How to Increase Your eCommerce Sales from Product Storytelling and Site Redesign

For Bobbi Brown, having a job as a freelance makeup artist was everything. She was happy and content but pretty soon she realized that there was something missing.

The makeup trends of that time were appealing; red lips, contouring and white skin. But Brown had always liked the tone of natural looking, simple skin, a trend that wasn’t around anymore in the 80’s.

But Brown wanted to bring the style back and she did it. Her brand started off with simple lipsticks and gradually developed into a global brand.

She gives credit to her confidence for all the success her brand has achieved. And then of course, comes her staff, which stayed beside her, taking the brand to new heights of accomplishments.

What stands out in Brown’s selling style is the difference in their advertising photographs as compared to other brands. Brown was adamant that they take up an editorial styled advertising approach. And surprisingly, it worked!

Story Telling and Site Redesign

“Tell a Story, Make it true, Make it compelling and Make it relevant.” Rand Fishkin Founder, SEOmoz

People were impressed by the brand’s story telling approach and soon, other brands started copying the trend.

What started off as a gamble, worked wonders for the brand and Bobbi Brown was in business! Their strategy continued on for many years and when the technology changed, they stuck to this strategy and the rest is history.

"One of the keys to good design for a solid brand, especially in ecommerce, is understanding people (read: target market)—who this product or service is for, what they really want deep down, and why they will care about your product over others. It's a designer's role to take those user needs and use them as a toolkit to build a brand the user can trust." Greg Moore Interaction Designer, Google

Such compelling stories are what attract people and when a good story is what people want, we better deliver. Visual stories have been successful in obtaining over 41,142 backlinks and 2,500,000 million visits.

It’s amazing what infographics can do to increase your organic traffic. With over 65% of your audience being visual learners, it’s important to create content that scan ease the flow of traffic and generate sales.

Media sites, such as Slideshare.net and Vimeo.com can serve as the perfect tools to get your content out there and gain relevance among potential customers.

Conversion rates for ecommerce are somewhere around 3%. But how exactly can story telling be used to persuade customers?

As Robert McKee said, “Storytelling with persuasion trumps statistics”. And keeping this in mind, read on to know how you can increase the conversion rate of potential clients.

1. Create a Customer Friendly Environment

Some bloggers assume that whatever bit they write will automatically be considered true and accurate. That might not always be the case, which stresses upon the importance of being honest. You have to be sure of what the potential customers see when they come to your site.

Are they greeted with the same clichéd ads or do they see an impressive story that compels them to stay and explore the site?   

The customers need to know that you care about them. You can give them this impression only if your site reflects a story or design that attracts customers. Failing to do so will surely be the end of your business.

"You can have the most beautiful design in the world, but if it's difficult to use, potential customers will get frustrated and leave your online store almost instantly. To ensure the best conversion rates through design, it's important to create clear and concise calls to action. I recommend having one main call to action per screen view, meaning one button per full screen scroll whether you're on a desktop or mobile device." Anthony Spallone Administrative Director, Arctic Grey, Inc.

Nick of time is an online textile store that was facing problems with their website design. Customers were not able to navigate the website, which was an increasing issue for the business. It took them a while to realize what was going on. They needed a site redesign and they were quick to rectify the problems.

Soon, the website was gaining back some relevance. In less than 2 years, they were able to increase their sales by 150% and the revamping triggered a 60% increase in their organic traffic. This is just one of the many success stories that are out there.

2. Introduce Your Customers To The People Behind The Screen

People want to experience reality and when you familiarize them with your staff, they find it easy to relate to your brand. That is exactly what Raven + Lily did.

The company started off in 2007 as a non-profit organization but by 2011, they had connected with women from Africa and India, and were aiding artisans to sell their products online. Their website includes specific details about the items, along with the story about its origin and the women behind the masterpiece.  

When potential customers get an insight on the people who work behind the screen to facilitate them, not only are they intrigued, but they can also relate to them. This is what you should strive for; a connection with the customers.  

3. Improve Search Options

When you provide the ease to refine their search, you are actually enabling them to save time and efforts. This is especially important for ecommerce sites that deal with sizes, such as a textile website.

Jordy Heis is a fashion ecommerce consultant who was asked what his favorite site was. And he was quick to answer that.

"Cienne has a great site, driven by well-styled photography, coupled with an on-trend color palette. Large product images on product pages appear in a familiar “scroll down” sequence, mirroring the way their audience is used to behaving on social platforms like Instagram and Pinterest. This offers a lesson for other brands to consider adopting ways of design or functionality that compliment their audience's existing behavior. I also really like the unique, prominent placement of their referral program. These programs are usually squirreled away in a footer menu somewhere, but Cienne has a dedicated header menu item intriguingly titled 'Get $25'."

Similarly, the search bar should be placed in plain sight. If the customers don’t find the search bar on the landing page, they are likely to move over to the next available site and with the market this deeply penetrated, you’ll end up losing lots of business.

The best way to increase your conversion rate is to make the search bar the main focus of your website. The more visible the search bar is, the more tempted people will be to keep browsing, which can definitely result in increasing traffic on your website.   

"Mother Mantis is an online shop that we appreciate for its design. Even with over 16,000 products, the site's design remains relatively simple through hidden menus or hamburger menus, clean and organized filtering, and mega menus while also having conversion optimization elements such as ajax cart dropdown for a simple purchasing process—all bundled up in a site that has a well-branded design that is cohesive on all devices and pages." Vinny Galiano President, Minion Made

But who said you can increase your conversion rate only through product storytelling and site redesign? An easy way out; you can maximize ecommerce sales through newsletter marketing.

4. Develop An Advanced Checkout Process

The last thing customers want is to end up tangled in a lengthy checkout process. They want an easy to maneuver design that lets them complete the transactions in a jiffy.

The best way to design the checkout page would be to eliminate adverts and replace the sidebar navigation. This way, the customers will be easily able to complete their transaction without any distractions.

It’s quite tempting to promote items or deals on the page. But it’s better to keep this off your list. This page should be free of all ads, with the least possible hurdles during the checkout process.

A check out page with too much content doesn’t appeal to customers and as the statistics prove, one page check outs are more effective. One page check outs have a conversion rate of 13.39%. It’s better to inform the customers if the checkout process has more than one step.

“By far and away the biggest mistake I see in ecommerce design is information overload. You’ll be tempted to showcase everything you have in your arsenal whether that be a plethora of information or a backlog of every product you’ve ever made. While it’s true that there are going to be customers who want to see the entire history of your brand, those people are few and far between. Figure out what your top products are and give them a place of honor on your site.” Mark Perini Founder, Icee Social

Over To You

With these steps in mind, it won’t be hard for you to get your site back on track and avail the benefits of a site redesign. Just make sure that your customers can easily navigate through your site and you are good to go.