The power of video

While all retailers scatter images throughout their web stores, many underestimate the power of video. Placing a video on your homepage introducing your brand, while also advertising your products, gives your store personality and depth.

Cater your welcome video to your target market and it could help convince consumers to take a look through your catalog.

Retailers can make specific videos for their best sellers or trending products in efforts to get them further into the limelight.

Video allows for the product to come to life, showing consumers the product’s various uses and benefits. This could be the final nudge a customer needs to make the purchase.

Seeing that viewers are 64%-85% more likely to buy after watching a product video, this is an investment retailers shouldn’t pass up.

Keep it local

Retailers could also add certain geo-targeted attributes into their store to increase conversion rates.

Walmart has recently started to do this by allowing consumers to see localized deals and specials offered at stores nearby. Although you don’t have to mimic this exactly, follow in the footsteps of this major retailer and add your own spin on it.

You can do this by addressing current weather or upcoming local events that consumers might need to shop for. It could be a friendly reminder for necessities they may have forgotten.

Trying to go international? Add a widget into your store that tells customers right off the bat if you ship to their state or country.

These features make for more personalized shopping and a better customer service experience. You could also compare prices of the biggest competitors, near or far, in-store or online. Include an automated pricing strategy in order to monitor your competitive landscape and price efficiently.

Cart persistently

Have you ever gone through pages and pages of an online store, packed your cart, and accidentally closed the tab?

Whatever it was, you didn’t complete checkout, not yet anyways. And when you finally did decide to return, the little number next to the cart said: (0). Frustrating isn’t it?

Consumers think so, too. Solve this problem by implementing a persistent shopping cart. It won’t empty when the page is closed and can keep items in the cart for as many days as specified.

So how many days is best? The longer the better. Keeping the items in the cart could remind returning customers of an item they wanted or needed, but simply overlooked, reigniting interest.

Product page perfection

Your products’ pages are the strongest weapon in your arsenal. They could make or break a purchase and be the one element that persuades a consumer to splurge on a long sought after good.

While all products could have product videos, the odds of that are unlikely. So utilize images to the best of your ability by keeping them crisp and clear.

Feature images at various angles and even include stills of people using the product. This makes the product more realistic, helping the shopper get ideas of how they could use it.

Accompany these photos with two product descriptions. While both should be informative and enticing, they should differ in length and style.

Use bullet points for shoppers in hurry, who only want to know the most important attributes and one in sentence form for those who have more time and need to build more confidence in order to purchase.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that, prices should always be present and easy to find on your product pages. Consumers don’t like to feel tricked, so be transparent with your price.

If needed, make a note of shipping and handling fees, because if they are included too late and buyers don’t like what they see, they could end up leaving their cart hanging.

Competition is getting more intense and retailers cannot afford to lose any more potential carts. Using videos, persistent carts and more could help build loyal customers and brand value.

What are other ways for retailers to fight cart abandonment?

Contributing Writer: Amanda Lin