In order to boost traffic and increase sales, you have to make your website in a way that helps your customers find the exact product they are searching for, make their purchase decisions, and check out easily to proceed.  In fact, you have to optimize your website conversion funnel to  convert  web visitors into actual purchasers. Some website owners fail to successfully create e-commerce websites because of complicated check-out procedure, lack of product description ,or ignorance of the fundamental approaches of web design… Therefore, these aspects should never be dismissed and when taken seriously into consideration, they might lead to drive up significant traffic and get the majority of your visitors  to buy your products and benefit from your service. We will discuss several steps that assist you in creating an optimized e-commerce website:

• Simplify your homepage: You should provide accurate description of the product you are representing to your customers while keeping it as simple as possible; if you provide too much useless information, you will confuse your visitors, so they would likely switch  to competitors. You must be credible and you should display your product in a positive image.

• Tell your users where they are landing: When visitors land on your page, you have to instruct them where they are. Is it a luxury product? a regular product? a household good? As a result, your website should be designed in alignment with your brand positioning. To generate pay per click traffic, the most crucial step is to build landing pages and always keep an eye on them; you have to test different search results to see if your change is leading to better conversions.

• Mobile friendly design: Some of your customers might prefer to buy your product from their phone, so you should adapt your home screen to IOS and android phones through responsive web design.

• Always optimize your search bar: It is a great start to direct your customers  to what they are looking for. Display the search bar on your website in its unique color so you would draw user’s attention and help them find their destination item‏ ; also write an instruction inside the box, such as “Enter a keyword” so they know what they should do. Plus, finalize the box with arrows in order to complete the  procedure successfully.

In an attempt to draw its visitors attention, FootSmart has distinguished its search bar using the green color to be unique from the site’s color scheme.

• Search results: “FootSmart” has segmented its shoes in different categories along with its corresponding rating, descriptions and prices.  It has also made  search results more appealing by displaying sorting options on the left for further information. This option is very critical to increase conversion rate since  customers view all products in front of them without having to click .If you implement a concise display results for customers search, you might increase conversion rate by 6%.
  

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FootSmart” has displayed each shoe in its own cell to provide better browsing and shopping experience.

• keep your website respond quickly to customers:  Your guests expect a fast  online transaction; otherwise, they get bored as they have to wait for some time to proceed with their action. The result is that they move to another website ,and you might get a low conversion rate. According to some statistics, for every delay of one second for page response might result  a 7% drop in conversion rate. In order to solve the problem,  go for a website speed test such as http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/ and follow their suggested speed optimization solutions to resolve any unnecessary delays on your website. You might often want to engage a developer to help you minify your style sheets, and javascripts, clean repeated library calls, and optimize your photos for web use.

Page loading time in seconds

• Don’t force your visitors to register early: Make your customers feel free and do not force them to register by applying  the registration button even before they make a purchase decision; make it optional.
• Take charge of long tail keyword searches:  As long tail keyword searches are helpful for SEO, they also increase conversion rate. For example, someone searching for “women’s long sleeve black tee size M” is much more likely to convert than someone just browsing “women’s tees.”

Display results of a long tail keyword search for yellow sneakers
Visitors type “yellow sneakers size 7” instead of “yellow sneakers”

• Ease the check-out process for your visitors:  Let your guests easily proceed the check-out without requesting from them to expand efforts. You have to also clearly label the page inside the check-out so that customers, for example, would be more able to differentiate a shipping form from a credit card form.
  
• Show your contact information on every page: Do not make your web visitors navigate around your entire site and waste time searching for your business contact; otherwise, they may leave and you  would lose a sale. Create an “About us” page to break the ice between you and your customers.

When you show your customers your contact info, you’re proving that you are credible.

• Carefully allocate shipping costs: Assign costs to products fairly based on  your commodities weights and distances to avoid charging too much and costing your business.

• Pay attention to selling prices: If you are selling the same product as your competitors, charge the same prices because customers are smart enough to recognize the market; on the other hand, you could charge your product at a higher price if you are offering something unique that the competitor does not have.

• Make your visitors come back: If your targeted audience are looking for a product and they do not currently find it on your site, you have to find a solution. Either offer them an alternative product or promise them that you are going to inform them as soon as the product is back in stock.

• Maintain consistency: Do not confuse your visitors with too many different colors. Whether it is a layout, design, infographics… keep a consistent image in front of your visitors. If your website is inconsistent, you might face drop-off problems.

• Secure your website with trust symbols: Shopping options are very essential to drive traffic, but customers expect credibility and trust when they decide to make the final purchase; therefore, display trust symbols on your site like (i.e. VeriSign & McAfee) to indicate to your customers that your checkout process is secure and that their information could never be stolen.