Closing an Online Sale – 8 Tips on How to Minimise Friction?

You will need to consider factors such as

• How to present your price and when?
• How to build trust and confidence?
• How to streamline the actual ordering process?
• How to minimise friction when closing the sale?

This is an area of huge importance and it is where many websites require a major effort for improvement. It deserves more detailed consideration and I intend to return to this topic in more depth at a later date.

Communicating The Price:

To maintain credibility you should make it easy for visitors to find your price.

If you try to hide the price, many visitors will leave the site, never to return.

Remember that when shopping online visitors have the attention span of a flea and if they cannot find what they are looking for (and price will be close to the top of this list) you will lose them even before you can sell to them.

I hear you say “But I want them to receive my sales message first so that they fully understand my offer…”. Ok I understand that and I hear your argument  “But what if they simply compare the price to a competitor before they understand our Unique Selling Proposition?”

There will be many types of visitor to your site, for example a window shopper may want to bookmark the site and revisit later. If they think your price is too high then perhaps it is (Have you researched the market and do you know what your competitors charge).

You could consider how best to present your price and include closing techniques to encourage buying decision. See the suggestions below:

• Normally $90 but available in 3 easy instalments of $29.
• Normally $150 but available to online shoppers at a 50% discount until the end of this month
• 2 for the price of one at $50 if you but before the end of this week
• Packages from $49
• Use a  “Buy Now” page to present the entry level package at $49 with the option to upgrade immediately to higher level packages with more functions and features.

Building Trust and Confidence:

The easiest way to build trust is to have a well known brand (Ryanair, Amazon etc.)

Given that most of us do not have that profile the nest best methods would include:

• Stating a privacy policy (Promise never to send emails without permission or to release contact details to any third party
• Use of a secure third party service for payment (no credit card details held on your website)
• Use of client testimonials to declare satisfaction with your product or service.

Streamlining the Order Process:

If you are selling a product range on the website, you will need a shopping cart

Talk to your bank about selecting a payment gateway that they can deal with. The find out what shopping cart systems you can work with.

Remember, the fewer steps involved, the fewer chances for shopping cart abandonment.

According to various industry research studies the rate of shopping cart abandonment ranges from 60% – 70%. This means that if 100 customer start to check out and are buying a product costing $35, then the lost sales will be $2,275 for that batch alone.

So it is critical to your online business profitability that you measure and track your current abandon rate and that you take all reasonable measure to fix the major causes

How to Minimise Friction:

1. Display shipping costs and return policies early on as this can be a major cause of abandonment
2. Provide customer assurance at all times such as:
   • Security seals
   • Customer service phone numbers
   • Live chat
   • Privacy policy
   • FAQ’s
3. Offer Multiple payment options (Major credit cards plus paypal)
4. Keep your price competitive
5. Use proven methods to present your price offer
6. Minimise the steps in your checkout process
7. Add graphical progress indicators to tell the customer where they are (e.g. step 1 of 4)
8. Offer a telephone order option

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