There are certain aspects of an e-commerce that every online store should have to stay relevant and to drive sales. Here is our guide to great e-commerce features to add to your website.
Multiple Payment Options
You don’t need to be a marketing guru to know how crucial online sales are to businesses. Online sales drive businesses year-round, so offering customers options when it comes to payment is critical to the success of any brand. There are dozens of online payment options. From credit and debit cards to Apple Pay and PayPal, if a company fails to offer robust payment options to users, it can have a detrimental effect on revenue quickly.
Understanding how your customers pay is key to increasing the success of your online business. If you limit payment options, be sure to let customers know why – for example, maybe you don’t offer bitcoin sales because you do not trust the reliability of its long-term value. But if possible, try to offer as many payment options as possible. Just look at the tremendous success Amazon has had with their one-click shopping experience.
Up-Selling
Up-selling is one of the best sales techniques for online shopping. Predicting buyer behavior and making specialized product recommendations using advanced AI and machine learning technology is great for encouraging user engagement and for driving increased sales.
A great example of an effective up-selling practice is Best Buy, who provide customers the options of add-ons or product upgrades, all while not impeding the overall customer experience or deterring customer’s progression towards a purchase. Best Buy utilizes a unique process where relevant add-ons for a product are displayed next to the item, while similar but more expensive items are displayed on the bottom under the heading “customers also viewed.”
Recommendations
Offering customers recommendations is a technique which has been mastered by the likes of web-giants such as Amazon. Amazon has used its ability to pull the browsing and purchasing data of its customers to offer personalized recommendations based on their history. What makes what Amazon does so unique, however, is that they are able to frame these recommendations as an “inspiration” for their customers. This means that they are able to offer their customers “you may also like” suggestions which show that they know their patron’s well – and they may know what they might also like.
This is a tactic that was also employed successfully by the late, great toy company Toys “R” Us. The company utilized a sophisticated AI-marketing technology in order to provide online shoppers with product recommendations as they browsed the site. Using this advanced technology, Toys “R” Us was able to offer personalized product suggestions to hundreds of thousands of users – something that simply cannot be done manually. NetFlix is another company that has a famously accurate recommendation engine. Software is getting better and better and understanding customer preferences, something you can use to your advantage to compete with the big guys.
Recent Activity
One of the best ways to keep customers coming back to your site is to offer a “recently viewed items” feature to your website. Having a recent activity feature built into your page is an excellent way to build trust in customers and to acknowledge their past browsing, purchases and shopping cart activity. This shows that you are aware of the customer’s history and that you want to provide them with great customer service.
One of the best aspects of having a “recently viewed items” widget on your website is that it does not require advanced AI technology, such as the recommendations offered by Amazon. It also allows customers to pick-up on unfinished business and can lead to conversions on previously viewed items. If you are looking to implement “recently viewed items” on your site, make sure to include thumbnails, item descriptions, and price to help inform users, as well as an effective call to action (CTA) to entice them into action.
Customer Generated Reviews
Reviews are critical to the success of any business. The simple fact is that many customers read reviews before they purchase. In fact, according to the Search Engine Journal, 92-percent of users say the average star-rating of a product is the number one determining factor on if they purchase it or not.
Having customer generated views can build confidence in you and your products, even if some of them are negative. As Search Engine Journal explains:
“you might think that having negative reviews is a sale killer. The opposite is actually true. Having negative reviews can often be a positive. It’s shown that products without negative reviews are seen as censored and, in turn, shoppers will assume the positive reviews are fake.”
Featuring customer reviews on your website is not only effective at building trust and rapport with users – it’s also easy to do! Most review platforms, like Yelp, Foursquare and Facebook offer simple to use plugins, which can boost the e-commerce potential of your site while keeping costs down!
Incentives
While there is nothing wrong with the traditional “blanket” discount, where all customers receive a 10-percent discount, for example, personalized incentives have proven to be a much more effective tool for businesses. Personalized incentives work by targeting individuals based on their past habits.
One customer, for example, may not purchase an item unless they receive a 25-percent discount, while another generally doesn’t need a coupon to make a purchase. Using personalized incentives, a sophisticated AI system can offer the one customer a 25 or 30-percent discount while offering no discount to the other. Meanwhile, neither customer will know that they have been specifically target.
Team with an Industry Leading Marketing Firm Today!
If you’re thinking about improving the e-commerce functionality of your brand’s website, now is the perfect time to partner with a team as dedicated to building your business as you are. Next Level Marketing’s world-class web design team has the know-how to super-charge your site and provide you with cutting-edge web design to get you noticed! In addition, our experienced marketing team will work exclusively with you to discover what sets you apart, create a compelling strategy to dynamically develop your business visibility and awareness and take a holistic, evolutionary approach to deliver exceptional results continually.
So, if you’re ready to take your business to the next level, give us a call today at (844) SEM-NEXT for a free consultation.
