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How To Get Visitors to Shop More of your Online Store

In the offline merchandising world, getting shoppers to visit more floors and aisles of a store is a major goal.

Online stores don’t have the physical problems of distance and fatigue, but just about all of us would rather sell more items to each visitor.

There are clearly common themes that we can learn from merchandising in the physical world. Let's take a look.

Real world shoppers restrict their shopping within a store because:

Time: Shoppers don’t always want to spend their time shopping. Some purchases are just a chore that needs to get done.

  • This is just as much of a problem online, however a well organized store that lets people quickly locate, research, and purchase what they need can be a real time saver.

  • You’ve got to make shopping your online store convenient and hassle free.

Fatigue: A monster WalMart store can drain energy out of any shopper, especially when kids are along for the trip.

  • At first glance, you might think that fatigue is not an issue with online stores, but think of eye strain.

  • Think of how much easier it is to leave a website, go back to the search engine and try something else when the slightest inconvenience is encountered with navigation in an online store.

  • Online shoppers have a much lower fatigue threshold, so your store has to be super simple to navigate and easy on the eyes.

Large or heavy merchandise: A shopper in the physical world can only carry so many large items before a second trip is needed. This leads to “I’ll just get that later…” where the purchase might be made later at a different store.

  • With online shopping carts and home delivery, this is one problem inherently solved by online shopping. An e-commerce shopping cart can hold an unlimited number of bits! ;-)

No help from store personnel: This is especially a problem during peek shopping hours. Delay in getting help takes valuable time and an opportunity to sell additional items is lost.

  • If your store answers all the typical shopper’s questions and help is available via an 800 number and/or live chat, you’re good.

  • You’ve got to make sure your store does not raise any questions that are not answered.

Crowded stores: During peek shopping hours, crowded aisles and long checkout lines again use time that could be spent shopping for additional items. This also adds to the fatigue factor.

  • This one is simple: get a good web hosting provider and shopping cart.

Poor visibility and signing: This keeps shoppers in the physical world from stumbling across or finding additional items that might be purchased.

  • Signing is a clean online store layout with clear navigation across departments. “Poor visibility” to other departments is the online norm.

  • A notable exception is Amazon, which does an amazing job of showing shoppers other things that might be of interest based on past browsing and other shopper’s buying patterns.

Inadequate elevators or escalators: Keeps shoppers from moving easily to other floors.

  • Again, easy navigation to other departments of your online store is the online equivalent.

Poor floor layout: This makes shoppers move more slowly, making the crowded store almost unbearable.

  • Layout of department pages to make browsing each one easy and intuitive.

Poor housekeeping: A dirty or disorganized store seriously dampens shopper enthusiasm, and sends shoppers out of a physical store. The online equivalents of good housekeeping are:

  • Is your site design overly busy?

  • Are there too many colors on your site?

  • How organized is your store? How about each department?

I’m sure you can think of other things that keep shoppers from covering more of a physical store. If you do or if you have thoughts on any of the above items, post a comment with your ideas.





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