One thing’s for sure, it’s tough out there. Despite the fact that the recession has officially ended, the second quarter can be difficult for a lot of retailers: Holiday season sales are over and its not quite summer, there are very few gift buying holidays coming up. Depending on your industry, you may have to give shoppers an extra push to turn them into buyers. These are some of the best tips and tricks I have to optimize your website to increase conversions and turn casual browsers into real shoppers.

1. Remove the barriers to buying: Think of all the reasons consumers would have doubts about purchasing from you: getting the best price, worrying  that the product might not be right for them are things buyers think about before they click the buy now button. Address these issues; Money back guarantees or best price guarantees ease the fears of potential buyers.
2. Create a limited time offer: Verbiage like “Limited Time Offer”, “Blowout”, and “Outlet Sale” create urgency. Using “Today” rather than “List Price” or “Sale Price” implies that the price could change at any time, so your buyers should lock in deals now. Also, a little javascript coding can go a long way. Placing some code that says “This price is guaranteed until 11:55 pm on [Today’s Date]” where today’s date changes automatically creates the illusion that the regular price could expire or change soon.
3. Keep pricing current: Use an XML file to make sure that all your pricing on comparison shopping search engines and Google Shopping is current. This lessens the chance that someone will click on an item only to discover that it’s a different price then was advertised, and keep your bounce rates down.
4. On-Site Comparisons: There are tons of sites where shoppers compare prices before making a big purchase: Shopping.com, Nextag, Shopzila are all designed to offer real time pricing comparisons to help shoppers find the best deal. But have you discovered Winbuyer.com? Unlike the other shopping referral engines, Winbuyer offers an html app that allows you to put real time product pricing comparisons directly on your site. It’s true that you might send a sale directly to one of your competitors, but you can also increase buyer confidence, and reassure shoppers that they are in fact making the best decision when purchasing from your website.
5. Retargeting Advertising: Not so long ago, Fetchback and a handful of other expensive companies were the only ones doing retargeting, but recently Google has gotten into the behavioral advertising game as well. Retargeting advertising works like this: when a visitor comes to your website, a cookie is embedded on their computer, whenever they visit a site that’s part of the ad network, they’re flashed an ad for your site. This helps increase your return visitors and reminds them what you sell. Retargeting can be done right in Adwords and all ads are PPC based.

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