How to optimise your online buying journey

By David Pert - Reading time 20 minutes

When improving your online shopping journey it is easy to be tempted by expensive or time consuming features such as clever AI based dynamic content or complicated recommendation engines. Some of these systems can be fantastically useful, but focussing on the fundamentals can often deliver a quicker ROI and ensuring these fundamentals are in place before making things more complex can make your life much easier. In this article, we’ll pick out some of the key pages to target for improvement and what makes for a best in class eCommerce journey.

Jump to;

How does your site compare with your competitors?
How to evaluate your core audience
 Key elements for a successful homepage
 How to know what is working on your homepage
 Creating an easy to navigate category landing page
 How to create a shopping basket that encourages sales
 How to ensure your checkout doesn’t lose you sales

‘As a rule, people will tend to buy from the place which makes it easiest for them’

  • Easiest to find (from a google search)
  • Easiest place to shop (because the website is fast and easy / pleasant / provides all the info they need)
  • Easiest to pay (with lots of payment options, and BNPL if appropriate, or simply cheaper) 
  • Easiest for delivery (cost, speed and flexibility)

The first step in making improvements to any eCommerce site, is to look for those things which are not easy or are more difficult on your site than your competitors. Customers may need lots of reasons to shop with you, but they only need one reason not to. If you can find and address those reasons, you stand a good chance of fixing problems with very little effort.

How does your site compare to your competitors?

The key message here is that your site does not need to be the best in the world, it just needs to be at least as good as your competitors. So the first question to ask is: ‘Is there a reason someone would buy from them instead of you?’. Browse the site of a competitor, then do the same with yours and ask yourself that question as if you were the shopper. You’ll be surprised what you notice! Some key things to look for when comparing yourself to competitors:

With this simple checklist, make a note of everything you think your competitor does better, and set about making those changes! Pricing is of course an easy one. If you are charging more than your competition, can you justify it? Do you have access to customers with a higher budget? Are you offering products of a genuinely better quality? (that the customer will pay for). Do you offer a genuinely better service? (i.e. If I know I’ll find it at Amazon, and delivery is quick. I might not bother price comparing).

How to evaluate your core audience

So you’ve checked out your competition and now your site is at least on a par with them. What now? Next, take a close look at your ideal customer. Anyone ‘could’ buy from your site, but by gaining a clear idea of who your ideal customer is, you can make sure your site talks directly to them. This increases your conversion rate, but also ensures your brand feels authentic and stands out from the competition. Your standard audience will include these 4 stereotypes. The best websites make it easy for all 4 types to shop in the way that they want to.

Targeted shopper

This person knows exactly what they want buy and just need to get to that product page as soon as possible so they can compare options, prices and delivery. They need quick links to the most popular products, a simple and accessible search function and simple links to major categories, (Men’s, Women’s, Kids, Winter clothing, Beachwear, Gifts, etc).

Bargain hunter

This person is laser focussed on the best deals. They need directions to discounts and offers (including multi-buys or bulk buy discounts) and guidance on where the best priced products are. They’re also likely to leave their email address for 10% off their first order. Give them that option.

Loyalty royalty

Your loyal customers. They shop on your site more than most and want to see what’s new, currently trending, popular or more interesting than the standard product. They’ll also like articles for recipes, style guides, etc. Inspiration is good for them. Make sure those calls to action are easy to find. And of course, it could be useful to offer regular customers a discount, or early access to new products or sales events.

The Researcher

These people are looking to learn more about the product. They’re information hungry and won’t buy until they know everything. Give them lots of product information and details, background information, editorial articles, etc, and encourage them to leave their email address to get sent more information (download our brochure, etc). They may be less likely to buy right away, so make sure there’s an easy way for them to leave their details with you.

Each of the above are starting points for a journey. Focus on making these easily accessible when first landing on the homepage or any common site entry page (not everyone arrives via the homepage!). Anything which doesn’t address these, should be dropped down the page. For example, try to avoid talking too much about you as a company, unless it is really important to your product or service. Focus on what the customer needs to achieve in this visit to the website and help them do it.

Key elements for a successful homepage

The goal of the homepage is to make it easy to scan and to get the customer to click into the site as quickly as possible. They will not read the whole page! One of the best ways to look at the homepage is to consider it in layers. Each layer should have a clear purpose whether this is focusing on new products or displaying sale items. It should have a clear title to say what that layer is for, and the options within it should be simple. And most importantly, it will be ordered by which is the most useful / likely to be clicked on by your visitors. You’ll have seen these on all of your favourite websites:

The great thing about organising your home page content out like this is that it allows for easier switching of sections experimenting with what works best to encourage converting visitors into customers. So don’t worry too much about the order. Put these in the order which feel right for your business, and regularly check on which ones get the most attention. Move the post popular ones higher up the page, and voila! you have a homepage optimisation process.

Compelling USPs

These are the elements like review scores, delivery options and the aspects that make your brand unique. These should be high on the page but without an overpowering prominence. Make sure the message here is obvious and compelling. This is is the highest profile space on your homepage, so make sure you say the one thing that you want all visitors to know.

