Ten Ways to Enrich an e-Commerce Website
My mid-year shopping needs seem to have surged, and my app-heavy smartphone has slowed down, reminding me to update and clear out unwanted data from the hard drive. Thank god for the e-commerce websites else, I would be waiting endlessly at the queues in the nearby supermarkets to buy groceries to restock my mid-year household inventory.
As per recent stats, it turns out that I am not the only one who is looking at e-commerce sites to simplify my shopping woes. Nearly 60 percent of the global mobile device usage accounted for retail and e-commerce sites visits in just the first quarter of this year! Of those visits, about 41 percent visits generated online shopping orders, suggests Statista.
Even in the app-driven world, e-commerce sites are a blessing in many ways and remain the default platform for retailers to engage in digital trade. To overcome the competition and conversion challenges, e-commerce firms undoubtedly need to take additional initiatives by optimizing sites for higher engagement and performance.
Profitability and sales are not the only motivation factors to create a responsive e-commerce site. As a regular shopper who sometimes prefers browsing e-commerce sites via mobile devices and desktop over downloading apps, I find the scope for improving the e-commerce websites are plenty for better customer experience and satisfaction. Listed below are some of the strategies that retailers and e-commerce firms should adopt to enrich their e-commerce websites:
Increase Site Speed:
It is not very uncommon to find online visitors abandoning purchases and leaving a site if the loading takes too long. On average, it takes 22 seconds to fully load a mobile landing page and almost 53 percent of browsers tend to leave the page if it takes over three seconds to load. Longer the loading speed, higher the mobile battery and data usage for a visitor’s standpoint. Therefore, retailers and e-commerce firms need to give a serious thought about scripts, tracking codes, ads in addition to HTML files, images, and content that determine the site weight and loading speed.
Easy Navigation:
Shoppers hate it when it takes too much jumping across pages for browsing through products, making payments, tracking orders or keying in relevant details for online buying. E-commerce developers should minimize the time needed to navigate across pages by including features like search bars, auto complete features, sorting options and product or services filters that not only simplify search but also motivate buyers to engage in re-purchase on the e-Commerce site.
Timely and High-quality Content:
The availability of products and services on omni-channels drive shoppers to research online before they go into e-commerce stores to buy. By optimizing e-commerce websites with rich and high-quality content like blogs, customer reviews, videos, images and product information, customers will have a single source to help them in the decision of online shopping. Moreover, updating the site with new, trending content and brief visual aids help keep the shopper interested and motivated to revisit the site for browsing and buying.
- Each product description and image serve as a marketing copy that reveals important details to customers to aid them in their purchases. Therefore, e-commerce websites have good hi-resolution images with zoom capabilities, 360-degree rotation and video content with clear audio and visuals to provide customers with a real description of products’ materials, color, dimensions, etc.
Easy Checkout and Safe Payment Process:
Customers are more likely to leave shopping if the checkout and payment process is too complicated and requires too many steps. It is better to inform them beforehand with concise instructions on steps for payment and checkout in FAQs or with necessary information and call of action buttons like view in-cart products, account signup, suggestions for other items, payment options, shipping options, delivery date, etc.
Responsive Customer Support and Self-service Options:
E-commerce sites with responsive customer support services to solve grievances, conflicts and answer customer queries on a number of communication channels like emails, phone calls, notifications and SMSs make buyers feel valued. E-Commerce sites need to balance their marketing communication without thrusting too many campaign and promotional messages and display equal fervor in solving customers’ problems. In addition, it is best to provide self-service options like FAQs, options to raise request tickets and chat windows to proactively address customers’ problems.
Social Media Integration:
- Social media is the fastest route taken by e-commerce companies to garner customers’ attention, drive more traffic to their websites and communicate and test marketing strategies and ad campaigns. Social media integration is not only a cost-effective way of achieving the target audience and sales, it serves as an effective communication channel to inform potential customers about the brands, products and services and other details that enable quick conversion, better revenue generation, and customer loyalty.
Customer Feedback and Review Section:
Customer reviews increase the authenticity of products and make e-commerce website more reliable for potential and new customers. Review and feedbacks are also great for impacting the sales of a particular product or service and make customers’ selection easier and more informed.
Increase Search Ranking with SEO:
- SEO is the most essential bit that helps an e-commerce website become popular by Back-linking to the domains and organically increasing the visibility of site on search results by using keywords. SEO strategies also include long-form content like blogs, link-worthy content, videos, etc.
Personalize Email Marketing:
- Email marketing and promotional messages play a primary role in reminding customers to engage in online shopping. E-commerce companies should implement methods that help make the email marketing content more personalized and directed to the customers by regularly sending them the notifications and reminders on products similar to their past purchases, recommendations, product review requests, discounts, and offers, etc.
If you are a small or medium sized business looking to create a digital footprint through an e-Commerce website, it is necessary to make the above-mentioned tweaks for optimal results. As for big brands, e-Commerce development solutions are always tasked to optimize their existing websites to remain on par with mobile e-Commerce apps.