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“I was just in the right place, at the right time.”

How many times have we heard that? When it comes to ecommerce, successful marketing is all about timing and having your site be in the right place when it matters.

When potential customers hit your site, you may not know where they are in the buyer’s journey. They could be doing some preliminary research for a purchase that is months (or even years!) away, they could be looking to purchase at that very moment, or they could be anywhere in between. Without knowing where they are, your site still needs to be able to give them what they need to move towards conversion – whether that happens right away or years from now.

Some of the timing will be pure luck, sure; however, there are some things you can do to set the foundation and cultivate luck. It can be difficult to find a four-leaf clover, but, with the right environment, you can grow an entire field of four-leaf clovers for your site.

These five things will help you prepare your site for an influx of “luck:”

1. Data for better decision-making.

You need to know what’s going on when it comes to your site. With analytics, you’ll be able to monitor traffic to see who is visiting your site, where they’re coming from, where they’re dropping off, and how they’re interacting with your site. This is all valuable information for building out personas, developing traffic channels, improving user experience, and developing attractive conversion pathways.

2. A conversion path for every persona.

You don’t want to overwhelm your visitors with choices. If your customer is ready to buy right now, you don’t want to get in their way or distract them with something else. However, if your customer is “just looking,” you don’t want to lose them by not serving their needs or trying to follow up. Because you don’t know where a customer is when they hit your site, you need to provide some options for them. These are your different CTAs (calls-to-action) and conversion pathways.

If they’re just doing research, having an updated blog with useful information may be all they want right now. So, how do you capture that business? Offer them a useful eBook in exchange for their contact information, present a form allowing them to subscribe to your blog to stay updated with fresh information, or create some other kind of appealing offer for them. Whichever option they choose, you’ll be able to keep in touch with that customer and build a relationship so, when they’re ready to purchase, they’ll come to you (and maybe bring some friends along for the ride).

3. Speed.

Things happen fast – your site needs to keep up or you’ll miss out. Being in the right place at the right time means keeping up with the changes and keeping up with your customer. Compressing images, reducing the amount of flash elements on the page, and ensuring you have enough bandwidth to handle any traffic load will keep your site loading quickly. A speedy site means your customers won’t be frustrated by slow load times, meaning they’ll stay on your site longer to explore. Customers can change their decisions at the drop of a hat; with multiple conversion pathways and the speed to keep up, you’ll be able to attract them at any stage.

4. Keep things simple & easy.

Everything, from your site’s general design to the structure of the main navigation to the content you include, should be created and built with your user in mind. Make it as easy as possible for customers to get around your site and make it clear what they’ll see when they get there (this means naming your pages correctly and organizing your products into proper categories). Put your contact information where they can easily find it, in case they need it. Sometimes simply having that information highly visible is enough to build a little trust. Go the extra mile to make sure that, when a customer hits your site, they have no reason to leave.

5. Market intelligently.

Sometimes being in the right place at the right time is simply making sure your site shows up in the SERPs (search engine results pages) when your customers are searching. To get there, you need to be intelligent and consistent with your marketing efforts. This means: following Google’s Webmaster Guidelines to stay within best practices, putting user experience at the top of the list, completing all on-page elements (title tag, meta description, alt tags, rich snippets, etc.), completing & creating unique product descriptions, getting involved on social, consistently creating valuable content, and more.

Keep your user in mind as you make decisions for your site and you’ll position yourself to come out on top. Once you have the data available to know your customers, you can create a site they’ll truly love to visit & explore, and, in doing so, you’ll create an environment full of four-leaf clover moments.