Given the increased traffic to ecommerce websites during the holiday season, your site is likely to see more visitors than usual. But how can you convince holiday shoppers that they should buy from you instead of another online store? Here are some tips on how to convert more of those shoppers into actual buyers.

• Focus on trust. With data breaches in the news, shoppers are on the alert for any sign that an ecommerce site isn’t taking every precaution possible to protect their information. If you’re not a known brand, site visitors may also have concerns that they won’t receive their order or that their information will be sold to others who will pepper them unmercifully with marketing materials.

Trust factors you can include on your ecommerce site include:

• Secure payment validations
• Information about tracking numbers and shipping timelines
• Statements about company policy regarding selling email addresses, physical addresses, and phone numbers to other organizations
• Frequently Asked Questions page
• Prominent contact information, including a phone number

• Create a sense of urgency. This is particularly important during the time of year when shoppers are likely to be anxious over finding the perfect gift. Close the sale by letting shoppers know when only a small quantity of an item is still in stock.

Writing great product descriptions helps create a sense of urgency too; emotion is an important part of the buying process. If your product descriptions are just a few lines long, they won’t entice users to stay on the site or compel them to make purchases. If competitors are offering similar items at the same or a lower price, it will be tough to stand out without product descriptions that make it clear why buying from you is the best value.

• Help your customers shop. The key is to actually be helpful, not pushy. Customers are savvy enough to realize it immediately when a “Frequently Purchased With” grouping doesn’t make sense, for example. Other constructive ways to help your customers include:

• People Also Viewed
• Q&A (you can post the answers to user questions on your product pages or use them to revise product descriptions)
• Care instructions and/or demo videos
• Reviews (entered by users; these are far more effective than Testimonials that prospective customers know you could have added yourself)

Product reviews on DanielGreen.com draw the user’s attention immediately.

• Make sure your site is optimized for all types of shoppers, including mobile. A recent study found that the conversion rate for smartphone shoppers on mobile-optimized sites is 160% higher than the rate for smartphone shoppers on non-optimized sites.

What does “optimized” mean? No matter how good your marketing is or how amazing your products are, online shoppers are impatient and will quickly abandon your ecommerce site if pages load too slowly or are difficult to navigate. Be sure to plan for increased site traffic over the holiday season.

• Make checkout easy. Have you ever abandoned a cart because shipping costs were unclear or because you had to complete a long profile? Your prospective customers will too. As they proceed through checkout, their anxiety over completing the sale will increase. Don’t give them a reason to ease their nervousness by simply leaving the site without buying. Be transparent about shipping costs and make the checkout process as simple and fast as possible.

Check back soon for more great tips on managing your ecommerce store!