Is Your eCommerce Store Ready For Quarter 4?

As I type this it is officially September the final month of quarter three – and whilst we are located in Australia quarter four of the year is still an epic event for lots of reasons.

Unless you have been living under a rock the past few years you will have noticed that Black Friday/Cyber Monday has gained some serious momentum here. There is also Green Friday that is growing in popularity too. The countdown to Christmas and Boxing Day sales and End of Year clear outs to name just a few.

It is often the case that quarter four is the biggest quarter in regards to number of sales and revenue for the year. For eCommerce businesses this means a lot of traffic to your store. This is a good thing – as no traffic means no sales. BUT. The real question is – Is your website up to handling quarter four?

Is your website conversion ready? Does it have clear calls to action? Easily communicates what you sell? Does it have broken links or little tech gremlins?

We have collated some tips and things to check on your website so your website is in the best shape it can be to ensure it is ready to rock and roll for all the quarter four craziness!

So here is our list of things to check and audit on your eCommerce website to make sure you can turn the visiting traffic into buyers.

Homepage Hero Image & Message

Does your image clearly show what you sell so someone can easily tell within three seconds what it is you sell. This image works in conjunction with your homepage messaging – we recommend your statement is short – not too fancy and explains clearly: What you sell and Who you sell it to. Remember this is aimed at first time visitors to your website.

Clear Calls to Action

Are your buttons clear? Can customers clearly tell what the next step in the buying journey is? Do your buttons (think add to cart, checkout buttons) stand out visually? Out top tip here is to make your calls to action clearly stand out. Ways to achieve this include having a brand colour that is only used for calls to cation that is distinctly different to the other colours on your website. Add a little shadow to raise the button off the page.

Shipping Matters

Do you tell your customers how much shipping is throughout your website? Or do people have to click through to your checkout to work out how much shipping will be? You want to make it super obvious how much shipping is for people. The top places to display this are in the announcement bar at the top of your website, and right near your add to cart buttons on your product pages.

Reviews & Ratings

Have you ever noticed how people don’t like being the first to do something? And if there is no sign of people having purchased from you it can be really hard to get other people to trust you enough to purchase from your store. People really want to know that other people have purchased from you, had a great experience, loved their purchases and that you are a real trustworthy store. To achieve this reviews from real customers are hands down the BEST way to help achieve this. You want to show as many trust elements on your website as you possibly can.

Check the Process

Do a process audit – or get someone else who will tell you the truth to do a process audit of your website. This includes landing on your website, selecting a product, adding it to cart and checking out. The idea is to find any bugs or issues that are showing up on your site, or things that are not displaying as they should. Checking that all your messaging and imagery is complete and as it should be. The your calls to action are clear and visible. You want someone to tell you if things are broken, not quite right or are not hitting the mark.

Gremlins & Bugs

Techy and application gremlins and bugs happen. It’s a part of having a website. What is important is that you identify them quickly and rectify the just as quickly. Take note when a customer states something isn’t working or you notice something that isn’t quite right. Especially when you add a new application, product or feature or you update something on your website. Reach out to developers, the app creators, theme creators and Shopify if need be. Things like this make your website look unprofessional when they happen and they will happen – it’s just part of it. Worse yet they can prevent people from even being able to check out. Make fixing these a priority as you become aware of them.

Automatic Emails

Did you know that eCommerce stores have an abandoned cart rate on average of about 70-80%? Yep it really is that high! We always recommend that you have an abandoned cart automatic email flow in place for eCommerce stores. Often people just get distracted by something else in the process of online shopping – you know what it’s like someone needs an answer straight away to something and you forget to purchase that item that you are really needing. Even if you don’t have any other automatic emails set up the abandoned cart flow is a MUST for us.

These are our main tips to ensuring your website works just as hard as you do during quarter 4. Remember if you need help with any of these just reach out to us! We are here to help. We understand how challenging some of these things can be.