Boost conversions in your web-store with this one killer feature

If I know you right, you’re always fighting to get those conversions up, increase average basket size, and make your business more profitable.

Day after day, you show up at the office to see if you can find the golden ticket that’ll take your webstore to ecommerce heaven. Well, I have something good in store for you today … you better read on.

Okay, let’s take the bad news first.

There no such thing as a golden ticket that’ll save your business and make you rich, happy, and beautiful.

But you know what the next best thing is?

A simple fix that’ll increase the average basket size in your ecommerce store.

Something you’ll only have to do once, but will make you money week after week when you’ve set it up.

We’re going to talk about what happens when your customers put something in their basket on your site.

Ok, here we go:

Show related products.

It’s that simple!

When your customers put a product in the basket, instead of sending them directly to the checkout page (or worse, nothing happening), you introduce an extra step that shows them products related to their purchase.

With a more fancy term, it’s called personalized recommendations or, simply, personalization.

And a personalized shopping experience, that’s something we as human beings crave.

Studys show that 56 % of online shoppers are more likely to return to a site that recommends products, and 45 % of online shoppers are more likely to shop on a site that offers personalized recommendations.

This should be food for thought for any online entrepreneur.

I’m in. How do I do this?

You can implement this feature a billion different ways, so let’s be smart about it.

What happens when your customer puts something in the basket?

A nice illustration of the basket increasing? Do you send them directly to the basket with the option to continue to checkout or continue shopping?

Here’s what you should do instead:

When your customer puts an item in the basket, this is where your automated personalized shopping experience sets in – okay, that might be stretching it a bit.

But this is where you have a huge opportunity to upsell.

Show related products and give your customer a personalized recommendation.

You can either show the recommendations in a pop-up window or on a separate page (a so-called transfer page).

The choice is yours; but keep in mind that if you choose a separate page, you’ll be able to display more products than in a pop-up page (due to the larger screen size).

For this very reason, data suggests that the transfer page generates 3 times more revenue than the pop-up page.

Makes ya think, doesn’t it?

No matter which one you choose, dont' forget your customer!

She just did what you want every visitor to do: Put something in the basket. Therefore, you should show her that she did right.

Confirm her action by showing (clearly) that the product is now in the basket, and give her (clear) options to proceed to checkout or return to shopping.

Got it. Will do. But which products do I show?

Ah, now we’re getting down to the nitty-gritty.

If there are products that are related to the product in the basket, show them to your customer. This might be complementary products, e.g. showing a phone case when your customer purchased a phone.

Or if your customer did a bit of browsing before purchasing the product, you should consider showing her items from her browsing history. Maybe seeing that cool other option one more time is too tempting to resist …

You could also show most popular items or items that other customers have purchased with this product.

You need a bit of inspiration?

Alright, who do we go to when we need inspiration for best-practices in ecommerce? You’re absolutely right: Amazon.

And luckily, the awesome folks at Amazon have shared some insight on their personal recommendation algorithms: A little method called item-to-item collaborative filtering.

Go read it. I’m serious.

If by any chance you’re a developer working on optimizing an ecommerce store, you should read that article.

Amazon is the king of online shopping. This goes for personalized recommendations as well. Read the article. You’ll love it.

Alright, let’s sum up the key points here:

• Show your customers personal recommendations when they purchase a product.

• Implement an extra step before checkout: a transfer page or a pop-up page.

• Remember positive affirmations: Confirm that your customer did the right thing.

• Let the customer move forward: Provide links to the checkout and back to the store.

That’s it for today. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts and comments - join us on Facebook or Twitter.