Simple Shopping Cart Mistakes To Avoid

At InstanteStore, we try to keep things simple for our merchants so they can concentrate more on the marketing aspects of their store. A simple shopping cart not only saves time, but helps improves productivity as well. However there is only so much a simple shopping cart can do to help merchants improve their bottom line.

The following are a few free online shopping cart tips to help merchants get the best out of their site.

The Importance of the First Fold

As mentioned in earlier posts the first fold of a web page is prime property. Why is that? Well, this is the part of the page that visitors see the moment they land on a site. The visitor then decides either to scroll down the page, to continue browsing other pages on the site, or to leave the site entirely. All of this will be based on what’s presented on the first fold of the page. A visitor will take less than 7 seconds to come to a decision. This is why merchants must do everything they can to make as much of a positive impact as possible within that little chunk of precious space.

Pretty Pictures!

Nice-looking images are a good way to attract the attention of a visitor. But as we have previously mentioned in earlier posts, everything on an online store must be geared towards getting a visitor to making a purchase or at least to convince a visitor to take a positive action (e.g. subscribe to a newsletter) that could lead to a sale later.

The most common mistake merchants make is placing huge mastheads or top sections on their page. This uses up a lot of prime real estate. Merchants also use huge images on the homepage that look good but do not prompt the visitor into doing anything.

If you have an attractive image, use it as a CTA or Call To Action tool and link it to a product page where a visitor can immediately make a purchase while they are still in a interested/buying frame of mind.

Key Template Elements

Most of our merchants will opt to customize their template designs once they have the hang of our ecommerce solution shopping cart software. The thing to remember is to keep certain elements within easy reach/view of visitors when these changes are made.

These elements include New Products, Featured Products, Top Sellers, On Sale Items, and the Search Box. Many online shoppers do not use specific product names when conducting searches. This means that they are open to suggestions when they do a search for say, “Soft Toys”. So make the best use of this opportunity to tell them what to buy.

The elements we mentioned earlier would offer suggestions to visitors as soon as they land on a site selling a variety of Soft Toys (“Hey look, this product is new/popular/a bargain!”). Keeping this in mind, try not to move these elements below the first fold, if possible. You should almost always place the Search Box somewhere near the top so it is easy for a visitor to do a search just in case they want to look for something a bit more specific like an Elmo (Soft Toy), for instance.

Final Say

We hope that you use these simple shopping cart tips wisely. It’s just a matter of optimizing your page elements to help you convert visitors with as little effort as possible.

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