For many webmasters the most important aspect of any website is how good the design looks, however there is another factor which has a much bigger affect on sales and that’s your content. In my opinion the layout and style of your content is the real difference between a site that turns visitors into sales and one that doesn’t.
It’s tempting to include as much information about your product/service as you can, but the old saying “less is more” is very true for online stores. People are often looking for just the main points on an item and giving them hundreds of pages of technical info is just going to be confusing. Try to summarise the main features so people can make a quick decision.
Another problem I see with many online stores is only using one medium of content and that’s text. While an article on the product can be valuable a video of someone demonstrating how the product works is going to be much more interesting to people. Remember people on the net have very short attention spans.
People love to hear the thoughts of other shoppers on any site, it’s just more trustworthy than the opinion of the person trying to sell the product. So having the capacity to include user reviews is important even if it does take time to approve and moderate them. Remember at all times you should be trying to increase the shopper’s confidence in what you’re doing.
Many surfers new to online shopping feel that ecommerce sites feel very impersonal and faceless. To fix this you need to convince people there is a real person behind the business who can help them with any problems there might be, so always answer any emails from potential customers as soon as possible.
Converting website traffic into sales is never an easy process, you should always be implementing new techniques to increase confidence in your online store.
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