Can you think back to a time when if you wanted to go shopping, you had to physically get in your car and go to the store to make the purchases you needed? That almost sounds prehistoric today with all of the technological advancements that have emerged in retail e-commerce shopping.
Did you know that as of 2018, e-commerce shopping brought in well over $500 million in sales in the US? That’s a substantial amount of money. Can you guess what exactly has brought about this increase in e-commerce sales? It’s the convenience and ease of it. Just think about it… how many times have you been at home and needed to go to the store to buy something but didn’t feel like going to the store to go buy it? Everyone has those moments at some point in their life and with the direction it’s moving in, it’s only going to get better.
The only thing about retail e-commerce shopping is that it’s not instantly gratifying, meaning that you may need a pair of shoes for a certain event but you won’t be able to get those shoes instantly delivered to your door as soon as you pay for them. Depending on a site’s shipping options, you will typically have to wait four to five business days before being able to receive your purchase. But the fact that the customer didn’t have to leave their home to make that purchase usually makes up for the lack of instant gratification with their purchases.
Enhancing the Overall Shopping Experience
Convenience is definitely the biggest factor in the success of e-commerce stores but with e-commerce shopping being done online, can you guess what the main goal and objective are for all e-commerce stores? It’s the overall customer shopping experience.
Because e-commerce stores are online, whether a customer is shopping from their cell phone, tablet, or computer, it’s that company’s responsibility to make sure that the website is user-friendly for customers. As you may or may not know, customers are extremely demanding when it comes to their shopping experience, and the fact that they can’t interact with a sales associate face-to-face, they are easily angered…
The last thing you want a customer to be angry about is the fact that your website was hard to navigate. Some of the top instances that can easily anger an online customer are:
- Difficulty in finding what they’re looking for
- A page taking too long to load
- The website has broken links
In order for you to have a successful e-commerce site, you will need to design your website with the customer and the type of shopping experience you want them to have, in mind.
Building Your Website With the Customer In Mind
When creating and building your website, regardless of what products or services you’re selling, you need to make extra efforts to ensure that it’s as informative, yet simple, as possible. You want to make sure each page is appropriately named and each sub-navigation directly relates to the main navigation. It’s things like that, that enhance a customer’s overall shopping experience but those are just a few of the factors. Take a look at the biggest strategies to enhance your customers’ overall shopping experience.
Make Your E-Commerce Store Accessible Across Multiple Devices
If you want your e-commerce store to be successful, you have to make it accessible across multiple devices. With the ease and convenience of online shopping these days, people will shop with whatever device is near them. So they may be in the bed but their tablet is next to them or they may be sitting on their couch watching TV and their phone is near them so they pretty much will shop on whatever is close to them. Because of that, your site needs to be accessible on a mobile device, tablet, laptop, or desktop.
Mobile devices are the most popular device that people do their online shopping with so if anything at all, make your website mobile-friendly… in fact, not making your website mobile-friendly is one of the biggest mistakes of starting an online business, so this is a mistake you want to avoid at all costs!
Make Sure Your Site Has Direct Call-to-Actions
Sometimes visitors to your website need reminders of why they’re on your website so having direct call-to-actions on all your site pages will prompt them to click and eventually prompt them to buy! Here are a few examples of some specific call-to-actions:
- “Click here to buy”
- “Get your free quote now”
- “Download today”
- “Click here to learn more”
Make Sure Your Website Is Extremely Fast
Did you know that people will visit your site but if it takes too long to load, they will leave your site, regardless of how good of products or services you have? They figure they can find another website that offers the same products or services on a different website that also loads faster than yours. According to thinkwithgoogle.com, if your website takes longer than three seconds to load, potential customers will leave your website… Again, this is because they know there are other websites that will have the same things you’re selling but their site will load much faster than yours.
Make Your Domain Name Easy to Remember
In order for people to come to your website, they need to know the name of your website… better yet, they need to remember the name of your website! Shopify.com is a great platform to search for memorable domain names, and it’s a quick and simple process too. All you need to do is think of what you want your business name to be and then just type the name in Shopify’s search engine.
Once you do that, it’ll let you know if the name you chose is available and if it is, it’ll give you the option to choose that name in the form of .com, .org, .net, etc… If the name you selected is not available, it will show you different options of names that are similar to what you wanted.