Nine E-commerce Call to Action Hacks to Turn Browsers into Customers

It’s exciting to know that you have traffic on your eCommerce website. Well done you! Your potential customers are there, eyeballing your content and product.

There are over 1 billion websites out there, and your visitors are on yours. That’s special. We need to make guests feel right at home, let them know we appreciate their visit, and care for them.

You can have visitor numbers to your eCommerce website that could make your head spin, but are they taking action? Are they buying, engaging, opting in? Are they converting? Giving you more than just a once over? Conversions are generally accepted at an average of 1-2%.

So, two ways to make your website business more profitable are to increase traffic and to increase conversion optimization.

Let us focus on the conversion part for now. There is no way we want our guests leaving empty-handed. So, here are 9 tactics that you could implement to get that conversion rate sweet spot out of the ‘average’ zone.

1) Action-Creating Copy

When your visitors read the words on your website, are they instantly drawn in? Because they have to be! No one is going to wade through dull reams of long copy, hoping for a nugget of gold that they can act upon. Your website copy needs to be irresistible, seductive and powerful.

Your copy needs to emotionally resonate with the customer, empathise with them, show an understanding of their ‘pain points’ and address their fears. And communicate your mouth-watering benefits and promised results. So, not much then? 😊

This all needs to be done while keeping your brand tone of voice consistent and authentic. One of the best ways to create copy that invokes action is to be ‘active’ in the language you use, to convey benefits.

For example, you could use buttons that read ‘Sign Up’ or ‘Subscribe’, and these certainly have their place. But how does ‘Try for Free’, ‘Get Started’, ‘Claim Your Free Trial’, ‘Launch’, ‘Take Me There’ or ‘Shop Now’ sound to you? More active! There are call to action benefits in there that are communicated. Such as trying for free, this allays a potential customer’s fear that this might not be right for them.

Use your words to connect, to explain the immediate benefit the customer will receive if they take the call to action you are asking them to. The words must quickly explain why it would not make any sense to do anything other than taking the action you are asking for.

Check every word on your site and ask yourself, ‘what’s in it for me, the customer?’ If the copy does not communicate this, it is time to change it.

One of the tried and tested formulas to guide your sales copy, when you are staring at a blank screen is to apply the AIDA formula.

Attention – How have you grabbed your browser’s immediate attention? This is usually explained in the headline and opening sentence.

Interest – Did you lead straight into why they should be interested? Will your solution take away their pain point?

Desire – Is your potential customer burning with desire for what you have?

Action- Tell your customer what they need to do now - buy, subscribe or download.

2) Vivid Visuals

It’s true that a picture can speak 1,000 words, so here is your chance to create an instant emotional connection with your eCommerce audience.

The visuals, styling and colour palette that you use must resonate with your target audience in terms of gender, age and interests. The visual appeal and website development of your page should instantly communicate how your product will improve your customer’s life.

If it is a physical product, can you immediately see the salient details that make your product stand out? Does your visual communication show the product being used in an actual situation? For example, a dress on a model is instantly more appealing than on a hanger.

Would a prominently placed video show your customer how the product will be used in their situation? If your product is a physical one, a 360-degree view or a zoom function can immediately help customers to see the detail they need.

The images you use can be that glitter dust that immediately triggers desire in your customer. Seeing a sizzling steak on hot coals is far more appealing than a photo of a slab of raw meat, hence the saying, sell the sizzle, not the steak!

From a practical perspective, images should always be uncluttered and clean, so the brain can immediately focus on the benefit or emotional connection. One powerful image will engage faster than lots of smaller ones. Making sure your images are the correct size for your website design and download easily is part and parcel of website housekeeping. As is ensuring the image dimensions are responsive, and view beautifully, no matter what device your customer is using. If you don’t have the skills for this, your digital agency will!

3) Social Proof

The abundance of marketing messages we are all exposed to daily has naturally made us a little cautious of believing every message that comes our way. We’ve all had the thought ‘hmmm, sounds great, but what do people really think of XYZ product.’ And one of the quickest ways to find out is to read actual reviews. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5 Stars!

We all trust reviews and opinions of our family, friends, colleagues and peers over someone we do not know. Reading reviews from customers gives peace of mind (if they are positive, of course!). Installing a review capability into your eCommerce website and encouraging customers to use it provides an excellent way to let your customers use their own voice to promote your product.

Social proof can also take the form of expert opinions and quotes on your site or even celebrity endorsement. Can you take the experience of your happy customers and express it? It doesn’t even need to be an expert or celebrity, but an example of typical customers whose lives have genuinely been made better through their experience with your company. Bloggers and influencers can also form a part of your social proof arsenal.

There is safety in numbers too, so if you have 10,000 sales of a product, use that as part of your call to action drive, and drop it in that you have 10,000 happy customers!

Social proof can make the difference between an interested customer, and an actual buyer.

