25 Tips to Boost Web Traffic & Sales

As the difficult economy soldiers on, undoubtedly you’re looking to improve sales from all channels, including your Web site. But how will you do so?

Amy Africa, president of Creative Results, an online research and consultancy based in Williston, VT, offered attendees of last fall’s conference for the New England Mail Order Association the following tips for e-tailers who want to increase Web traffic and generate more sales.

1. Make your site load fast. The average site loads in 46 seconds on a dial-up modem, but most people decide if they’re going to stay on a site within eight to 12 seconds. So they’re deciding whether or not to browse your site even before it has fully loaded! For most e-tailers, boosting their site’s load time is the single most important thing to fix, Africa said.

2. Pay attention to your site’s load order. Tests of eye-tracking patterns show that most people look first at a site’s top right quadrant. Because the eye naturally goes there, that part of your site should load first. Additionally, put the best offers on your entry page in the top right portion.

3. After looking in the top right quadrant, people tend to look down the middle of the entry page and then subsequent pages, so the meat of your offerings should remain in the middle of the pages. “It’s also a good idea to put sales-oriented things in the right-hand column,” says Africa, “because that’s one of the places the eye tends to go before it leaves a site.”

4. Know your active average user session. How long do visitors stay on your site? “The more they stay, the more they pay,” said Africa. Keep users on your site as long as possible, because 80 percent of orders come in after visitors are on a site for at least 12 minutes, she continued.

5. Make your entry page as enticing as possible. Did you know that 90 percent of all visitors exit a site after the home page or entry page? While you can’t guard against people inadvertently stumbling onto your site, you can work hard to keep them there once they’ve found you.

6. Know from where people are doing their shopping on your site. If your peak online ordering hours are 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., Monday through Friday, you probably have a lot of people shopping from work. Why is this important? Conversion rates drop by up to half when people shop at work. “People get busy, they get phone calls, they have to cut their shopping short,” Africa noted.

This is another reason for instituting shopping carts that remain full even after the visitor has left your site — they can resume shopping when they get a free minute later in the day. And don’t clean out your carts every night. Make it easy for shoppers to come back the next day to resume ordering.

7. Lessen the number of steps to the order process. Offer a “quick-checkout” button on every page. If you can’t do that, then limit your average ordering process to no more than five steps. The first step should take less than 20 seconds to complete, and the remainder should take no longer than 50 seconds each.

8. Keep asking for the order, and make it easy for customers to comply. Africa’s extensive research shows that 85 percent of online shoppers actually think cart technology is purposely made to be too difficult to use. “Most users tell us they feel that marketers intentionally make it difficult for them to shop online,” said Africa. Message here: Make it supremely simple for people to order products from your site.

Determine your BOB. BOB means “Best of Breed,” and it refers to the other sites to which your average customer compares you (e.g., eBay, Amazon, ESPN or the Weather Channel). Look at your referring URLs to see if your customers are coming to you from BOB sites. If you have a large amount of such shoppers, investing in some of the latest technologies may offer some return on your investment.

9. Discern if you have the perfect shopping cart. An outstanding cart has the following characteristics:
- fast, easy and streamlined;
- intuitive, meaning it prevents the shopper from having to think too much;
- safe and secure to use; and
- offers flexibility by allowing shoppers to move around your site and to change orders.

In short, a good cart should mimic your offline selling processes. It should be easy to order from, and it should refrain from asking a lot of questions at the checkout.

11. Address security and privacy issues. In this age of heightened interest in such issues, put a link to your privacy and security policies on every page of your site. And offer secure payment methods to shoppers. Remember, you’re a repository for your customers’ identifiable data. Secure it responsibly. A privacy breach could be embarrassing and brand-damaging, and its aftershocks could severely damage the health of your entire company.

12. Get shoppers’ e-mail addresses early in the ordering process. This way if they abandon their carts, you can e-mail them to ask why or to offer assistance. In your e-mails to them, offer links back to your site. Africa’s research shows that this tactic has a 10-percent to 20-percent conversion rate, and a 50-percent clickthrough rate on average. Additionally, the best place on your site to ask for the e-mail address is at the top of the left-hand column.

13. Offer alternatives to ordering online. Your customer service phone and fax numbers should be at the bottom of every page on your site. If you’d rather not do that, at least have your contact data prominently displayed on your ordering pages.

14. Send e-mail confirmations of orders within 30 seconds of receipt. This shows that your company is quick, responsive and customer-centric — all good qualities to display in the faceless world of online ordering.

15. Offer veto power. Allow people to override information if you’re wrong.

Africa offered an example: The ZIP code for her home is sometimes not listed in e-tailers’ address-correction software. An easy way for her to veto the software’s decision tree would make online ordering faster and easier for her and her neighbors.

16. Keep your navigation functions to the left side of the pages. People shop from the middle and right side of the screen, but they get their directions from the left.

17. Offer more than one way for shoppers to find an item. Use navigation bars, pop-ups, advanced search and/or a site map.

18. Offer generic recommendations for “no finds.” If a shopper uses your search functions and can’t find what she seeks, program your site so a generic item pops up. If she sees a message stating “nothing found,” she is more likely to log off your site and head to your competitors’ sites. “Show them something,” said Africa. Remember, the goal is to keep them on your site.

19. Periodically watch user paths. See how an average shopper gets around your site. If you find that 40 percent or more people make the same mistake or select the same choices from pull-down menus, then your site needs to be fixed. For example, if the primary credit-card choice you offer is MasterCard, but a significant portion of your customers go to your pull-down menu to select Visa, make Visa your default credit card. Remember, you want to make the ordering process as simple as possible for the largest number of customers.

20. Don’t be too wordy. The only place where most site visitors will read lengthy copy is on a launch or home page. And even then, limit the length to 150 words.

21. Put alternative (alt) text behind photos. If you have many daytime shoppers, they’re probably browsing your site while at work. Because some companies have disabled graphics on the Web sites coming through their servers, your pictures may not load on your visitor’s computer. Put alt text behind those photos so at least your product descriptions will appear.

22. Show a picture of a person, preferably a member of your target demographic, on your home page. This will instantly connote to browsers that your products are a good match for them.

23. Use light colors for your navigation. Light yellow, green and pink grab users’ attention the fastest.

24. Make a pitch for referrals. Three to 15 percent of site visitors will give you the name of a friend in exchange for a small gift or the chance to win a bigger prize. And the best place to put this offer is at the bottom of your index in the left-hand column.

25. Upsell/cross-sell from the “thanks for your order” page. Put other offers and deals on the page in which you acknowledge orders. “Remember,” says Africa, “the longer they stay, the more they pay.”

To reach Amy Africa, president of Creative Results, e-mail her at amy@creativeresults.com.