Your site provides users with the option to use e-Commerce? Great, so do thousands of other sites throughout the internet. What you to do change the experience to more effectively capture and convert leads will be what determines how successful your e-Commerce option is. Just giving users the option isn't enough.
Watch
Thought it might feel creepy, take recordings of customers interacting with your site. It can allow you to see why users don't follow through on a purchase, or where the user leaves or possibly loses patience in the process of finding a product and purchasing it. Engaging in this literal form of oversight can help you spot problems uniquely encountered by your clients in real time.
To carry this out, simply take advantage of user recording services such as Inspeclet. However, to determine if any changes you make relative to what problems you see users experience are actually improving your conversion rate, it might help to invest in some A/B testing.
Home Page
The first thing a user sees when they visit your site is obviously your home page. However, you want them to see the products you offer as soon as possible. As such, present your best selling and most successful product on the homepage itself. That way you're presenting the product with the highest probability of purchase and best track record in converting leads to sales from the get go.
Give Them Options
Sometimes the online cart can cause problems or frustrations. There might be a color or feature a potential client may or may not want. However, the user interface your site has can only offer so many options and variables for the client to change. Leave other avenues of ordering open. Just because you have an e-Commerce option on your site does not make it the best or default option for all potential leads. So keep a telephone number available, or even a fax number, giving users the option to order their product however they want.
Hit Them Close to Home
You can enable your site to localize itself to show a degree of personalization for a user. Whether you ship internationally or just across the United States, take advantage of IP addresses. In doing so, you can tell a user through a banner or notification of some sort that your firm conducts business or can ship to their particular location. This helps in answering a key question (i.e. I wonder if they ship here?) without a user having to go to your FAQs, help, or shipping information page(s).
Sell Through Facebook
Lolly Wolly Doodle, a small family run business in North Carolina, is revolutionizing the industry to the point where it can be rendered obsolete. She uses no e-Commerce platform on her website. Instead, she sells directly through Facebook. The idea of selling using Facebook commerce as a sales platform is so novel, co-founder of AOL Steve Case provided $20 million to invest in the company. Purchasing a product is as easy as commenting. It cuts out the need to entice the users to use your social media platform as a means to engage your website. This entire Facebook venture began when Brandi Temple, the business owner, posted about some some left over garments for sale on Facebook.