1. Make The Most Popular Products Visible

ZenCart is a great platform for selling substantial amounts of products (which is one of the biggest selling points of ZenCart Over Other Platforms). While this is great and If done properly can help you increase your sales, most shops are just not getting the conversion levels they want.

One of the biggest reasons for this is that the stores do not advertise their biggest sellers clearly enough. Go on the front page of your Zencart shop and ask yourself “Is the product(s) most people buy the first thing I notice”. If the answer is no, then you would benefit from a change.

ZenCart has a built-in sales report function found under admin > reports > products sold. Use this tool to generate a list of your top sellers and make sure they are front and centre on your website. I used this trick on a client’s shop –  “products of the week” which I coded in 3 of the top selling product ids to show right under the front page banner.

  1. Make Sure Your Shipping Costs Are Obvious

We all know how annoying it is when you get to the checkout only to be faced with a ridiculously high postage cost, or even worse it doesn’t show up until you are just about to pay. Most shoppers at this stage will drop off your shop entirely. ZenCart is built in with a “shipping and returns” page as standard. Ensure you select or code your template to either have a link to this page on the header or a banner on every page of your site.

You can simply edit one of the default banners in ZenCart admin > tools > banner manager and produce a graphic with your shipping costs and link to your shipping information page.

Another tip would be to add tabs to the product display pages. The picture below is off of one of my ZenCart templates with the shipping and returns tab integrated to every product.

  1. Use A Clear Product Description Page

The second point brings me nicely onto the third… The ZenCart Default classic template comes with an extremely poor product display page. If you have not changes this, by doing so you can hope to see far better site performance.

I like to use what is known as an “action box” which is a summary of all the basic product information that someone interested may need to see. I like to use this either to the left or the right of the product pictures and make sure it all fits in one screen. This would ideally include – reviews, product name, product model, any attributes, add to cart and a small description of product overview points if needed.

Below this have the bulkier product description and pdfs that a customer may require. Anyone interested will typically read on so no need to try and cram everything into a small space – just the important stuff!

  1. Make Use Of ZenCarts Multiple Image Function

This is a Very simple point but one that many forget! Humans are becoming more and more visually driven and before purchasing a product online want to see several images or videos of what ever they are considering handing over their money for.

ZenCart Comes with a very easy to use multiple Image function straight out of the box! Firstly, make sure your images are the same dimensions (this will ensure that the thumbnails render and look even on the product display page).

Secondly, using the admin upload your main product image in the normal way in the product edit section – for this example we will call it “product.jpg”

Lastly, either using ftp or file manager in your control panel go to the directory the main image was loaded into and upload your multiple images. To make them link you would simply name them “product_2.jpg”. “product_3.jpg” etc.

You will end up with something like the image below depending on the ZenCart template you have used.

  1. Keep Your Checkout As Short & Simple As Possible

My fifth and final point for this short blog is a huge one! Customers now expect extremely streamlined and simple checkouts. This is an area I would highly recommend spending time and effort into improving on your store.

The default ZenCart template and many others I’ve seen for that matter use long and clunky checkout pages for which there is absolutely no need.

There are two solutions I would advise implementing. Firstly, making use of paypals express checkout is one quick way to speed up the ZenCart checkout process. This is configured under payment methods in the admin. The only downside to this is it does encourage more paypal payments which typically incur higher transaction costs than card payments.

The second implementation I would advise is a one-page checkout system to be coded either from your web developer or using a ZeCart plugin. Myself and my team developed a lightweight solution called the ZenCart AJAX One Page Checkout (details of which can be found here).

By decreasing the time and complexity of the checkout experience for customers you can likely expect to see vastly higher conversion rates. One of the most frustrating pages for customers dropping off sites is the checkout page – The good news is this is relatively simple to fix!

That’s a wrap on my 5 simple steps to increase sales on your ZenCart Store.

I want to ensure that the effort gone into listing and creating your website is not wasted by some simple adjustments and overlooked tricks.

If you have any questions or comments do not hesitate to email me and please leave a comment below.

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