How to Close the Sale – Online - Ziller Web Marketing Blog

When a consumer enters a brick and mortar store and starts browsing some products they are interested in, what will they usually do next? they will choose a item their thinking of buying, pick it up and feel it, look at the front, back and sides and read the fine detail. More often then not they will then choose to buy the product that has better packaging and is more attractive on the outside, then the less attractive product even if the less attractive product is in fact better quality.

If you are thinking of starting a online business or already currently do, how do you try and replace what I just described above using your website? Just because a user is now online it doesn’t mean there shopping behavior has changed. If you cannot give the user a good indication of how that product is going to look / feel when it is in their own hands, the product is not going to sell, or at least not sell as much as if you did.

Having better product images is one of the most complained about factors of e-commerce stores. Too many stores out their place no importance on their product images, when this is one of the most critical areas and one where you should be putting much effort into.

If a user can visualise a product in their hands, the hard work is done. Work hard on that.

A few months back one of my posts at half-geek talked about the big mistake many shopping carts make by making it mandatory to register when checking out. By registering I mean making them enter a password when checking out that they would then use to access their account and checkout in the future.

My good friends at getalastic today released a post called checkout inspiration from top converting sites which I thought was very interesting. It backs up the fact that making a user register does cause friction and will result in cart abandoment which any shopping cart can do without.

Looking at Nielsen Online / Marketing Charts which lists the top 10 ecommerce converting sites, you may notice that some of the sites listed here do make you register when checking out. Don’t always do what the leaders in your field do, they may well find it more efficient to loose some sales in order to complete some other business goal.