A Closer Look: How to Improve Your Magento Store?

How to make your business most profitable? That’s easy: let your customers feel most comfortable! And how that is done - this is the real question.

Today we want to share a priceless post from Inchoo. Just to remind you and ourselves how we all can make our customers happier and more satisfied with our online stores.

Home Page

The one rule that can be applied here would be “Don’t over do it”. Many times you wish that you could show everything to the user (mostly for the first time user) so you try bringing it all out. In many cases that is not the best solution. Here are several reasons why and what to do about it:

- Too many products – You can’t show them all, rather give a hint with a few featured products, selected products, new arrivals in an eye-catching manner. Big image or a slideshow will solve the problem for the user trying to find his way around and actually enter the shop. Once she/he is in, the home page served it’s purpose: Showing the way inside the store.
- Over categorization – When presenting the categories for the store you should be concise as much as possible with only top-level categories presented. Make the case even stronger by representing those categories with images and text for easy navigation and “Decision making”. It’s all about reducing the “Time to think” factor mentioned above.
- No updates or news – Either being a regular or a first time user everybody likes to see that you’re alive and kicking. Use Twitter updates or a Facebook update or simply pull some headlines from your company blog. Anything that can help you with presenting yourself to the public should be utilized.
- Static is sooo out-of-date – If you have a video about your product or company that is actually worth watching on the front page, place it adequately or you can make it as big as a house if you have a flashy animation/video that will excite and motivate someone enough to see it and do something about it afterwards.

Category Page

Show me what you got - but let me decide how much I need to see at once.
The same principle as on the homepage, don’t over do it. If I want to see all of your 10000 products in one category on one page, well then I’m the one over doing it. If you let me see only 10 by 10 products out of those 10000 products, then you’re arresting my shopping experience.

Find the balance and everybody’s happy.
Thankfully, Magento lets the store owner and the shopper meet half-way with options for numbers of products to show as well as sorting them by attributes or whatever suits your/their needs.

I’ve found the product – Let me buy now!
The look and feel of this page and the use of “Buy Now!” or “Add to cart” can dramatically affect user’s experience and convert it into “I’m their customer now” kind of experience if you let the shoppers who already found their product make the purchase. It’s all about who you’re talking to, right?

The Product Page

And now, impress me!
First impression is what makes the sale so make that one a success. No matter if your product is “simple” enough to have “only a few” color options present it with the best photo/illustration/3D render you can and describe it well.

Image is everything so try to put enough valuable images of the product as you can.
Note: Don’t save on getting the best photo/illustration/3D render, you only get one shot so do it right.
There are some additional recommendations you should follow that can be easily overlooked during the site planning:

• Price – Make it clearly visible, don’t try to “minimize” it visually. Add to Cart button – Make it clear as the summer sky: big, bright and very visible but of course, don’t over do it:) This one should be used instead of the “Add to Wishlist” button cause it doesn’t stay in the way of user’s purchasing decision.
• Payment – Provide as many payment options necessary: Paypal, Google Checkout, all major CreditCards, money orders etc. Magento has lots of payment gateways built-in for that so use them as many you need.
• Sharing – Allow the users to send this product to the ones that can actually buy it if they are not interested or want their parents to buy it for them, maybe?

Highly recommended for the product page would be of course “Recommended products”. Hey, I like it when the salesman does his job and finds something interesting for me. Do you? Magento has that built-in also as “Related products” placed cunningly in the sidebar and sits patiently there while you examine the product and decide in the next second to look what your “Online salesman” believes is related to that product.

My Shopping Cart

In a great situation where your customer has more than two products already in the cart, she/he is maybe considering to buy more of the same product with or without removing other items. Make sure you provide enough visual cues for adding as well as removing items from the cart.
This IS the way to do it ’cause you don’t go around the “Real shop” and stop people from returning the product back on the shelf.

The Checkout Page

Keep it simple – don’t make me dwell or register, please :)
Checkout business should feel fast, secure and with my shipping options presented well and understandable.

If there’s something not available at that moment or for the particular product, let me know and give me options. Especially for the shipping and handling.

Don’t require registration before the purchase except if it is “really” necessary for some reason. Rather provide some easier and widely acceptable ways of connecting through:

Facebook connect
It is possible to allow your clients to register with their existing facebook account. This provides comfort, ease of use and friendly approach for the shopper and by default relieves her/him of those tedious tasks of reentering the same data again, registering for a new account etc. Yes, it is good as it sounds and you should get on that train right now.

Now look back at your store. Found some ideas for improvement? Then go and do it now!
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