Hi All,

 

I Have on online ecommerce site and am looking at ways of generating more traffic but more importantly buying customers. I have hired companies to plan and execute search engine optimisation and streamlined my emails to members. I sell clothing and wondered if there were any obvious ways of increasing my market. My business has been growning over the past 4 years, so all the previous work has been beneficial but i wondered if there are other ways of attracting customers and retaining them to continue my companies growth.

 

Thanks

Welcom to WDF!

 

Clothing is a highly competitive area unless you have something totally unique and in demand, so there's always the risk of reaching a time where your growth slows - the law of diminishing returns and all that.

 

Presumably you have a good flow of traffic to your site, via search, links and direct? If so then I'd suggest looking at improving the converstions ratio for existing visitors - if your site is working but not making sales it's *generally* because the site needs updating and not more visitors. If you, say, make a sale with every 300 visitors, aim for something like a 10% improvement in the next 12 months so you get a sale every 270 visitors - you get the idea.

 

Increasing sales to your existing visitors will mean revisiting how you do certain things on your site, first you need to suss out things like...

 

1. Why *do* people buy from you

2. Why *don't* people buy from you

3. What makes customer make repeat orders?

4. Do your categories and products have the right information for potential buyers? Is anything missing?

5. Are your product images high quality? Do you offer additional product images for closeups, rear views etc?

6. Do your descriptions "sell" or "waffle"

7. Is the site fast to load and easy to navigate?

8. Is the checkout easy to understand, and done in the fewest possible steps?

9. Do you offer incentives for customers, ie 10% off a second order, special offers, buy1get1free?

10. Do you freqently update products in key positions such as your home page and category pages?

11. Do you offer a choice of payment methods?

12. Are your terms, delivery and shipping info easily found?

Here's an article which you may find useful - The website it's on is well worth a read as it's jam packed with useful eCommerce content aimed directly at people like yourself. Here's another one about eCommerce copy writing.

 

These should help capture the attention of your customers when they get to the site and in turn lead to client retention and loyalty. You need to also consider getting more people in the door via email and DM campaigns. Success usually comes from a combination of online and offline campaigns working together to give a cohesive and engaging offering.

 

Cheers