Primary & seasonally relevant categories

This is your main selling area, so use it wisely. Make sure that all major categories are easily labelled and ordered in rank of importance. This is a good place to mix evergreen categories (Men’s, Women’s, Kid’s, etc) with seasonally relevant categories (Summer, Christmas, Back to School, etc). The main categories should be always there, but test out adding seasonally relevant categories and see how many clicks each gets. Swap out the ones which don’t get attention, and you’ll always be optimising!

Seasonally relevant offers or campaigns

This area will likely sit above the fold so focus here on displaying relevant special offers and categories. If Christmas is coming up use this are to display your top gift categories. They should be things which are important enough for you to push attention on, but not a top category or promotion (as these would be in the layer above)

People only see this section if they have scrolled past and chosen not to click into your top categories. So here, it’s about placing a bet on which products are most likely to get the customer shopping. It could be your best seller, your best deals / value, your latest products or simply your most interesting products.

Shopping Enabler Messaging

By the time the customer has browsed this far, they clearly aren’t there to expressly buy from you, or have a specific product in mind. So now is a good time to give them something which makes them love you. Consider expanding on your USPs by going into more detail, showing your users whether you utilise Buy Now Pay Later schemes, next day delivery or first order discounts here gives your visitors a reason to continue shopping with you. This is also an excellent space to demonstrate your businesses knowledge within your industry with valuable blog posts that educate visitors on you and your products. Make it something they will remember about you if they don’t buy from you today.

Data Capture

At this point of the page your visitors have seen your top offerings and if they haven’t already delved deeper into the site this is an opportunity to gain more information on them before they leave the site. By including a newsletter sign up you can encourage your visitors to interact with your brand. You should also consider offering more in return for your users precious data an exclusive discount for new users can greatly encourage those visitors to turn into paying customers. Also consider recommend a friend, 10% off next order, etc.

Much like with the data capture section above, your visitor is not likely to be a shopper at this stage. In this area you can add some social proofing to your brand. You can use this space to deliver more information on your brand and you should also link out to any social channels that you use to market your products. In a similar way to newsletter signups gaining a new follower on social media takes a user from visitor to potential customer.

Site Overview

In the final section of your site you should offer a large overview of what you offer. use this space to show your users everything you have to offer. List out all your top level product categories and also give them the ability to find useful information such as payment and delivery options, news section and information on how they can get in touch. Many people do this with an extended footer section which sits on all pages.

How to know what is working on your homepage?

To discover what is working on your homepage tools like HotJar and Microsoft Clarity can help you to understand which sections on the homepage are getting the most clicks. In principle, there should be more clicks into the layers highest up the page, decreasing gradually with each layer.

It is beneficial to investigate this every few weeks to see which section is getting the least amount of clicks, moving it further down the page and replacing that section with something else.

Similarly if a layer that is further down the page is receiving more interaction from users it would be beneficial to move it further up the page, raising its prominence.

If your page layers are well designed, you can also apply this optimisation technique to the content within each layer. If for example you have a row of banners or products in one layer, identify and replace the least clicked one over few weeks.

You should repeat this process over time but it is key not to worry too much about keeping the homepage ‘fresh’ as the majority of your users won’t be visiting your site often enough to notice these changes and focus more on the process mentioned above. Repeating the check every 2 to 4 weeks will give you good insight into what customers are less interested in. If you keep adding new items to replace the poorer performing items, you’ll often stumble across items which people really love.

What should you to avoid on your homepage?

Research has shown that if you change the creative design, but the primary offer stays the same, then there will be no increases in any of your KPIs. Whereas if the offer is clear (i.e. 10% off x category), you can keep the same creative and just change the offer value when you need to. I.e. Black Friday discounts that month.

Avoid features which hide content behind a revolving or sliding carousel. Most people won’t see more than the first slide, so the other content is effectively hidden from view. They also make the page slower, which will have an effect on you Google Rankings, and the job of the homepage is to get people off of it and deeper into the site quickly. Don’t make them wait around or have to scroll to see other elements appear.

What else should be included on an eCommerce homepage

Utilising lazy loading on images can have a major impact on load times for users and should be used at all times. This is a technical setup for the page where banners only show when the visitor scrolls down the page. This makes the page load much faster, and is therefore better for mobile users, and for Google rankings.

Creating an easy to navigate category landing page

It is common to obsess about the order in which products show on these pages. However people filter first, before browsing the products. So the filter options and related category links are far more important to optimise first.

Sub category links at the top of the page (or as a filter option) are really useful to refine the product set down to something more specific. People tend to search first for lazy terms. I.e. ‘Dresses’. But if you ask them (via a search filter or banner option) if they meant summer dresses, wedding guest dresses, formal dresses, etc, they are likely to click on these before browsing the product. This is really important when you have lots of high level categories on the homepage. If someone on your homepage or main navigation clicks into the ‘Women’s’ section, they absolutely will not browse all products. they want to first filter the product set down to something more specific (see this example at John Lewis). A top tip is to create sub categories of products which group together in a useful way for your customer.

