3 Reasons why Amazon Sells More Products than You

Who wouldn’t want to be as successful as Amazon.com when it comes to moving merchandise online? I mean, let’s face it; $136 billion dollars in revenue for 2016 pretty much puts them in a while other class than most online retailers. To be honest, most of us don’t dream that big and that’s okay. On the other hand, wouldn’t it be nice to know how they managed to get where they are, so you could boost your own online sales just a bit?

The good news is that the reasons these Internet giants achieve numbers like those come down to a few. I’m not talking about TV advertising or huge, expensive marketing schemes or even affiliate programs. What I’m referring to are proven, honest tactics that anyone with an online storefront can – and should – use to turn shoppers into buyers, which translates into sales. What’s more, there’s a simple tool that can help you get the job done.

It’s All About Conversion

Obviously, you need traffic to your website in order to generate sales. On the other hand, there’s no point in bringing visitors in if they don’t purchase. Your site’s conversion rate is actually more important than the amount of visitors you have. Let’s look at three common reasons that you may not be converting visitors into customers. Then we’ll talk about how the right kind of site search tools can make an astounding difference.

photo/ Manuel Alejandro Leon via Pixabay

Reason 1: People don’t find what they’re looking for – quickly.

You might have guessed this would be the first in line. In most cases, this is the number one factor in turning an online shop into a successful enterprise. It’s also one of the problems that Amazon offers a brilliant solution for and has for a very long time.

Think about it: when you visit their site, there’s a big, prominent bar right in front of you. It’s not just another on site search, either. Whatever you’re looking for in this gargantuan marketplace, all you need to do is start typing. You’ll find that the most popular searches come up as suggestions as soon as you’ve typed a few characters and as you continue to type, the suggestions refine themselves.

Most shoppers are going to see what they want to find pretty darned quickly within those suggestions. There’s no need to start by clicking on categories or browse an extensive catalog. Just type a few characters and, “Voila!” there’s the stuff you’re looking to buy.

Smart search: So, what we’re talking about is a website search engine that not only uses the users’ input to find what they want, but stores and analyzes the data. That data is then used to automatically generate suggestions for future customers, to make finding the right merchandise a breeze. You may or may not notice that it also sorts those suggestions in order of popularity, weighted by the customer’s geographical location and personal preferences.

You don’t have to be a programmer or spend a lot of money to add this kind of search engine functionality to your shop. I’m going to tell you how. For now, keep reading, because there are still a couple of important things you need to know.

Reason 2: You don’t offer what people are buying.

No matter what kind of merchandise you’re selling, there are constantly-changing buying trends among the buying public. Big merchandisers like Amazon track and use these buyers’ shopping habits to determine what items they offer. It’s one of the most important jobs in merchandising.

Fortunately, they don’t have to manually pore over sales records and build charts, etc. to decide what products to “put on your shelves”. Would you like to know how Amazon does it? With their search engine. When a user searches for something and doesn’t find it, that data is recorded, too. If enough people don’t find something, you can bet that it will be available on their storefront soon. Not only that, it will probably be heavily advertised and prominent on their front page.

Know what’s hot: You can have this same capability on your web store, too. The site search tool I’m going to introduce you to will help you round out your inventory with the products people are looking for. By using this feature, you can offer the right merchandise at the right time. Instead of giving your buyers the same, stale choices, you can show them the hottest items on the market and constantly freshen your promotions.

Reason 3: Choosing and Buying aren’t easy enough.

Customers should easily recognize the right product when it comes up in the search results. Remember, humans are visually-oriented animals. Your prospective buyer with a product in mind will look at pictures rather than read descriptions. When he or she sees the right one, chances are good they’ll want to just jump right into the buying process.

Amazon does a great job with their search results, displaying thumbnail images and brief descriptions. Users can scan through the list quickly and focus only on the listings with photos that look like what they want. Unfortunately, when you find the right one, you’ll have to go to the full description page and then return to the listing if it wasn’t the right product after all.

Quick Details: Here’s where you can actually one-up the big names. Your website search results can offer a Quick View option that lets a shopper see the full details of a product in a popup window, and just close it if it isn’t the right one. No “lost places”. No looking for a back button. Even better, you can enable your buyers to buy a product directly from that popup window, too. It doesn’t get any easier than that for people that know exactly what they want.

The Solution

I’m finally going to let you know about the site search tools I’ve been talking about. It’s actually a single solution and it’s incredibly easy, versatile and valuable for anyone running an online store on any e-commerce platform. The name of the application is Site Search and it delivers everything I’ve discussed above and more.

For the shoppers, it gives your site one of the fastest, most intuitive on site search mechanisms you’ve ever seen. Just a few keystrokes will get them where they want to go and it can even offer some ideas they might not have had. It’s cloud-based, so it performs all its operations with impressive speed. It lets your visitors find, view and purchase your products faster than you can say “increased profits”.

For you, it delivers a fantastic set of data collection and analysis tools that can increase your conversion rate almost immediately after you install it. It automatically creates and sorts suggestion lists. It creates clear, simple charts for you to see what’s hot, what’s not and what you need to order. No more flying blind in cyberspace.

This amazing, customizable app works on any platform and it won’t increase your server load. It’s the best thing you can do for your web store. Get all the details and add Site Search to your store today!

Author: Charlie Brown