Your Squarespace website is the front door to your business; how can you encourage more customers to buy?

As you are well aware, there are millions of websites out there now and when someone is looking to purchase a product or service, they have a lot of choice.

Your job is to make your website a destination of choice.

It helps to have a good understanding of how you can encourage customers to buy. Let’s check it out:

Download how tips for reducing cart abandonment here

Common barriers to purchase

Think about your own experiences browsing websites. What sorts of things have stopped you from making a purchase? There’s a good chance you haven’t bought things due to some of the common barriers listed below:

The website is confusing

You’ve probably heard the saying “a confused mind never buys,” and this tends to be true for websites. When a person arrives on your website, you have less than 15 seconds to get their attention. They have to be interested enough to carry on browsing.

Most people won’t make any sort of special effort to learn more if your website leaves them confused. This might be because your messaging is confusing, or something like your site navigation is difficult to follow. People want to know what you offer, who for, and how they can get it very quickly.

The user experience or user interface is poor

Related to website confusion, if your UX or UI are poor, this can be another common barrier to purchase. Fortunately, when you use Squarespace to build a website, you get access to some awesome, professional templates. It’s still up to you to “fill in the blanks” in a way that makes sense. 

It helps to test your website on a third-party, preferably someone who would fit within your ideal target audience. See if they have any difficulties or barriers. If you sell things with a shopping cart, give careful attention to how easy that process is. Complexity can be one reason that customers abandon.

There’s no reason to trust your business

This particular barrier is huge. What makes you trust a website you haven’t seen before? Of the millions of websites out there, we know many are scam sites, so how do you get potential customers to trust you?

The answer here is that you have to add “trust elements” to your website. These are things that signal to customers that your business is legitimate and that you will give them a quality product or service. Some of those elements include:

• Social proof. People love to know that other people have bought and loved your product or service. You might include product reviews or client testimonials on your website to cover this.

• Security seals. When you use payment gateways, there are security seals you can use on your website to show you keep payment and customer details secure.

• Having a clear return policy. People want to know that they’re safe choosing a product because they’ll be able to return it if it isn’t suitable.

• Indicators that your website and social channels are kept up-to-date. If it looks like there haven’t been any signs of life for a long time, then people wonder if the business is legitimate. Making regular updates to your website and social media can help.

• Having clear ways to communicate with your business. If they need help, can they easily find it? For many people, the fear is that they won’t be able to get hold of someone if they’re unhappy.

• Using high-quality product images. Shoppers can’t pick things up and examine them like they would in a bricks and mortar store - high-quality images help them to see what they’re getting.

• Having detailed “about us” information. In general, people want to know who is behind the company and what they’re all about. This might include things like your values, experience and where the inspiration for the business came from. When writing this page, consider the question “why should they trust us?”

Those “surprise” charges

The average cart abandonment rate is somewhere around 69.57%.  A huge number (almost 60%) abandon because they were just browsing in the first place, but about 50% say they abandon because the extra costs were too high.

That’s what happens when they get to the cart and are surprised by shipping costs and/or taxes.

If you sell goods via a shopping cart, there are a few things you can do that might reduce that “sticker shock.” For example:

• Offer free shipping for orders above a certain value.

• Make shipping a flat rate (on a “win some, lose some” sort of basis as obviously some orders will cost more to ship).

• Offer shipping options. For example, free shipping might take longer to reach the customer, whereas they could also have the option of paying for faster shipping.

• Use free shipping as a promotional activity (for example, to grow your email list).

• Build shipping into your pricing somehow, so that it isn’t an extra charge at the end.

Shipping can be tricky. Amazon has created a widespread expectation of fast, free shipping, but you’re not Amazon! Most small businesses can’t swallow shipping charges entirely, so you need to find creative ways around it.

Some enticing Squarespace options

The idea is to remove or minimize anything that might create a barrier to purchase. Here are a few Squarespace plugins that can help:

Testimonial Slider Plugin

Build trust with your customers by giving them the social proof they want to see. This plugin is super-easy to set up and will appear as a slider on any page on your website. It’s fully responsive and comes with free email support.

Squarespace Yotpo Integration

Another integration for building trust with your customers. The Yotpo integration dynamically configures the Yotpo Review plugin for each product in your store, without you having to manually add and configure it for each product. This is, of course, a major time-saver as well as a good way to encourage individual product reviews.

Product Gallery Video

One barrier to purchase can be when customers don’t feel they’re getting a good enough look at a product before purchasing. They’re relying on a judgment of what they see online, rather than being able to pick something up and turn it over in a store. The Product Gallery Video plugin allows you to demonstrate a product via a video. Seeing a product in-use is a good way to encourage people to buy.

Product Image Rollover

This is another plugin to allow customers to get a closer look at the product. The plugin will display a product image in a bigger size when people roll over it.

Inventory Indicator

Sometimes the idea that a product might be a bit scarce can be enough to nudge a customer to make a purchase. The inventory indicator helps to create this urgency by displaying the quantity of a product that is left in stock. 

Get our tips for reducing cart abandonment here

Final thoughts

Your website needs to go beyond looking pretty - it needs to meet your goals, too. If one of those involves customers buying from you, then you need to consider what encourages them to purchase.

Building trust in your business is a huge factor, as is the usability of your website. People want to easily be able to source something from a trustworthy business. 

Think about this when you’re designing a website to encourage people to buy products or services - how will your user experience be better than the competition?