02 Apr
With the advancement in technology, ecommerce websites have emerged as the primary choice of the customers. This is the reason why many businesses and organizations rely on the ecommerce website for reaching to their clients.
It has become a widely used channel for the businesses to enhance their sales figure. These websites are user-friendly and one can easily use them to make a purchase.
What is ecommerce?
Ecommerce also known as Electronic commerce is a business model that lets firms and individuals buy and sell things over the internet. Ecommerce operates in all four of the following major market segments: Business to business. Business to consumer. Consumer to consumer.
What are the types of ecommerce?
There are 6 basic types of ecommerce:
- Business-to-Business (B2B)
- Business-to-Consumer (B2C)
- Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C)
- Consumer-to-Business (C2B).
- Business-to-Administration (B2A)
- Consumer-to-Administration (C2A)
How to improve your business with an ecommerce website?
Here are some tips to improve your ecommerce website:
1. Use right platform
Yet this is basic advice, but the most important one. Not all ecommerce platforms and merchant services are created equal. You’ll have to make sure you’re choosing the ones that provide the features you’ll need to get ahead.
Ecommerce focuses on their particular fields. If you need a method for processing online transactions and credit cards, for instance, go with a specialty service that built themselves from the ground up to do so. Their expertise is more likely to ensure that the system works correctly, you can get support when you need it, and they can score you the most advantageous fees and transaction rates for their services.
When selecting a platform, remember questions that you might want to ask yourself while looking at different ecommerce providers:
- What is your budget?
- What type of products are you selling?
- What features does your online store need?
Once you’ve narrowed down your focus, it’s a simple matter of finding the platforms that fit your criteria.
2. Upsell and Cross-sell
Nearly every ecommerce platform offers some way for online sellers to feature related products.If a small or mid-sized ecommerce business owner or manager is overlooking this opportunity, either not bothering to add upsell and cross-sell products or not putting a lot of thought into the products they list, sales could be missed.
Upselling is the act of encouraging a customer to purchase a product similar to the one she is looking at, but which has either a higher selling price or a higher margin. Cross-selling is the process of encouraging shoppers to buy complementary products after they have purchased or indicated that they have an intention to purchase.
Practically, upsell and cross-sell offers in ecommerce are made on product detail pages or during the checkout process. Using sales affinity (relationship) data, make an effort to pick upsell and cross-sell products that are likely to encourage shoppers to add items to their shopping cart, boosting the value of their order.
Often online sellers can improve upsells and cross-sells without any change in software. It just takes a little bit of research.
3. Live chat and being available 24/7
What can be a better way to attract your customers than being available for them 24/7. If your online customer service is working around the clock, customers see you as a credible organization. This will not only expand your customer base but also give you a stronger brand image.
Adding Live chat allows customers to ask questions or express concerns just as they are in the process of making a buying decision, potentially boosting conversion rates or improving the customer shopping experience for your business.
More, live chat to most ecommerce platforms is a relatively simple task that requires very little technical expertise. What’s more, live chat can also be very inexpensive, and it can be turned on, if you will, when it is convenient.
4. Optimize your pages for search engines
Every site in existence should employ some form of search engine optimization (SEO), and this is especially true for ecommerce sites. Over seventy percent of all sales inquiries begin with a search engine. Consumers usually type in contracted terms and expect the engine to know what they mean. For your site, include these key terms wherever possible, so their searches lead to your landing pages.
5. Content
Content is the key hence, commit your blogs and articles to generating interest without bogging the consumer. Create easy to follow guides to share on social channels. Showcase your standout products in easy to read product guides, or give easy explainers on the types of products you sell to better answer your customer’s questions. As with any action you take toward potential consumers, the idea is to add value. This can often take the shape of informative content that leaves them with a better idea of how to best use your products or services.
6. Checkout process
This needs to be as simple as possible. If your checkout process involves multiple steps it will increase the chances of them leaving your site frustrated before purchasing. There should be no more than three steps from the main page to the checkout, and navigation should be engineered toward ushering the customer along without complication. New customers should be able to figure out how to enter their information quickly and return customers should have even less to figure out.
