Many businesses opt to undergo paid search (PPC) only to find that they are getting many click throughs but not many conversations. This is common problem for online businesses and the first thing you may look to do is pump more money into your campaign in order to push your advert up in the rankings and hope to get more click throughs and hence higher conversions. Yet still your conversion rate is low and the reason for it…poor web design.

Designing your website is an extremely important part of an ecommerce business. Many aspects should be taken into account. Just because you are offering a product that a certain person may be interested in does not mean that people are going to buy from you.

Here’s a scenario. You are looking for a new television. You shop around and walk into a store you have never heard of. The layout of the store is confusing. No one offers you any help. The store looks messy, dated, and the front of it looks shambolic. If you went into a store like this there is no way that you would have confidence in parting with your cash. 99% of the time you would not even set foot inside the store to begin with and if you did you certainly would not return. The same applies to your website.

To get to grips with good web development practice there are hundreds of journals, articles and books that all touch on many areas. The following are a few tips that, if followed, should improve your conversion rate.

Firstly look at your checkout area if you have one. If you do not have one then get one…it is important for ecommerce (this will be covered later). If a large amount of people are getting through to the checkout area on your website and then abandoning it this indicates that there is a problem with this area of your website. It could be a technical fault or it could be the way in which you have designed your checkout area. Avoid confusing people, keep it simple, and guide people through the buying process. Look out for the accessibility of your checkout area from the pages in your website. Also allay any fears people have in buying from your site; people are still apprehensive of buying online so ensure you tell them that it is secure.

Have a basket and checkout area on your website. The ability to buy online seems obvious but many ecommerce websites fail to allow this. By having a checkout area once an online transaction has been completed Google is able to compile a conversion rate and through looking at your Google Adwords campaign you can see the progress your paid search is having.

Remember who uses your website. It is vitally important that you think of your target audience. If you are selling camping equipment the age range can be quite vast with anyone up to 60+ wanting to buy from your website. It is therefore important to cater for all age groups. Many people are still new to using the internet and whilst it may be easy for you and me to use it can be a complicated practice for some people so again simplify how you use your website. Also make navigation easy for users, have an internal search feature and list the products on offer in a clear way and have a minimal amount of clicks for users to get to where they want.

Have simplified and informative text. All products that you are offering should be clear and concise so that people know what they are getting. A simple list of the features of a product would suffice. Another important aspect of product information is having images of the product. These images should also be high quality. Images draw people’s eyes in way before the text does and so the quality of images pays dividends toward the perceived credibility of your website.

Again understand your audience. Not all people have the same amount of money etc. So have categories of your products so people can search product price. If you are selling complicated products then having an FAQ page or a live help feature would be extremely beneficial and is likely to increase the amount of sales that your get.

Have special offers on your website and augment the products you offer. If you sell computers, offering a free fibre optic mouse with a new laptop will give you an advantage over some of your competitors and ultimately increase the chances of making a sale.

Lastly retain your customers. If people have bought from you then they are likely to buy from you again so keep in contact with your customer and build a relationship them. A good way to do this is by informing them of new products through a monthly or seasonal newsletter.

Of course the above barley even scratches the surface of web-design. There are many other aspects that you should read up on, however if you pay attention to some of the points above then you should be able to maximise the amounts of sales you make and really make the most out of your paid search.

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Google, PPC - Google Adwords, Search Engine Optimisation, Web Development