10 Secrets to Successful E-Commerce Store - Thumbnail
Shopping isn’t a woman’s thing anymore! Thanks to growing trend of online shopping! There are several E-Commerce stores offering great range of gadgets that can keep anyone glued to the screen for hours. In addition, there are numerous web stores offering range of products for parents, teens and kids.
E-commerce is not a niche market, targeted to a small audience anymore. Given the growing competitive landscape of e-commerce stores, it’s imperative to apply all tips and tools that can help keeping your e-store competitive and sustainable.
Today, let’s have an insight what makes any e-commerce stores site successful and future ready!
1. Clear Logo:
A sharp, clear and attractive logo is your business card. It’s the symbol of trust and bonding with your customers. Your homepage with a well-known logo or a mascot and an appealing image or video with the ‘Buy’ button can be sufficient to establish a bonding with your customers.
2. Latest News and Popular Products:
When the home page is equipped with news, sales offers or upcoming events that buyers should know, it will surely increase the popularity of the website. Avoid making it too hard for buyers to find exclusive offers and hot prices. Recurring customers will more likely browse several ‘new’ products on free sale rather than browsing for new and trendy products.
3. Deals and Free Shipping:
People are quite smart to decide whether they like a website or not. Within few seconds the website should grab customers’ interest; otherwise they’ll find better website with a more attractive home page. Shopping deals and free shipping are the best and fastest attractions. Several people buy almost anything at discounted prices just because it’s on sale.
Some customers are attracted by free shipping; some by the major mark downs. The list is endless to attract them. It could be one kind of promo or another. Thus, free deals, discounts and free shipping are generally the first things that visitors look for. Let your website have such attractions.
4. Brand Products:
You can never predict what the customer will be looking for, but you must have the most eye-catching and exclusive offers readily accessible on your home page. This tip matters a lot and makes a great difference for retailers who sell huge product range. Display the branded goods on sale. You can also offer the opportunity to ‘shop by brands’.
5. Shopping Cart, Search and Login Options:
The combo of login, search box and shopping cart features is mostly found together in most e-commerce sites. There are several stores that provide their shoppers with their personalized accounts using which they can check all their previous orders and activity history.
Every registered customer can receive special discount offers too from the store owners and can also take part in various sales or promotions. If you have a wide range of products then having search box could be a great help to the customers. It will also become popular with your customers who demand a particular product from your online store.
6. Payment Gateways:
Usually all eCommerce websites are open to customers from across the world and they all have their preferred payment gateway. The obvious difference in different payment systems could be some technical restrictions. For instance, few websites may not accept international credit cards; others may require the customer billing address and the delivery address in the same country. Better you display your payment system on the home page.
7. Social Media Links:
As per estimation nearly 20% of online purchases are done through social media sites. Most people tend to get public opinion. Online communities can also help you identify the most active customers, and also those who are new to your web store. Social networks could be a good channel to keep your customers aware of the latest sales, news, and special deals.
8. Trustmarks:
These are tiny images or logos displaying a security guarantee by third party showcasing that it is completely safe to purchase products on the site. These trustmarks could be from Network Solutions, Verisign, BBB, TRUSTe, McAfee, GeoTrust, etc. These accreditation certificates are the proofs that the site is safe to buy. However, trustmarks don’t matter much for huge brands as they don’t really need to undergo security and privacy tests to establish their reliability as they are already established brands.
9. Contact Details and Online Chats:
Having 24/7 hotlines and live chats are the most important feature of any online store to be successful. Often buyers communicate with sellers via computer networks while making transactions that are no longer geographically bound. Customers would prefer to have someone they can talk specifically when online purchases are done all day and all night long.
10. Store Finder:
This option is vital for web stores having multiple local or national retailers. Many traditional customers prefer to visit the actual store before making a real purchase. You can keep store finder option on the top or bottom right corner of your site. It should include a search box for country, city, address and zip code search.
In addition to above tools and trustmarks, a clean and simple design, user-friendly menus, comprehensive detailed product descriptions and reviews of users can also make a huge difference in building better online reputation. Just note that trust plays an important role in a customer’s willingness to part with their money.
Bonus Trick:
How-to Guides?
However, it is not mandatory; it’s a way to trigger visitors’ interest to purchase something that they are not familiar with. Customers purchasing major products may wish to have guides or at least to understand the specifications to have a look at prior to making a purchase.
And that’s all! Hopefully I have managed to include all the necessary tips that are imperative for any e-commerce website that can boost your revenue and ROI. With all the effort, time and resources put in to build your online presence, these small tricks may in fact help make or break your e-commerce stores business. Let me know if I’ve missed something that would be helpful, just submit them the comments section.
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