Drive e-commerce conversions

Transcript

In this episode, we’re going to be talking about ecommerce conversions and checkout functionality.
So hey, rich, so we obviously have a lot of ecommerce clients. And I would say that we are really quite experienced with E commerce. So what would you say is absolutely the most important thing in terms of improving e commerce conversions.
This is something I’m quite passionate about, and follow quite closely on blogs and white papers, etc. Design all originates in the design studio, the design and layout, I think, are essential to the experience, the user must be able to find what they want, easily, must be nice and clean. It’s very important that no matter what website you’re creating, as soon as it becomes ecommerce, it’s it’s kind of design over function. Sometimes Sometimes the designers over design it to make it look really cool. But at the end of the day, we need to convert we need to make a sale. So to make that experience as fluid as possible. It’s just extremely important.
Would you say that the old phrase that we used to use that people expect things to be where they are on ecommerce websites? Because people are familiar with how these tend to work now? Do you think they’ll still hold today in 2020?
Yes, or 100%, I’d like to say no. And at times, even our own website, the logo is in a different place the menus in a different place, and often it confuses, but we don’t need to necessarily convert any commerce sale. So that’s probably that’s why we have and the designers have more, more creativity really more options when it comes to non ecommerce websites and product based websites, they can be as creative as they like. But when it comes to an E commerce site, people do expect the checkout to function in a certain way. People do expect the the shopping cart to be in a certain place, etc, etc, all we can do is just make that whole thing fluid, make sure that their website functions fast, and building things that customers want to see like trust payment providers there they’re familiar with and feel confident using, especially in this day and age. And then every now and then throw in something like Amazon have done we’ve previously discussed in another podcast, there by now swipe mobile option, for example. That’s something unique. So so there is flexibility throughout the end. But at the end of the day, we need to keep things clean and simple. Take away distractions that will take the user away from actually clicking that add to cart or buy button.
So when you say about expectations, especially around sort of payments in checkouts, what do you think that people are looking for any commerce checkouts now that would encourage them to buy and knock them off in terms of things like shipping options and payment methods,
they want more options, we found ourselves building many more options into websites. So previously, it was it was it was a card payment processor, whether it be safe pay, WorldPay, etc. and PayPal them are the two options back in the day. And now everybody wants all of the options. So Amazon pay PayPal Sage Pay, and the option to even check out using Apple Pay, which is now available on many devices. So these are kind of standard now. And and even myself when I shop, I quite often use Amazon pay because I’m a big Amazon shopper. So it’s literally one click and PayPal one click functionality makes things a lot easier. From a payment processing point of view, it pulls in the addresses previously used and just makes the whole process quick and easy. For myself, I think that makes the whole conversion process a lot cleaner. Because within two clicks, you could buy a product. In fact, almost most of the websites we’re putting out lately as well within one click you can check out which is absolutely fantastic.
So that’s really interesting. And just how in terms of sort of shipping methods in in the checkout. How how do you think that’s now working in this modern age where people expect Amazon style next set next day, same day delivery?
Yeah, well, this, I think all the couriers are following Amazon’s example. There are there are there are courier in themselves and offering same day delivery is making people like Argos for example, they were the first to jump on it, where they’re offering same day delivery DPD and a few of the other couriers, for example. They’re all offering different services. So as an E commerce provider in a way, we’ve integrated with many of these services to to get the the user any option. So most couriers now operate a seven day and most couriers offer a service within an hour so you can choose your time slot or even a drop off and pickup location so so a checkout used to have a couple of payment options maybe the free slow delivery option, or the next day delivery option for a premium price. Now there’s probably six or seven different options and most ecommerce websites. I think same day will be very soon on majority of things but All depends on location and logistics partner really?
Okay. Yeah, I think we’re seeing that across a lot of clients really were the ones that offer more options, more functionality in that checkout are making more conversions because people are seeing what they want to see. And they’ve got the option to choose just just around the sort of the checkout side of things. And obviously, we we use WooCommerce as our platform. Do you think that people are now used to the standard WooCommerce checkout layouts? And that we’re we’re seeing on on lots of size, because he’s becoming very industry standard? Or do you think that there’s room for and sort of bespoke work on that?
I think the core the main core checkout, it works, it works. It’s a lot of sort of a lot of development over the years. And it really does work, you can add to it. And I believe every shop should add to the checkout, if they see it being useful. But truly believe if you can keep the amount of things the users got to fill in to a minimum, then you will convert. So for example, making the shoppers to create an account, create an account is a great thing to log in and view the progress of but it’s not necessary. You don’t need to create an account, you can just simply check out even directly through PayPal, all the no details are filled in, you hit one button, it pulls all the details through PayPal, or even Amazon pay. And they check out so really, that checkout can be really short and sweet and simple. Or if you need to, and you want to add more. You want to find out more information about the user, it can be done support going back to what you ask WooCommerce checkout, it works out of the box, pretty much.
Yeah. And I think I’d agree. Yeah, we were. We we’ve had a look at this over many years. And it’s why we settled on WooCommerce as the main platform, but I’m seeing it more commonly on all sorts of websites I’m shopping on now as well. And as it’s becoming more widely used around the world, I think people are just used to seeing it and familiarity will improve the checkout conversion as well. Have you got any other final tips that people should think about in terms of increasing their ecommerce conversion?
Yeah, I think an address lookup service of some sort on The Checkout is always helpful. It’s great, put a postcode in and everybody fill in the address, and what if you just have a free field, the first field they come to, to type the address in, and they type their address in not just a postcode, and it comes up automatically, it saves a lot of time. And it saves a lot of shipping mistakes as well.
Yeah, I’d agree with that. I think, yeah, we’ve got a number of clients that are using integrated postcode lookup software and the website that we’ve sort of set up for them. And I know that it’s reduced the the wastage cost in terms of missed deliveries, and things like that, which does outweigh the cost of the lookup itself.
And even asking for a mobile phone number, the mobile phone number gets passed over the majority of time to the logistics partner, who will call that number and even text that number before delivery, to tell them they’re coming and to give the options to change their delivery. So mis deliveries are becoming less, a lot less now. Yeah, I
think especially during this COVID situation, all the careers have adapted to hands off delivery really as well. So yeah, I think we’re, we’re seeing a big change really in sort of buyer behaviour and shipping and logistics around this. And I think this is all been all come originally from Amazon, setting the market trend really, in terms of how they deliver with their own careers, and how they integrate how they inform people are thinking if we can get our small business customers to start adopting more of these things, then they’ll increase their conversions.
Yeah, but it’s not just Amazon that can offer these services. Now all the couriers are catching up, if not ahead of Amazon, from the logistics point of view, DPD are probably market leaders at the minute, you can view your driver on a map and know that he has three deliveries before you, for example, which I think it’s great if you take that time out of your day out of work to take an important delivery that needs signing for, it’s great to know that you’re only three deliveries away, for example, and all of the feedback. All of the feedback comes via your website. So your tracking number goes in the text message comes from the number that was provided at the checkout in the website. So integration is now somewhat better than they used to be that used to require a PC and a piece of software, pinging the website constantly. Whereas now it’s all it’s all quite fluid as part of the process when we build a website.
That’s right. In fact, we’re working on a project at the moment to integrate a UPS tracking system into an e commerce website for a client as well. So yeah, we we’ve got some good experience with that more recently. So thanks for that rich, if anyone’s got any other questions around improving their ecommerce checkout, logistics payment methods, and basically just adding more functionality to their WooCommerce checkout, then drop us an email at Hello at so marketing.com