Top 5 eCommerce Tips for a Seamless eCommerce Experience

These five eCommerce Website Design tips will help you improve the user experience for your online store and boost sales.

It was Tom’s best friend’s wedding. It was a gunshot wedding and everything had to be planned in just a few days’ time. To add to it, the wedding destination was miles away from where Tom and his to-be groom friend stayed. Tom and Brian were in Ahmedabad and the destination wedding was planned in Goa.

Tom being the groomsman had to ensure that the groom’s dress was all in place. They quickly visited an online store and found the perfect dress that would go with the wedding theme. However, they couldn’t risk ordering online as they were not sure if it will arrive in time. Moreover, Tom wasn’t sure if the item was in stock at a store near him.

With few searches online, Tom managed to find the same item in a different retail store. The store not only had the product in stock but also listed nearby stores where he could walk in and pick-up. It was awesome, as he could see the item available in Goa as well. Tom purchased the item online and opted for BOPIS Goa store – “buy online, pick up in-store”. In a nutshell, they both travelled to Goa and picked up the items from the store there. They even had trial wear and also bought some additional accessories from the store.

The story could have ended differently for the retailer who lost the sale, had he offered the right flexibility and shopping experience to Tom and Brian. It’s important for companies – both retailers and manufacturers – to give customers rich, immersive and seamless experiences, online and offline. It is hard to achieve but not impossible. Offering a seamless customer experience includes not just building an ecommerce website with products listed. It also includes working on different stages of the customer journey during the purchase. Studies show that Experience-driven businesses have an average growth rate of 15%, compared to 11% for all others and their revenues grow 1.5x.

This article lists five keys that can help you offer a seamless commerce experience to your customers.

• Consistent experiences
• Smart commerce
• Personalization
• Enterprise at scale
• Engaging with Touchpoint

Consistent experiences

It is important to remain consistent across all your selling channels. This includes your website store, multichannel websites, marketplace etc. By offering a consistent, unified platform you can extend all your services such as BOPIS, Buy online return in-store, loyalty points and redeeming of these points or buying a gift card. This also includes having consistency in your product parameters such as pricing and inventory availability irrespective of how and through which channel your customers reach you.

Smart commerce

Smart commerce can happen when your ecommerce store becomes intelligent. This is possible by using AI and data to build intelligent experiences. Here are some ways you can build a smart ecommerce:

• Find ways to identify which products customers have searched in the past.
• Identify the carts abandoned by customers and follow up with them with reminder emails or discount offers
• Use remarketing techniques to showcase your products to customers even after they have exited your eCommerce store
• Use AI-based chatbots to assist your buyers in finding the right product.

Personalization

Personalization is about knowing the full context of a person’s behavioural data and commerce data. To enable a seamless ecommerce experience, retailers should offer a differentiated experience for different audiences. This will enable to customise the shopping experience so that customers can select products from the appropriate catalogue and check out via the correct dealer using their pre-approved payment process. By offering personalisation, retailers can cater B2b and B2C customers as per their needs. Some ways to achieve this includes easy product configuration, customer-specific sites and catalogues and advanced search functionalities. McKinsey reports that Companies that grow faster drive 40 percent more of their revenue from personalization than their slower-growing counterparts. Seventy-one percent of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions.

Enterprise at scale:

Your ecommerce store needs to be scalable to meet the growing needs of your business and customers. Following are some aspects for scalability for your online store:

• Ability to support a large volume of product SKU’s
• Flexibility to support traffic spikes during flash sales and holiday offers
• Scalability in terms of regions, languages, currencies
• Website security including SSL and PCI certification
• Adits that reduce mitigate risks and remove loopholes
• Backup and action plan to prevent downtime of the website or data loss.

Engaging with Touchpoint

Customer touchpoints are those moments of connection between your business and customers during the customer buying journey that are key in decision making. It starts all the way from when your customer first discovers your online store to the checkout phase including track shipping, return and customer support. Touchpoints can be classified as pre-purchase, during purchase and post-purchase.

Pre-purchase touch points include site speed, landing pages, product listing pages, filter and search features and FAQs. It is studied that nearly 70% of consumers admit that page speed impacts their willingness to buy from an online retailer.

During purchase touch points include the checkout process, shipping and payment gateways.

Post-purchase touch points include tracking status, delivery, packing experience and returns.

It is important to work upon these touchpoints of your ecommerce store to ensure your store visitors turn into customers.

Atlas SoftWeb provides eCommerce development services and has pioneered in offering a seamless eCommerce experience through its development solutions for small, medium, and enterprise-level stores. Our team of Shopify experts India can help you build, customize, and optimize your online store for maximum performance and sales. Contact Atlas SoftWeb for a free quote and consultation now.