The most influential user-friendly features
The e-commerce sector doubles in size every five years, even though large behemoths like Amazon retain a large share of the market. It’s possible to succeed as a small to medium-sized business as long as your site offers the most influential user-friendly features.
Attractive Pricing
If your prices can compare with your main competitors, you have already won 80% of the battle. There is no feature quite as important as price, because clients can click into a hundred sites precisely like yours without taking a single step. If your checkout process is difficult to use, however, even the cheapest prices cannot help you. A mobile friendly site is imperative, so make sure it doesn’t look cramped on smart devices.
Speed of Delivery
The world values time almost as much as money, so do all you can to amp up your delivery speed. The only feature more important than this is the capacity to purchase online. Remember that the more widely you can deliver, the larger your demographic can become. A truly global store draws far more clientele and thus profits.
In-Store Collection
In 2014, only 60% of vacation traffic was mobile. Google recently found that same-day free delivery and offline servers would increase their share of the market. If you give your clients the option of fetching their purchases from a brick-and-mortar store, you will increase your growth by 45%. Despite the fact that we live in a digital age, there is still a large contingent of clients who prefer to interact personally with the businesses they buy from and even more who are in too much of a rush to accept internet-based delivery.
Loyalty Programs
No business of today can afford to function without a loyalty program. Customers expect to be appreciated if they are repeat buyers. Loyalty rewards let your clients know that you value them. They also give you the opportunity to collect the details of your loyal shoppers for future marketing efforts. You receive a client list for special offers and sale alerts while developing a real and lasting relationship with your most influential customers.
Demonstrations and How-To’s
The world’s largest e-commerce sites feature how-to content and buyers’ guides for a reason. They are almost as important to attaining a good market share as online reviews are. Your product pages are some of the most important on your site. They make the difference between a sale and a lost client, so use persuasive copy that informs buyers without appearing overtly promotional. These days, shoppers pay little attention to obvious advertising. Your content needs to be of use to them even if they don’t click the ‘buy’ button.
Social Advertising and Media
Word-of-mouth advertising is a core part of an effective marketing campaign, with social advice coming a distant second. Customer influencers are some of the most potent tools you have to effectively market your business, so you need to identify who they are and send traffic in their direction. This is almost impossible to do without a social media campaign. Facebook, Twitter, and similar sites let your customers interact with you and share your content with friends. They allow you to see what your buyers are talking about so that you can harness them to market to other customers.
Today’s e-commerce buyers make more in-store buying decisions than pre-store ones, so the content you display on your site is more important than ever before. Shoppers tend to use smartphones and brick-and-mortar shops to research their purchases, but nine in 10 use videos when choosing the technology they buy.
