In my last post, I offered some tips for improving the visitor experience at online retailing sites. To continue the discussion, below are some simple website enhancements that can help your customers find information they need more easily, and will likely lead to more valuable interactions.
- Prominently display the customer service phone number on the home page (and every page of the site) – and make other company contact information easy to find. You don’t want people to have to hunt down the info. Check out the home page for Allé Jewelry, which displays the company phone number right under the logo at the top of every page.
- Place the e-mail subscription box high up on the web page so it’s more readily seen – more subscribers can equal more sales. Agri Supply places its email signup box near the upper left corner of the page, which makes it hard to miss.
- Give visitors a good incentive to sign up for e-mails, such as: “Want to receive additional discounts, offers and hear more about our events? Sign up here.” Buggies Unlimited touts exclusive deals for people who subscribe to its e-mails.
- Test different placements for your search box. Most retailers place it somewhere in the upper right-hand section of the page. However, some of our customers – such as WEBS and LydiasUniforms.com – place the search box on the center of the page, and even experiment with different search box sizes. It’s worth testing placements and sizes to see what works best for your customers.
- Include a “Your Account” button in an easy-to-spot location on the home page, so return visitors can quickly check the status of recent orders, their purchasing history, etc.
- Include a “Locally in Retail Stores” link so people can easily find out what items are available in stores nearby, in case they prefer to purchase offline.
These are just a few things you can do to make your website perform better. If you have other ideas to share, feel free to post a comment below.
