say it works.
Send several emails to increase the likelihood that your customers will open at least one of them
If you only send one email, you run the risk of being overlooked. It's important that you add value with every email you send and don't just repeat yourself. And that's where your content marketing strategy comes into play again.
You can't do this manually. Create an automated email campaign. Start with a 'Nurture'. Once a visitor has signed up for your newsletter, send engaging content that ultimately leads to a purchase.
Your measure N° 5:
Set up an automated email nurture campaign that includes
Contains three to four emails
Provides customers with valuable information that helps them on the way to solving their problem.
Helps visitors realise that you really want to help them
Include a solution in the last email with a link to your products and services that your newsletter subscribers have been waiting for.
06 Create a referral system so that your target group promotes you
It is not enough to attract your customers through advertising. As the number of online businesses increases, so does the cost of advertising.
Some businesses will not be able to afford to advertise online in the future. The cost reduces your margin, but the competition is still selling at the same low price.
Find a way to ensure that your customers recommend you to their friends and family
People still trust other people more than they trust you as a company.
And that is exactly what you need - the trust of your customers. HelloFresh understands this. Every time customers order three meals for the week, HelloFresh invites them to send a free box to their friends. And once the friends have taken the bait, they often order more boxes.
Harry's pre-launch campaign is another very good example of how a referral programme can spread the word without spending money on advertising.
The company, which sells shaving products, collected over 100,000 email addresses in one week. The concept: visitors shared their email addresses and those of their friends in exchange for various Harry's products. Depending on the number of friends who then joined, there were different products to choose from.
Your measure N° 6:
Consider a referral programme so that your customers promote you and you save the cost of marketing ads.
Make sure that your clients actually benefit when they refer you. They can benefit in two ways:
Give them a product, service or voucher on their next purchase as a thank you gift.
Send their friends a product or service and make your customers (the senders) feel good about giving away your product or service.
+1 Build fast websites to boost your sales
Customers don't like to wait and will quickly leave your site if it is slow to build up. The slower your online shop is, the less turnover you generate. This means that your page load time corresponds directly to your sales.
To reduce page load time, you need a developer. However, you need to be aware of the issue so that you can have your online shop set up in the best possible way.
This issue has been with us our whole career. Besides the negative experience for your customers, page load time is a crucial ranking factor in Google. Don't underestimate the negative consequences that slow page load times can have.
Try loading the page in less than 2 seconds.
This is the time that visitors accept. Imagine you are looking for a blender. You click on one of the ads and then - a blank page that slowly starts to build up.
What does the average visitor think and do? 'I don't have time to wait. The other blenders looked great too.' You jump back down the search results and click on another ad. As a shop owner, you have paid for the click and lost a potential customer before they even landed on your product page.
What you can do yourself is to make sure that you reduce the file size of your images as much as possible without reducing the quality. Your images should be less than 250 kB. You can also install tools that compress your images directly when you upload them to your online shop or compress them beforehand, e.g. with tinypng.com.
Make sure your online shop is set up properly
Every request that visitors to your site send to the server costs time. The more fonts you use on your page, the more requests you send. The more extensions, apps, plug-ins you use, the more requests you send. The more layout rules you use, the longer it takes to load the page. The more images you load at the same time, the longer it takes to load the page, and so on. You understand us.
If you, your developers or the agency you work with has set everything up correctly, then your page performance will look like this in PageSpeed Insights 😉:
Your measure N° +1:
Reduce the page load time:
Compress images
Make sure the code is clean when setting up the online shop
We have made it our mission to create websites and online shops that sell and to accompany you on your journey to becoming an online expert. Would you like support with your strategy or implementation or would you simply like us to analyse your website/online shop? Feel free to write or call us and we will arrange a first free consultation.
Do you have questions about the guide? Then feel free to write to us, too. We look forward to your feedback!