There are a plethora of ways to attract visitors to your website by giving many incentives for online shoppers – special offers, free shipping, discount vouchers or competitions.

But which incentives and features of a web site help convert online sales the most? Once you’ve attracted your visitors and got them engaged, how can you ensure they stay and buy your products?

During our past years of testing we have gained experience in this field and have proven theories that work to help improve conversion rates and decrease shopping cart abandonment rates. The online user experience is now more important than ever

Here are a few tips to helping convert your visitors to sales, improve user experience and reduce shopping cart abandonment.

If you have say a childrens toys shop, make sure you state the age range of the toy and any safety features

Having a picture image of the product they are buying through out the payment process can certainly help. We found that less users left our clients websites at the shopping cart stage if this was the case.

Ensure that you show all your costs at the shopping cart stage;delivery costs, VAT and any special discounts. If possible, show when the item will be delivered by stating the date, not just the delivery time. Provide express delivery as an option.

Show that your website is secure and the payment methods you accept. There is nothing worse than getting to the final payment page and realising that the website does not accept your credit card (eg. American Express). Paypal is now becoming a popular and secure way for people to pay – you could be turning away upto 15% of customers if you don’t cater for a paypal payment method.

Don’t use the words ‘Buy’ on your button to add items to the basket. Customers don’t want to commit at this stage so instead use ‘add’ or ‘add to basket’ as an alternative.

Another important factor is to show how many stages there are in the payment process, so users know where they are and how far they have got to go to complete their order.

If your ecommerce system allows, give the option for express checkout that only asks for limited information – the quickest route to payment is a good way of accelerating the customer process to completion.

One of our clients was www.toysgamesgifts.com and just by adding their telephone number on their website helped improve online sales especially at christmas time when some customers preferred to call to check if they would get the item in time for xmas.

To enhance trust and credibility, show feedback and customer ratings on product pages and/or the home page. This will aid the conversion of new customers who haven’t shopped with you previously.

And finally, if you are upselling products, don’t use pop up adverts;they are just annoying and mostly ineffective. If you are wanting to relay these types of messages, try using hover ads – they dont get blocked by pop up blockers and are less intrusive to the user.