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Welcome to BK Talks Business, the podcast where we dive into the world of entrepreneurship with practical insights and actionable tips. I'm BK, your host, a project and operations management professional, and I am thrilled to have you join me. Over the next 30 days, we'll be delving into 30 systems in 30 days. Each episode of this series is designed to be short, sweet and power-packed with valuable information geared at helping you get your business to run like a well-oiled machine, and at the end of 30 days, you will have a pretty good list of the systems in your business that, if optimized, can take you to the next level by being more efficient. Let's get started. Hello and welcome back to another episode.

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Today's system is for our online retailers e-commerce optimization. Have you ever pretended you were one of your customers on your site trying to buy something? Was it an enjoyable, appealing, easy experience? This could be a process that you create to evaluate every so often how easy it is for your customers, or your potential customers, to navigate your website. You could check where on your website they might be getting stuck or they may be being redirected to somewhere else where you did not intend. You want to create a system that checks these things so that your website converts scrollers into buyers more often than not, and when thinking about this particular system, you want to prioritize user experience. Your e-commerce website should be easy to navigate. It should be visually appealing and optimized for mobile devices. Most of the time, people are on their phones, so you need to make sure that your website, your products, look good even on a smaller screen.

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Test your checkout process Is it streamlined? Minimize page loading times. Make sure that product information is clear and concise so that the overall shopping experience is a pleasant one. Now, when you're on your website, remember you're looking at this through the eyes of a potential customer, so consider the quality of the product photos. Are the product descriptions compelling? Do they give you the information that you want? After reading the description, what questions do you still have? And visuals? Visuals play a crucial role in online shopping, so make sure your images are clear, of a high resolution, and that they showcase your products from multiple angles, even close up for somebody to get the sense of the texture, if that makes sense for your business.

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Another best practice is to implement a robust search and filtering system. Make sure it's easy for customers to find what they're Offering advanced search functionality, intuitive filters and sorting options. This helps reduce friction in the process and, overall, improves customer satisfaction, because they find what they're looking for a lot quicker. Another thing you want to think about is social proof and having that on your website, and this builds trust and credibility with your audience. So, incorporating customer reviews, ratings, testimonials throughout your website to showcase the positive experiences of past customers this goes a long way in helping to build trust and alleviate doubts from people who are still on the fence and they're not sure, and it encourages those hesitant shoppers to pull out their card and to make a purchase.

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So your e-commerce optimization strategy starts with conducting a comprehensive audit of your e-commerce platform. Maybe you, as the owner, or another person on your team, can do this. You can test your site, making sure that the journey it takes your potential customers is seamless and intuitive. Identify areas of improvement in user experience, website performance and conversion funnels. Do the placement of buttons make sense? Is that where you would expect them to be? Is there somewhere a customer might expect a button and it isn't there? So these are kind of the details that you're going to have to look into when you are thinking of how to. When you're auditing your site, you might even want to go as far as testing the checkout experience as well, and even beyond that.

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The actual shipping and fulfillment really test the journey from start to finish. I would want to know how my products are received, in what condition they are received in, how long it takes, et cetera, because this might mean I might need to make changes, right? If I find that my fulfillment company is maybe sloppy on the delivery, then I will need to make some changes or have some conversations around making sure that the quality that leaves my showroom or my desk is as good as when it gets to the customer. So this is a way that you can make sure and that you can be confident that you are wowing your customers each time they are receiving a package from you, even if you have third company partners within that chain, right? So, in addition to this, you can use tools like Google Analytics or heat mapping software to get an understanding of user behavior while on your website. What heat mapping does is to show you where website visitors are spending the most time, where they spend the least time on your site, and you'll be able to see where they drop off or click off your site, and then you can look to see why that is happening. If it is affecting your conversion, affecting your bottom line, then you really want to get to the bottom of why it is that they leave your site before making a purchase. So what this audit is going to help you get to the bottom of is where you need the most, where your site needs the most improvement. So you're going to focus on those areas with the highest potential for improvement, such as boosting those product pages, making sure your photos are the very best that you can afford, streamlining your checkout process or maybe even including personalized recommendations.

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Once you've made these tweaks and changes, continuously monitor and measure the impact on your e-commerce performance. So you want to track the key metrics over time. You want to analyze the results and then iterate your strategies based on what your data is telling you. Remember, system number 22 was data collection and analysis, so that you are making data-driven decisions rather than relying on what we feel or your gut. This optimization is an ongoing process, so be prepared to adapt and refine your approach as needed so your customers have the very best experience buying from you.

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So having a system for regular site checkup can help you continuously improve your platform, which will make it easier for your customers to navigate and to buy, leading to increased sales, higher conversions and improved customer satisfaction, and it also helps you stay competitive and really maximize the return on your investment for your online store. So that is it for today's episode of 30 systems in 30 days on BK Talks Business. I hope this episode gave you some ideas to implement for your e-commerce optimization system. Join me again tomorrow for another essential business system. I'll chat with you then. Bye for now.