The Right Approach to Build a Successful Ecommerce Website

What in your opinion is an online shop? Is it a secretly running website lost on the world wide web with some fascinating product pictures and a seemingly successful checkout function? Or your way of pacifying yourself by saying “I am an ecommerce store owner and I certainly run with today’s times.”

Well, looking at the expert predictions of 2 trillion sales expected in two years, it should be way beyond that! In 2017 and 2018, the total projected U.S. retail ecommerce sales are expected to be around $440.4, and $491.5 billion, respectively. So whether you already have an online store or are looking forward to have one, it’s high-time to get your foot into the right door.

You might already have resources to provide you with ecommerce development solutions and the potential to run an ecommerce store. But in order to scale it up, you need to put in a lot of time and efforts. We are here with some powerful ingredients that will help you reach the intended zeniths. So here we go with the powerful recipe!

Go On a Customer Hunt

Oh yes, you need to find out where your customers hang out, why and what entices them. Don’t spend too much time working on ecommerce marketing strategies that do not work. Sometimes marketers undertake endless promotional activities on social media which manifests into nothing.

Instead, consider getting in touch with some deal sites. Conduct research, contact these website owners and partner with them. Promote your offers and discount schemes through these websites. This can work wonders for startups establish themselves in the market and customers will come looking for you. However, it is not the only way to establish your foothold in the market. Once you have figured out where your ROI comes from, you are good to go that way.

Mobile Mobile Mobile

“GO MOBILE!” Experts have been saying this forever now. If you want to know how HUGE mobile commerce will become is going to get; take a look at the total e-commerce sales last year – which is $638 billion , according to The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (a multinational investment banking firm). This includes retail sales done from tablets, desktops, smartphones, smart TVs etc.

And what about m-commerce sales? Ladies and gentleman, by the year 2018, the figure is going to reach $626 billion. Which means, web sales carried out only on smartphones and tablets will match up with web sales on every computing machine from before 5 years.

Here’s a sneak peek into the evolution of m-commerce sales on smartphones over the years. The projected m-commerce sales on smartphones, smartphone percent of mobile sales, m-commerce sales on tablets, and tablet percent of mobile sales, according to Goldman Sachs are:

It’s time to make your website Mobile responsive folks!

Treat It Like an Offline Store

How keen, enthusiastic and full of anticipation were you when you had your offline store? In fact, you took care of it like it was your baby. An offline store, ain’t no a hobby dearest! Ideally, you should make as much money from it as you would with your offline store. So start dealing with it like it is no less than a brick-and-mortar store.

Conceptualize, plan and execute strategies and start making decisions that would help your online business grow. Only then you would be able to carve your niche in this humongous ecommerce market. Get good product reviews, add great pictures, plan contests and competitions and offer excellent support!

Integrate the Right Software

Most of the websites today are built on Magento based platforms. Having a Magento ecommerce website is good enough. But do you have extended functionalities that would give a seamless shopping experience to your customers?

If not, then you can get in touch with ecommerce website development companies and discuss your requirements with them. Some of these companies also provide extensions and plugins that help you take your store to a whole another level.

Software and extensions that take care of scalability, security and usability are most sought after. Analyze the glitches you and your customer face, jolt them down and discuss with the experts. They will definitely be able to help you. All the best with that!

Allow Guest Sign Ups

Nobody likes to undergo a prolonged procedure of creating an account, filling a form and signing up. I mean, imagine doing it every time you want to sign up for a new store! Lengthy account creation is what people dread and it is one of the major reasons why people prefer to shop from the same e-stores.

Solution?

One click guest sign up! Help online shoppers to check in as guest, make their purchases quickly and sign out easily.

Take Apple Store; for example. It’s guest checkout features enables buyers to purchase products from Apple without an Apple ID. They can add the items they like to purchase to the cart, enter shipping information and click the “Place Order Now” button.

Does that sound like something you can do?

Make Checkout Easy

Complicated check out procedure leads to frustration and Cart Abandonments. Checkout procedure should be such that even a juvenile can handle. Don’t create opportunities for your customers to check out the products of your competitors.

Undertake the steps given below to make an ideal checkout process:

1. Lessen the number of checkout screens
2. Offer cheapest default shipping option
3. Cut down the number of form fields and use auto-fill
4. Offer different ways to make payments apart from the common ways (PayPal and Amazon)

How about getting some more advice from experts?

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you should not wait for visitors and customers to magically line up on your store. Take action and choose winnable niches. Also, conduct user testing at regular intervals to know how your site is performing.

Did you find these tips useful? Feel free to share your thoughts with us.

Original Source View: https://www.biztechcs.com/blog/right-approach-build-successful-ecommerce-website/

Is Personalized Shopping Forthcoming Generation Trend?

“Online shopping” are the words that can excite millions of users as well as scare many. As we all know there are pros and cons of every aspect and so is the case with eCommerce applications. But, in this case the myriad of benefits overshadow comes its scary side. Majority of the world’s population, surrounded by technology all the time, uses smart ways to live life. Online shopping is a smart way to spend money as per their desires, they believe! They are absolutely correct. Modern age shopaholics refer to eCommerce website for product quality and price. They can get better deal for the products as compared to brick and mortar shops.

