Anyone who owns an online business wants to dominate the market and be a reference in it to position their brand in such a way that it can influence people’s purchases. Every entrepreneur must have qualities that make him different from others and one of those qualities must be not being afraid of risk; since when starting a business there will be obstacles along the way that have to be overcome.
But who said that being successful in ecommerce was easy?
Well, perhaps today undertaking e-commerce is something quick and simple to do, but there are different myths that surround it that makes the performance of online stores not the best.
That is why in this post we are going to focus on giving you some tips that will help you improve the performance of your online store, so take note!
Online Stores: 5 Tips to Improve Your Performance
Website usability
To improve the performance of your virtual store, its design must allow easy and intuitive navigation. Web usability is totally focused on the user experience, and in this case, in an e-commerce store, on the experience that its customers have.
When a customer knows a physical store, he acquires from the senses experiences that are stored in his mind, and in the case of online stores, because they are not tangible, different strategies have to be used to position themselves in their minds. Below we show you some factors that are important in web usability which you should add to the strategy of your online business to improve the user experience.
Sources
Look for legible fonts for your website content and titles. The letters have to be able to be read without putting so much effort because if not, it will cause the user to get tired and decide to leave your online store.
responsive design
Many of your customers will not reach your online store through a computer but through a mobile device, so responsive design (a design adaptable to mobile devices) is essential. If you are not prepared with this type of design, many possible conversions will be getting out of hand and the performance of your online business will be poor.
New tabs in new windows
A recommendation to improve web usability, and as a consequence the user experience, is that when you have external links, the pages open in new windows, so that in this way your customers never stop being in your online store even if another page has interested.
consistent links
Links on a website are extremely important, especially internal links as they allow users to go from one page to another in a practical and easy way. But it is necessary that your links are consistent, that is, that the way in which you are indicating that it is a link (regularly changing the color of the anchor text) is the same on all the pages of your virtual store. This will let people browsing your site know when they have found a link and not get confused.
Security
Many of the reasons why people do not make a purchase in your online store is due to mistrust. If you want to improve the sales conversion percentage of your virtual store, increase its security. Here are some steps you can take to improve the security of your online business:
web hosting
The web hosting service is very important when you have a virtual store, since it is the place where your website is hosted. Imagine that web hosting is the physical place where your business is located and it is important that you take into account mainly the company that is giving you the service and that it offers you. Some providers of this service manage software tools that allow you to monitor network traffic to increase the security of the servers and improve the security of the sites that are hosted there. This minimizes the risks of having intruders or information theft.
SSL certificate
One of the things you should investigate is whether the server where your online store is hosted supports the SSL certificate.
This certificate serves to provide greater security to your clients, since it allows data such as passwords and credit card numbers to travel safely between the server and the user, encrypting the information preventing it from falling into the hands of unwanted people.
If you have an online store, without a doubt, this protocol will improve the performance of your business and increase the confidence of your customers and, consequently, sales.
upload speed
If you want to improve the performance of your online store, without a doubt, you have to improve the loading time. If your pages are taking more than five seconds to open, chances are that your visitors will close the page and leave with the competition, so with this you would be losing customers and sales. Don’t let yourself lose customers because of a slow website!
Load time is important to your customers and to Google, so pay attention to this part of your business. Next we will show you what may be causing your virtual store to be slow:
Themes and plugins
Some e-commerce platforms handle certain templates that can slow down the loading of your online store. Check if it is one of the templates that is causing your online store to load slowly, install another one and test if the loading time of your website has improved.
Other causes are the plugins , since some of them are installed but it is likely that you are not using them, if so, we recommend you uninstall all those plugins that you are not using, since they make the loading of your website slower. slower.
Images
Images are a very important part of your virtual store, especially if we talk about the photographs of your products, but many times, thanks to their weight, they affect the loading time of your online store. We recommend reducing the size of images without losing image quality using tools like kraken.io and tools.dynamicdrive.com that allow you to do this.
product images
The immediate contact that customers will be able to have with your products before buying them are with the images of these, so to make a good impression you must have excellent photographs of your products that invite and inspire the visitors of your online store to buy.
You don’t need to be a photography expert, there are many apps that can help you get quite attractive images for your online store. So it’s time to make your online business have better visual content.
SEO optimization
Every e-commerce store must be optimized to be found more easily in search engines.
An SEO strategy will help you appear in the first results of search engines like Google and Bing. Positioning your business on the Internet is not an easy or quick task, but it is something you must do in order to improve the performance of your online store.
conclusion
In electronic commerce there will be obstacles that you must overcome to keep your business profitable. Take these tips and apply them to improve the performance of your online store, it may be that you already have some time in ecommerce but it is the duty of every entrepreneur to improve day by day.