By Joel Mandre
Getting a customer to finalize a purchase on your website can be difficult at times. As they are going through the checkout process, a sense of dread hits and then they begin to second-guess the purchase and try to find deal breakers that will give them a way to justify walking away from your website. It is important to know what these deal breakers are on your website while helping to give them some peace of mind about their purchase.
One of the biggest concerns online shoppers face is the dreaded shipping charges. Companies offering products for dramatically lower than anywhere else and then tacking on unreasonable shipping charges. It is important for you to find a way to offer free shipping. This can be as simple as offering media mail or first class as a free option with faster service available for a fee. More often than not, people will upgrade the shipping, but this does present a free option for those who are looking for a deal.
Have Set Prices and Stick to Them
The next concern many people have is that the overall cost of an item becomes outrageous with handling charges and other costs. It is important to keep the final price of a product as close to the original price as possible. While you can’t absorb taxes in the price, add your handling fees and other items so there is little variance in the final total. That way, you are more likely to retain a sale.
Let Customers Know In Advance if an Item is Out of Stock
Product availability isn’t something many customers will want to mess with either. When an item is ordered, the customer anticipates you have it in stock. It is important you clearly mark items that are backordered as such or notify the customer of a delay in shipping if you have to special order an item or if it will be drop shipped by a third party for you. This prevents confusion and can help you to avoid a potentially lost sale resulting from a lack of initial communication.
Make Sure Customers Can Connect Quickly with Your Support Team
Some customers won’t do business with you unless they have easy access to your customer service team. It will be very important you make this information easy to find and have your hours clearly posted at all times. When a question is asked, you need to make sure the customer receives a prompt and courteous reply. The longer they have to wait or the harder it is to communicate with your support team, the less likely the customer is to finish the buying process.
Security is Critical for Your Customers
If you haven’t already, you will also need to make sure you are offering a secure connection during the checkout process. Customers today look to be certain they see the lock on their browser or a HTTPS:// url before they do business with any company. If you are lacking in these areas, you can almost certainly count on your sales being low.
Allow Customers to Create an Account
With this, there should also be the ability to set up an account on your website. For repeat business and following up on orders, having a secure account will help to simplify the online shopping experience for a customer. Make sure you have your system set up to be informative and easy to use when they are accessing their account and you should find your occurrence of abandoned shopping carts is reduced.
Compare the Rates of Your Competitors
Customers like to comparison shop. You need to be proactive and do it for them. Let them know the prices of some of the other providers. This will let you to ensure you do have the lowest rate possible while also giving them some peace of mind in knowing they are going to be getting a great deal.
Off Discounts
We’re all in the business of making money and sometimes to do this, we need to offer discounts. The best way to do this is to offer a deal of some kind to entice them to finalize the sale. You can alternate between 10% discounts to 25% discounts when you need to clear out inventory. You may even want to combine a discount with free shipping if they meet a certain minimum order total.
You have plenty of options when it comes to ensuring there is a reduction in the number of abandoned shopping carts your website faces. Consider these tips as being part of the groundwork to take your online experience to the next level. Then crush your competition by knowing your website is set up to give you the edge you need.