They get better deal, better price, superfine quality and home delivery. Don’t you think these benefits are enough for one who wishes to buy a product from another country? Well, we all are aware of the scenario in which eCommerce web solutions are replacing bricks and mortar stores gradually.

Personalized Shopping Experience is New eCommerce Tactic!

Getting personalized shopping experience is what every shopper expects from eCommerce giants. Getting too personal with the customers will definitely annoy them. Online stores track customer’s browsing history and sell crucial customer data to the third party. They make the worst use of it by annoying the customers to a great extent.

Buyer like getting store discounts, real-time deals, complimentary items, compare price of the products prior to adding it to their shopping cart. Around 60% of the customers like personalized shopping but majority of them hates getting too personal. But, this percentage ratio may vary for different countries.

Customers avoid visiting online stores tracking their locations, feedbacks for their personal choices. They can even believe to what the store tells not to buy, due to some reasons. For instance an online medical store owner may ask their customers to avoid some drugs that may harm their health and the millennial do consider this as personalized suggestion. They are recommended the items that suit their taste, budget and are beneficial.

Is Personalized Approach Better than Generalized?

Well, if we start comparing both the approaches, we would find more reasons why companies are getting personalized. They use emails to send customers, who are specific about the deals, discounts or recommendation.

Who would not like the attention? Modern eCommerce business marketer uses this fact to improve business strategies. For all the attention seeker online buyers, personalized approach boosts their shopping experiences.

Whereas, this might not be the case with generalized shopping experience where store owners treat every customer equally. They use a generalized marketing strategy that might not work well in the eCommerce era where getting personal means more business!

Verdicts

Personalized shopping experience can be the next eCommerce trend that is set to change the online shopping phase completely. Buyer’s choice and affordability would be the most crucial aspects, eCommerce marketers need to focus in near future.

Customer Behavior - What does it Actually Teach?

Customers' online behavior matters to the overall business of any enterprise. There are several factors impacting the overall business performance and customer behavior is one of the most vital one. Be it an online or an offline business, buying decision depends on customer behavior. To study purchase decision, modern businesses conduct several surveys, which helps them design unbeatable marketing strategies in harmony with customer behavior. It is observed that customers avoid thinking much while buying products of lesser value. Market analysts research the market to find the factual data that would help building strategies to take business to the next level.

Let us learn about the customer behavior that can give a clear view about how a customer makes buying decision?

Need Based Purchases

What makes customers decide to buy products or services? Until they are in need of such product they aren't going to buy it. This could be the obvious answer. Actually, this is not true for every customer. It is applicable to special type of buyer that does not buy without a cause. This could be the first step of the decision making process.

Extensive Online Research Based Purchases

Once the situation is created, product to be bought is already decided. Now the question is which is a good brand to rely upon? The answer to this question is, are your customers buying the product for the first time or are they simply changing the product for better functioning. If they are buying the product for the first time, they need to research the entire market. But if they are changing the product, they might be aware some brands when buying the previous product. Both the cases require thorough research.

Internet is the huge market to find and buy the products of their choice. The biggest advantage of using internet to shop is, they get variety in almost every factor like brands, product types, price, quality etc. Who would go to the brick and mortar store and buy the products when the product can reach your customers in just few clicks? Even the current scenario of eCommerce development industry states that technology is the future.

Evaluation of Purchase Alternatives

This can be the next step of the decision making process. Once the customers decide the product and its features, finding its alternative is the next task. Which brand should be selected that fulfills their requirement list? The selection of the brand also depends on the buyer's persona. Some myths and beliefs attached with some brands may change the buying decision.

Customers can check the products by going to the store rather than harboring negative approach towards any brand. Such beliefs might be true, but not 100%. So making up the buying decision by just considering the customers reviews might not always be the right decision. Researching the market and zeroing in to the most suitable products is the best bet.

Purchase Decision

This final step includes post evaluation process i.e. purchasing. The product which is decided by the intense market research cannot be a worthless. You may suggest the products that would suit your customers' requirements. But it is the customer who has to think about which product to buy. Product suggestion is just the part of the job of a sales person, he might not be aware about your customer's selection of choice.

Buyer can even change their decision or can even cancel the purchase if they find another better product to replace the existing choice. Even factors like long queue at the counter, complex payment system or impolite behavior of the employees might change the buyers' decision. A negative buying experience can also change the buying decision. To handle such buyer's' behavior, buying process needs to be simplified. An intense research on buying decision and shifting customer needs can help enterprise to plan their forthcoming marketing strategies.

Post Purchase Decision

The post purchase behavior includes the dissatisfaction with the products purchased. If it happens customers will not recommend the products or the brand to their friends or relatives, else they will recommend it to the people they know.

Manufacturers want to satisfy their buyers by making the product in accordance with the buyer's choice and requirements. But still, if you fail, you need to work harder and conduct more intense online customer survey. Only the customized products and quality service will assure the post buying behavior to impact the business positively.

Conclusion

The process of making buying decision includes all the steps explained above. You can actually learn about how buyers make decisions about what, how and when to buy the products. This study is driven by the buyer's' psychology.

To build the most powerful and effective marketing strategies to drive your customers to make purchases, studying their buying psychology is crucial. Buyers' online behavior is just the part of it!