Sculpt and Simplify your Sales Funnel

So you have your eCommerce store set up and ready to sell your products. However, just like any retail store, you need to consider how your store works from a customers perspective.

There’s more to selling something than simply have a great product and a flashy website. The sales funnel, which leads a visitor from whatever source of marketing you’ve used, through your homepage, product page, shopping cart and ultimately purchase, is usually the decisive factor in whether a person purchases from one website or another.

Like most conversion optimization tips, the best way of thinking about the sales funnel is simple is better. A long, twisted, and confusion sales funnel will usually cause an interested visitor to abandon the sales process and purchase somewhere else.

For most products, a good sales funnel is not only simple in design, but it’s also relatively short. A process that avoids as many obstructions as possible, and limits the number of steps required will convert better than a longer process. Keep three things in mind when evaluating your sales funnel:

• Use trust symbols throughout your store: trust symbols, such as a BBB accreditation, or net security badges,  assure visitors that your business and website is trustworthy and that their payment will be safe with you. The Internet is still a scary place for many shoppers, so assuring them throughout the process with appropriate trust symbols helps ease those fears.
• Take away as many obstructions as possible. One of the biggest issues that we notice in eCommerce websites is when they require a person sign up for an account before purchasing a product. While it’s tempting to have a membership list that increases customer retention and future sales, it’s vital that you allow guests to purchase directly (with the option to sign up as a member to your store). Regardless of whether the account is free or paid, people do not like giving out information. The less obstruction like this you have, the better for your conversions.
• Offer multiple forms of payment. Not everyone is comfortable using a Visa or MasterCard to purchase a product online. Paypal, BillMeLater, and Google Checkout are all payment platforms that are available to businesses and consumers. These platforms are both low in cost, and trusted by many consumers. By offer it, you avoid losing those who have limited forms of payment methods.

In addition to keeping the  above tips in mind, also remember to design your shopping cart and product pages to where they’re very easy to navigate (big “Add to Cart” buttons, simple pricing, and a visual step-by-step interface), and also follow design themes seen in other shopping carts.

Take some time to look at popular online stores like Amazon.com, Buy.com and NewEgg.com. Notice how their product images are placed, their shopping carts and prices displayed, and use those themes for your own store. These website have spent years of time and resources testing their designs, and this research can help your website succeed also.