For example:

Try new ones regularly (just as with the homepage) and replace any which get the least clicks with new ideas.

Taking this approach helps ensure that the first set of products a customer sees is more closely related to what they are looking for. I.e. There’s no point showing them your top selling evening dresses, when they are shopping for summer dresses.

The filter options should be ranked (stacked) from the most useful at the top, down to the least useful.

More recently, it has become popular with the top retailers to treat the first page in a major category as a mini homepage. These pages tend not to show many products at all, but instead offer a wide range of different ways to view different subsets of product within that category. Here are some good examples:

Get the most from your filters by ensuring your product data is on point

It is vital to ensure that your product data includes the values that are required for fully functional filtering of products. If there are gaps in your data your users won’t ge getting the full potential from searching via filters and may also miss key products from your catalogue.

You should also remember that filter options my be category specific, especially with larger stores that offer a large range of products across various categories. For example televisions will require different filters than a refrigerator.

When setting up filters you should consider what the key decisions you expect your customers to make, and the question that they will be asking whilst filtering through products.

For example:

Once you have considered these aspects you can determine the priority of your navigation, and understand the journey that users are going to take on your category pages. Are they going to be looking for a better suited sub category of products, if they land on your dresses category page they may find value in quickly and easily being able to navigate towards your summer dresses category.

Product ordering

Then you consider the order of the products on the page. The products at the top of any category should be an even mix of really popular products and the ones you need to push. However you should try not to include too many from either group to ensure that your users are able to see a large gamut of your product range.

You should also keep a close eye on stock, as your most popular products sell through. If you have a low stock item placed high on the page, it could result in lots of frustrated costumers when it sells out of key sizes or variants.

Keep a close eye also on ‘perceived stock’. I.e. not just how many unit items are in stock, but which colours or sizes are in stock. You may have 100 of the top selling shoe in stock, but if size 8 is sold out, that product could essentially be sold out for the majority of your visitors.

A good tip for this is to track how many views of the product page and unit sales the product does on average each week. If the views stay high but the unit sales drop, it’s likely because one size or colour option has sold out. Put a different product in that space!

Conversely, look for products which get low views of the product page, but still sell well. Put them in a more visible place to get more views and see if the unit sales go up as a result. If they don’t, move it back to where it was.

Of course, look out for products with high views and low unit sales too. There could be something wrong with these products. I.e. low stock, sold out of an option, pricing mistake, broken page functionality, an offer not working as it should, or an image or information missing or incorrect on the page. Have someone look for these pages each week to identify where things can be improved.

And finally, look for products with low views and low unit sales. You could be wasting your time adding these to the site. Check them for issues, and if they should be selling well, try putting them in a more visible space. But be ready to remove them if they still don’t sell well.

How to ensure that your product page delivers

What information you place above the fold is extremely important when it comes to product pages. You need to ensure that the essential details are immediately within the focus of the user. You need to consider what your visitors need to know before they buy the product, and what information is useful, but not essential

When looking at the example of dress shopping the following are key details that should have prominence on the product page.

Other information, although important, becomes secondary information and can sit further down the page such as;

All useful, but not essential to purchase. Don’t worry too much about how this part of the page looks. Just make sure the information in this section is laid out simply and is easy to read.

How to create a shopping basket that encourages sales

Your customer has worked hard before getting to this page. This is where they pause and decide if they really want to make their purchase. If they choose to proceed the checkout should be the fun part of the journey. So this page is all about them deciding, will this be fun? The page needs to give all the information they need to make that decision. It should make them feel comfortable and safe. And perhaps most importantly, it shouldn’t introduce any new questions or concerns (think security, safety, delivery reliability, etc). This page is often ignored and can look basic, technical and clunky compared to the rest of the site. But with a little attention, can make a world of difference in turning your visitors from shoppers into customers.

Top tips:

How to ensure your checkout doesn’t lose you sales

Unless you haver a particularly unusual product or service, there is no reason why your checkout shouldn’t be perfect. On WordPress / WooCommerce in particular, simply instal a one page checkout and you should be good to go. All that matters at this stage is the following:

A pre-built checkout like WooPay or Stripe can be an excellent solution here. It integrates all your payment options without additional work and gives you a standardised checkout experience that customers should find familiar.

In addition, if you are delivery across multiple country borders, it may be useful to use a system like SendCloud to help manage and simplify the addition of different delivery partners for different countries, auto creation of shipping labels and returns management, and improved tracking to handle those all too common ‘Where is my order?’ enquiries. We like this system a lot, it’s well worth a look.

The buyers journey on your site is critical to online growth

Hopefully some of the points above have given you plenty to consider for your site. By considering small improvements at each point in the journey you can quickly improve the user experience on your site without significant investment and add great value to your conversion rate and therefore your bottom line.

And of course for any help analysing your site or implementing any of these improvements, we’d love to hear from you.

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Do you need help evaluating your users buying journey. Establishing pain points in the process and improving the usability and user experience on your site.

Get in touch today to see how we can help you improve your buyers journey.

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