How to make customers out of visitors?

Hello,

I'm looking for some practical tip-offs how to make customers out of visitors? Who has tips?

Thanks

Here is a link to some simple ecommerce tips to help maximize your click-to-buy ratios and reduce shopping cart abandonment...
http://www.ecomenterprises.com/PDF_f...line_sales.pdf

Hope this helps....

Thanks.

Especially the exit-survey is a subject in our companie which has been discussed earlier.
Does anyone have experience with such a survey? Should we do this only by registered customers or with any visitor, who puts anything on the shopping cart?

I would like to contact some people who deal with such things too.

Regards,

Marlie

We've got a few ideas on the topic you might find interesting:

10 Tips to Make Your E-Commerce Site Sing
http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.co...le.php/3106731

Looking Out for the Little Guys
http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/ emarketing/article.php/3091231

The Way Customers Want to Buy
http://www.smallbusinesscomputing.com/ emarketing/article.php/1572111

Happy Reading!

Marlie,

Exit surveys really do help to capture what would be a lost order. When we implement exit surveys, we usually apply them in two key areas: the catalog (product listings) and in the shopping cart/checkout. They are two distinct surveys that address seperate potential issues. You can visit https://store.teledex.com to see an example of an exit survey.

Hope this helps....

N

[email protected]

Great tips! Thank you. We are busy implementating an exit-survey!

Is there anyone who has experience with a ratio of customers vs visitors? On our site about 1% of all visitors are customers. You may understand that we are glad is this ratio goes up to 2%....

Marlie

ps my English isn't too well I'm afraid, so I hope you can understand me!

Marlie,

these guys are the experts. They're professional and from New York, but their site has a lot of great freebies you can use, whitepapers to download and a great newsletter you can sign up for. All for free. Read this lot and you will be ahead of the game.

http://www.futurenowinc.com/

Have you try visitor tracking too or online chat applicaitons ?

Such as liveperson or clickchatsold ?

FunkyJ, My English is too bad. :(
I don't understand what you are talking about? Could you please explain your remark?

Thanks

Marlie, I think FunkyJ is referring to chat services that let salespeople and customer service reps chat with site visitors. We profiled some solutions here recently -- http://ecommerce.internet.com/how/cu...333471,00.html

The idea is that by chatting with visitors, helping them find what they're looking for and assisting with any problems, a site can boost sales, reduce abandonment, and improve customer satisfaction.

Thanks, Now I know what is meant!

Thanks

i also think live-chat with customer is very good way to keep customer satisfation. Besides I will think using BBS board and webcammera to improve customers communication and reduce customers email workload. But one factor I concerned about is that labour cost. Because you have to send customer representative sitting in front of computer to wait for customers getting on line. Another factor I concerned about is that the quality of webcamera pictures. I do think if you can move such service to labour cost countries, you can have many customer representitives sit and wait for visitors.
Appreciate for any comments.

It's true that issues of labor make using chat problematic. However, most chat solutions have developed workaround so that you don't need to employ someone full-time to "sit and wait" for customers. One way is that some chat solutions link to your IM, so you (or another employee) can go about doing your normal work and be alerted with a pop-up when there is a new site visitor or a customer with a question.

Also, most chat services redirect to email when there's no live help available -- say, after normal business hours. So, customers still have a channel for help if you or a rep aren't online... it's just no longer immediate.

Does anyone have some direct results of live chat with customers? Okay, I can imagine that some customers are more satisfied, but are they going to buy stuff after that?
And do you have some sites for example who use this?

Marlie

The product vendors all have customer referrals and case studies they can show you. My take is that results vary fairly significantly, depending on the amount of "hand-holding" that goes into the selling process of different products. But you might be able to find a case study that's similar to your business.

The tip I can give you is to add a live help software to your web. I did add it to mine five months ago and I've increased a lot my sales, because I can help people on tyhe right time, and they can aswer me everything they don't understand.

I've been using www.touchmind.com software, and so far it's the best i've found.

You should try it :)

Kisses

Amy

The most effective way to build customer sales and a customer base is to collect customer email info and for them to op in to your email list.

There are many ways to do this, some don't work all that well, others are gold!

The question to ask is, "how can I get my customer to opt in"?

I have the answer to that question too.

The next question is after they do opt in to recieve your email, then what? How do you get sales from that?

One technique for success is to give the visitors "a little something" for FREE. This not only draws visitors to your site, but also increases sales as they like what they see and will want more.

"One size doesn't fit all" the reason I say this is coz all the solution people provided here may not fit your business for the simple reason that your business is different from others...

1. Let me explain some members suggested Live help which is good if shoppers who come to your site don't understand certain terminology or shopping habits, the way you find out is if they start calling you and asking lots of questions then you create a FAQ if that is not helping you then you decide to put a Live Help....

2. Certain business like adult products or lingere business people don't want to ask questions regd the product they would rather buy silently and read more abt the product online so live help is not good there ...

3. Regd your question how to convert visitors to customers, yes 1% is decent enough if it can double then great .... but the way you would look at it is two through various observations.

a) How many visitors are coming and from where?
b) What is your cost for getting those visitors?
c) What is your renetion plans in terms of retaining the same customers for repeat orders, nobody talks abt it, I see this as Gold mine in your backyard.
d) How many of them have added items to cart? and how can I make them to checkout? Free shipping could be the answer, or maybe promo code or discount ...
e) How sticky are your product pages? I mean if the visitor comes to your site and jumps right off then it is not sticky if he is around for 5-10 minutes then your stickness starts there and can go up all the way for an 1hr
f) Navigation, are people able to navigate easily
g) Search, internal searhes are they powerful enough to give relevant results

So if you see there are numerous things one should consider coz that is how shoppers convert to real customers and you have to take one thing at a time and do all this and see its results..

Why make your customer have to hunt around for what they want in the first place? Why not take them to EXACTLY the page they want? Why not to the EXACT item that they want?

One reason people don't buy even after going to the shopping cart is that it isn't the right timing for their buying cycle. It may not be pay day, etc.

The fact that they wanted to go far enough to see what the check out price would be is a good sign. It shows they do want what you have.

If you could approach them with individual items that they put in the cart, one at a time, with an excellent price and with personalization you could become a hero in their eyes.

Most of the online businesses out there aren't making money. Most of the online businesses out there are doing the same things. What a coincidence!

Maybe it's time to think outside of the box!