7 Essential Tips for Optimizing Your eCommerce
The pandemic has instigated a tremendous rise in eCommerce. Following the initial economic havoc caused by Covid-19, eCommerce sales grew from $600B+ to $794B+ in 2020. If you have an eCommerce business, you know there are many factors at play when optimizing your website for conversions. In this blog post, we will share seven essentials for eCommerce success.
1. Brand Identity
Trust is imperative for any brand as many consumers are still building their trust in the digital world. Excellent brand identity makes it easy to signal trustworthiness to consumers. Some of the essential branding elements include: having consistent brand design, language, themes, features, and customer support. This consistency helps establish your brand as professional and trustworthy to do business with. Excellent brand identity will encompass an incredible customer journey, a mission, and a compelling story.
2. Mobile Friendly
Around 39% of online shoppers in the US and 63.5% globally made purchases using mobile devices in 2018. Mobile purchases are expected to grow to 72.9% across the globe in 2021. Having a mobile-friendly website with touch navigations or dynamic website design is essential to a successful eCommerce channel. This will help improve the customer journey and lessen bounce rate due to poor mobile design and navigation.
3. Search
It can be daunting for customers to find products online, especially within large inventory. Having great search functionality will not only make it easier for customers to find relevant products but will also pave the way for better product recommendations and customer experiences. Additional features such as image search and instant search are great solutions to this problem. Instant search shows recommended products after keywords are entered into the search bar. Image search is an alternative to keyword search that prompts customers to upload or take pictures of products or looks, allowing AI technology to search and provide relevant recommendations.
4. AI Personalization
AI Personalization lets you identify and tailor each customer experience virtually. With AI personalization, relevant products will automatically be recommended to each customer based on their personal preferences. The product recommendations can appear on multiple touchpoints: check out page, cart page, homepage, and confirmation page. AI Personalization enhances customer experience while increasing the probability of upselling in a frictionless, non-invasive shopping journey.
5. Customer Experience
The website’s primary goal is to be an exciting and satisfying experience for users to navigate through. Everything about the website should be user-oriented and easy to use, including a frictionless shopping process. High-quality images and great product videos are necessary to convey product quality.
6. Customer Feedback
It is hard to gauge the quality of a product or service without directly seeing it or trying it out. Therefore, customer reviews and feedback help gain potential customers’ trust to purchase from your business. Reviews also give your customers a platform to voice their honest opinions regarding their purchase, helping your business be open and transparent to customers.
7. Logistics
One of the most significant hindrances to online shopping from traditional in-store shopping is how customers receive the products. It would typically take a couple of days or weeks to receive products from online purchases compared to in-store purchases. This is one of the main reasons why Amazon’s growth has been exponential. They established a two-day delivery for all prime members, making other delivery options appear slow.
While delivery and shipments are not handled by the first party, having a great logistics partner would go a long way in boosting customer satisfaction.
