So you’ve got a fantastic idea, and you’re ready to bring your product to the market? Brilliant! You’re even thinking of launching an eCommerce website so that you can reach your customers online and let them proceed to purchase easily. But do you know that a large proportion of new eCommerce sites go bankrupt every year because they have failed to get the basics right?
Things Online Retailers Should Not Forget
In fact, almost every online retailer in 3 doesn’t make it past the first two years because they didn’t consider the various purposes of their websites. What does an eCommerce website do? The answer is simple: It provides a platform for product research, purchase, payment, shopping inspiration, and customer loyalty. Most websites tend to forget some of these functions and only offer what they think is the most important, consequently an online purchase option.
However, it’s likely that your customers will rapidly expect more from your website than allowing them to click and buy. Here are the three essential processes that you need to remember before you launch your first eCommerce site.
1) Getting everything working perfectly on day 1
When you are launching a new website, it’s essential to plan enough time to test everything before the actual launch day. For eCommerce websites, this is even more important, because your platform needs to be ready to attract customers and deal with their data safely.
You will need to pick an eCommerce template that allows for products filters and even comparison – especially if you sell tech gadgets. Additionally, you will need a template that works across most browsers, and that includes payment gateways plugins for most common payment methods.
The addition of plugins often requires substantial PHP knowledge – if you want to do it yourself, you might want to follow a specialist class here https://www.trainingconnection.com/ to update your skills. But an eCommerce website also needs relevant and technical content to optimize its SEO ranking, and that means that you need to tailor all your H titles, meta titles and source content descriptions for each page and each product.
2) Creating entertainment as well as a shopping area
As mentioned above, an eCommerce website needs to offer inspiration and to give customers a reason to come back, outside of for their next purchase. In other words, you need to create engaging content that keeps people coming back. Video marketing is a brilliant way of combining entertainment and product advertising to help your customers make better choices, as explained in the article https://www.bigcommerce.com/blog/ecommerce-video-strategy/.
Indeed, you need to remember that 49% of online shoppers mention not being able to touch the product as one of their least favorite part of shopping online. So developing product videos to show and explain your products is a solution that addresses their issue, and at the same time helps you to create engaging content.
3) Improving with customers in mind
Your customers are digital-savvy, and they like to explore the possibilities that online navigation offers. As technology evolves, the way they shop changes too. More and more eCommerce businesses say that their customers don’t visit the website as often as they used to.
Instead, they prefer to shop directly via the app. Following the digital trends can help you to provide your customers with the services they expect on their preferred device.
Additionally, using UX experiments and feedback sessions with customers provides a platform for potential improvements. Don’t think that your website layout is set in stone: The digital world changes fast, and so should you too. 🙂
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