by Rostyslav Demush, marketing manager at Cart2Cart
Since the first successful launch of online stores, the e-commerce world has developed to unprecedented heights. These days it is far easier to build up a top-ranked and profitable shop with little effort; it is now possible to add a dozen features or implement attractive templates without a problem at all due to the wide range of technology platforms available out there.
Let’s just look at the shopping cart – there are not only many hopping cart technologies out there now, there are also of growing quality.
With continued innovation in e-commerce technologies, what should online merchants do to take advantage of such innovation to keep their online store abreast in 2015?
1. Responsive design.
Eye-catching design is essential to draw customer’s attention from their very first click. Nobody wants to shop in ordinary, boring-looking shop. However, the trouble is that the colourful and bright design of today may turn into old-fashioned and unpopular tomorrow. In order to avoid this happening, e-merchants always should avail themselves by changing the template of their sites often. Impress all customers imprinting your store’s design on their mind.
2. User Engagement.
What should a retailer do to catch a customer’s fancy? Here are some tips that will help to increase sales:
- Group product entities and make a top-selling products category – this medium will invite customers attention to the most-popular stock items.
- Make banners or announcements about what is going to be presented soon. That will kindle customer’s interest and encourage them to visit the store again.
- Work out flexible system of coupons and discounts. Special offers always attract customers helping to turn one-off clients into loyal ones. This may yield some losses at the start but is critical in the long run.
3. Live Support Chat.
Everybody loves superior customer service – and they appreciate having someone who can answer their questions in real time. Live chat support on your site provides such customer interaction.
In fact, research shows that 90% of customers prefer to visit websites with real-time support. So, are you still hesitating about providing such customer support?
4. Product reviews.
Before making a decision to purchase a product, people like to listen to different opinions. It’s the same with online purchases; 90% of consumers say positive online reviews influenced their buying decisions.
Don’t underestimate the importance of online comments and reviews on products. A large part of this is superior customer service, which can also influence the review or ratings people give to products. As a result, online store owners should realise that the success of their business depends on close collaboration with customers.
5. Blog.
The main objective of online blogging is to bring in as many customers as possible and inform them about uniqueness together with reliance of products and service of the store.
Useful information can hold their attention and keep them at the site. That’s where blogging comes into play – you can announce about upcoming promotions, goods, giveaways and rebates, for example. This also helps to raise site traffic and online SEO – which leads to increased sales and profit.
If you find that your current shopping cart lack the kind of features listed above, you may want to look at migrating to a more feature-rich platform such as Cart2Cart to help you jazz up your online store.
Rostyslav Demush is a marketing manager at Cart2Cart, the automated shopping cart migration service, a solution for online businessmen who are looking to change their platforms without difficulty or stress.