4) Shopping via Social Media Platforms

Your business will typically have a social media presence, and this can be used to your advantage by allowing people to buy directly from your social media account.

This can work especially well on Instagram or Pinterest if your product is very visual, such as clothing or food. Many of your customers would rather scroll through their social media feed than visit a website, so make sure you meet them there!

Paid social media adverts and competitions can also get your product up front and centre with potential customers. But be careful how you do it, you do not want to come across as spammy. Keep in mind, you are enhancing people’s lives with your offering!

5) FOMO, Urgency & Scarcity

You want action! What creates quick action? URGENCY does. The power of urgency, scarcity and FOMO (fear of missing out) takes a customer from interest to action. Whether it is a 50% sale that expires at midnight, the fact that there are only 5 pairs of the latest release of Nike trainers left in your size, or your course has only 2 places left and you really want to do it but were just ‘thinking about it’, this is important.

You can offer value and information 70% of the time, but sometimes, it is time for the sales jugular! Black Friday is a perfect example of this, who wants to miss out on getting the products they really want, at a much lower price?

Or knowing that product you have put in your cart and then abandoned it is being shipped for free, but for the next 24 hours only?

Remarketing is another way to use urgency with customers who have already shown an interest in your product, but then backed out of the action. Say someone has abandoned the product in their cart. They then get a lovely email from you saying that if you buy in the next 12 hours, you’ll get 15% off, or an added value product, or free shipping? It’s all about sweetening the deal, but with a caveat. It won’t be around forever!

You can use many apps to create these deals on your store. A creative urgency deal can be just the juice you need to pick up sluggish sales. If you ask your digital agency, they will be able to create that capability in no time at all! (See what I did there?)

6) Upselling & Cross-selling

It’s a delightful situation! A bird in the hand…. You are making a sale, it’s marvellous! Someone is already taking action, which means they are statistically very likely to take another action on the same path.

If you are already buying a beautiful coffee making machine, for $500, you will not be averse to getting the matching espresso cups, for an additional $25. A cross-sell is a similar concept, you can get a different product, that matches the one you have, beautifully. So, you have your beautiful coffee machine, how about a carefully selected array of exotic coffee beans to go with it, at only $15?

Making these suggestions is a powerful way to increase the value of each sale you make, by playing in the territory that the customer is already interested in. Most eCommerce platforms have quick and easy app capabilities to allow you to do just that, with every product.

7) Personalisation & Automation

In a world that became about ‘mass-production’, an important niche is personalisation. Luckily, technology allows us to increase CTA using the 3 ‘R’s’:

• Recognise
• Remember
• Relevant recommendations

You can address your customers by name, show them deals that are recommended for them specifically, and customise their experience with your brand by providing information that is inspired by past purchases, browsing history and wish lists.

These capabilities can be automatic if you set your online store up to cater to them with your web development.

8) Allow Guest Checkout

Picture the scene…..you have made your decision, and you have decided to just go ahead and do it….you’re going to buy! The passion killer? A tedious checkout that involves registration first before you even get to enter your digits and buy that widget.

Registration is great, you get to know your customer better. But the fatigue of filling out all the information and giving your details can cut away at the excitement of getting this wonderful product, that your customer has already made a decision to purchase. The ideal is to keep the shopping process seamless and uninterrupted. Checkout is where the highest point of dropout occurs.

So, make sure your customers get the choice to ‘guest checkout’. Make sure your payment journey promotes trust, while still being as easy as possible.

9) Payment & Delivery Options

While we are on the subject of the highly important checkout process, payment and delivery options pay a huge part in this. What if you get to the checkout, and your preferred method of payment is not supported? Or you thought you were getting an excellent deal, only to find out that the delivery costs scupper all your savings, as they are expensive?

The payment journey is big when it comes to increasing your conversion. The payment journey can be a customer ‘pain point’ all on its own. So, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and think of ways to make it easier.

• Include credit card logos and security deals.
• Provide links to your privacy policy, shipping details and refunds and returns policy.
• Consider a ‘live chat’ option if possible, for customers experiencing difficulties.
• Make sure there is contact information, such as telephone or email.
• Provide free shipping. IF you can. It’s not always logistically or financially possible but goes a long way.
• Give an option for gift-wrapping or messaging options if the product warrants it.
• Give a clear indication of the shipping date, or approximate shipping date, to be confirmed in black and white once the sale has gone through. Try always to under promise and over deliver, not the other way around!

Ask your digital agency to help you out with implementing these 9 conversion skyrocketers. Or, you can possibly even do it yourself, with so many automated apps available to install.

If you need some help along the way or are just too busy running the rest of your business, we would love to chat with you. Blue Beetle is based in Dubai, and we have over 16 years of website production and digital marketing experience. It’s a one-stop shop for all your digital needs, with scores of happy repeat customers.