Create a Buyer’s Guide
Knowing what product to buy (which model, what features, what accessories, etc.) can get very confusing and overwhelming for consumers. If I want to buy a new TV (it’s time to get rid of my rear-projection set), I have a lot of research to do! Plasma vs. LCD, new features (they can stream Netflix to TVs now!), sizes, manufacturers, contrast ratio – everything that factors into buying a new TV can be quite intimidating.
Use Landing Pages
There’s always more than one transaction happening on your website. Visitors converting to sales are your eventual goal, but there is also the transaction of information. Once you’ve created your awesome and valuable buyer’s guide that will make your potential customers’ buying process easier and more painless, park it behind a landing page. The concept of a landing page is that it asks for something valuable to you — the seller — (e.g. their contact information and answers to some qualifying questions) in exchange for something valuable to them — the consumer (e.g. information about how to make their buying process simpler).
Use Lead Nurturing
Once you’ve identified list segments that correlate to different products or categories, create custom email campaigns to follow up with consumers using information and special offers. Most eCommerce sites have some type of email marketing campaign in place (many of which are very expensive, involving hundreds of thousands or millions of email lists), but the conversion rate is usually very low. The reason is that generic email campaigns fail to capture the interest of readers in the precious few seconds that customers glance at your email while clearing out their inbox.