7. Offer Free Shipping
Various studies demonstrated that customers would rather not pay for shipping. In fact, more than half of online orders shipped in the forthcoming holiday season are likely to include free shipping.
If your business is not already offering a free shipping option, you need to add one. Most ecommerce platforms have some form of free shipping option built in, so that there will likely be just a minimal amount of configuration. The most difficult part about free shipping is understanding that while you will be giving away some margin, you should make more overall as sales increase.
8. Clear call to actions
Every page on your website should have one clear objective. On an individual product page, for example, your objective is to get the user to add the product to their cart. So make sure they understand how to do this. Create a clear call to action – your ‘Add to Cart’ button.
The colour, size, location, and copy of the button all contribute to your customer’s purchase, so it’s important to test each of these before committing to one.
9. Proper product page
As this is the most important page in the whole website, thus it should be more attractive. If you really want to sell your product then you have to use proper images of the product from each and every angle.
As far as the product description is considered, a professional copywriter can take a description of a product and make your customer think they can’t live without it. Do not merely copy the manufacturer’s description.
You work hard to get someone to visit your site, so don’t waste the opportunity. Better images and more compelling descriptions can improve your online sales by just 10% each month.
10. Site speed
Site speed is the point where most of the visitors leave your website without even looking at your products/ services. The slow loading websites have a large number of people leaving the site in frustration. The max load time of your website should be 2-3 seconds otherwise you’ll be losing customers and sales.
11. Proofread Your Website
Even the largest of companies can make errors on their ecommerce websites and taking just a few minutes to proofread your site can make a significant improvement.
In fact, sometimes you may not even know how bad it is until to start to proofread. Simply take a few minutes each day to use your website in a way similar to how your customers would use the site, reading your way through each page. It may also be necessary to try to get to your site from other sites or search engines in order to ensure that customers are seeing what you expect.
12. Personalized marketing campaigns
Most of the ecommerce websites use built-in systems to help them reach their prospective customers. With the numerous SEO, this process has gone even easier. It would always be better to give a personalized touch to your marketing campaign by communicating with your customers on email platforms.
In the competitive environment, one can’t run the risk of being unaware of the latest technologies which can help in ramping up their sales. Ecommerce websites are one of those methods which can be used as a powerful tool to optimize the sales figure of your company.
Advantages of ecommerce
The main advantage of ecommerce is its ability to reach a global market, without necessarily implying a large financial investment. The limits of this type of commerce are not defined geographically, which allows consumers to make a global choice, obtain the necessary information and compare offers from all potential suppliers, regardless of their locations.
By allowing direct interaction with the final consumer, ecommerce shortens the product distribution chain, sometimes even eliminating it completely. This way, a direct channel between the producer or service provider and the final user is created, enabling them to offer products and services that suit the individual preferences of the target market.
Ecommerce allows suppliers to be closer to their customers, resulting in increased productivity and competitiveness for companies; as a result, the consumer is benefited with an improvement in quality service, resulting in greater proximity, as well as a more efficient pre and post-sales support. With these new forms of electronic commerce, consumers now have virtual stores that are open 24 hours a day.
Cost reduction is another very important advantage normally associated with electronic commerce. The more trivial a particular business process is, the greater the likelihood of its success, resulting in a significant reduction of transaction costs and, of course, of the prices charged to customers.
Disadvantages of ecommerce
The main disadvantages associated with e-commerce are the following:
- Strong dependence on information and communication technologies (ICT);
- Lack of legislation that adequately regulates the new ecommerce activities, both nationally and internationally;
- Market culture is averse to electronic commerce (customers cannot touch or try the products);
- The users’ loss of privacy, the loss of regions’ and countries’ cultural and economic identity;
- Insecurity in the conduct of online business transactions.
Conclusion
Sometimes a small thing, like sending a thank you card or carefully choosing which related products to feature on a product detail page, can have a positive impact on an ecommerce business. Certainly there are sweeping business strategies and powerful software solutions that may help your business.
Ecommerce websites are one of those methods which can be used as a powerful tool to optimize the sales figure of your company.