Get the most out of your webshop during corona.

Anyone who has ever made an online purchase comes across it: a webshop! Besides a good collection, excellent service & fast delivery, consumers are asking more and more of webshops. Think, for example, of good findability, an easy ordering process and a well-functioning mobile website or app. Webba helps your online shop become successful by thinking along with you, so you can focus on your products.

In this article, we list the most important steps of a successful webshop and how we, as an internet agency, can support you with this.

1. Good findability for your product and your customer

In order to best serve your (future) customer in their search for that one sweater, that nice pair of jeans or that perfect pair of shoes, good findability is a must. You not only need to be findable on your product names, but also on other relevant keywords that your target audience uses in their search. A keyword research using tools like Google Keyword Planner or Semrush is often where this step begins.

Next, you have the platform choice: do you go for fast, but paid, results via Google AdWords, or do you optimise your website for Google for more organic traffic. When your shop has just gone live, it’s often advisable to start with AdWords (SEA). You can optimise this well to keep the cost per click as low as possible, and the art then lies in converting this visitor into a paying customer. We explain more about this in step two.

If you choose the ‘natural’ way of search engine optimisation (SEO), the most important step after your keyword research is a content strategy. How are you going to make your webshop findable on the search terms where your visitors can be found. Try to focus on so-called ‘long tail keywords’, keywords with a clear intent behind them that often have lower competition. This gives you faster results & prevents you from mainly attracting orientating visitors. You can then set up blogs and landing pages around these, meaning you create special pages in the search engine where your customer can discover your products.

2. A clear, conversion-driven design

The power of a good webshop design often lies in simplicity and small psychological tricks. You don’t want to distract your new visitor from the core: your fantastic products! So try to keep the design as clean as possible and place the products in the foreground. You probably already do this on your homepage, but try, for example, to also place relevant products in your blogs or on your landing pages. This makes it as easy as possible for the new visitor to purchase the item they were looking for.

Eventually you get the customer onto the product page. Here it’s extremely important to remove all hurdles to purchase, which in jargon we call conversion rate optimisation (CRO), where we steer towards an online purchase or action. Place a clear button where the customer can add the product to their basket and also actively show on the website that this has succeeded. A pop-up or other animation, like Coolblue does for example, can help with this. This gives your consumer the choice to keep shopping or order directly. By playing with colours, you can direct your customer’s attention to a

certain choice. At Coolblue this clearly happens towards the order button.

Try to limit the steps the customer has to go through afterwards as much as possible. The more steps, the greater the chance they’ll drop off without checking out. Turn the steps the customer has to follow to check out into a little celebration, for example with a progress bar. This actively shows which steps are in the checkout process, which have already been successfully completed and which are still open. This reduces the chance of early drop-offs and makes your process transparent.

3. The perfect handling of the order

Not 100% online, but certainly just as important. When the customer has successfully placed an order in your webshop, you could, for example, send a personalised email to thank them for their order, or set up your automated order system attractively. Make sure you provide as much relevant information as possible in such an email, such as frequently asked questions, delivery dates & the invoice. This prevents customers from unnecessarily contacting you about ambiguities, and a well-oiled, clear process increases the chance of returning customers.

Also turn your parcel into a celebration. Think, for example, of a handwritten card, nice packaging or a small gift. In 2020 we’re overwhelmed by webshops, and a small gesture can make the difference between a one-time or a returning customer!

4. Tailored aftersales

Yes, a successful order! But how do you now ensure this customer chooses you again next time, besides handling their order correctly? Aftersales is the answer. After a few days, you could, for example, send the customer an email via tools like MailChimp with a discount code for their next order. This increases the chance that they’ll choose you again in the future, a trick successfully used by Thuisbezorgd through loyalty cards at restaurants & collecting points.

Want more tips?

Want to get more out of your own webshop, or start a webshop? Get in touch with us. Prefer to just give one of our specialists a call? Then call 0591 – 71 46 99 and one of our online advisors will be happy to help.