eCommerce Blog - Page 18

According to many researchers, 2015 is going to be an amazing year for an e-Commerce industry. In 2015, online store owners (or retailers) must bring their A game in order to survive in this competitive e-Commerce industry. Today, customers are not only knowledgeable but know what item they want on what price by doing a price comparison. Customers are also interested in knowing product reviews, availability of the product (or inventory) and expect free as well as fast shipping.

People are shopping online more than ever before. This makes it quite critical for online retailers to know what online shoppers are interested in buying and how they would like to buy. So, it is important for all retailers to keep an eye on all the ongoing trends.

Here are a few key trends for the year 2015...

Today, online businesses are making use of all possible channels to market their store sites and attract more customers. Email marketing continues to be one of the top marketing channels that every retailer likes to use. ROI (return on investment) is one of the most captivating reasons why email marketing is beneficial in promoting your e-Commerce store.

Some retailers think that email marketing was killed by spam, facebook, twitter and blogs. Well, the surveys tell a complete different story. If emails are kept short, interesting, and relevant by providing the customers (recipients) an option to unsubscribe, it does bring the revenue. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing is responsible for bringing in $40 for every $1 spent (reference).

Today, we are going to discuss, how to make use of email marketing for promoting your e-Commerce store.

It is quite important to acknowledge the value of customers and rewarding them time to time as they strive to drive the business revenue. Rewarding your customers for being a loyal to your business ensures that they will return to your store to make their next purchase.

An infographic from Zendesk shows that acquiring new customers is an expensive process for businesses, so it’s vital that some of them become loyal to the brand and return for repeat purchases. The data also shows that 34% believe that exceptional customer service is the best way to build customer loyalty.

Rewarding is a great way to make a connection with your loyal customers to your brand. It shows that you care for your customers who play a significant role in the success of your business and you are willing to go above and beyond to make them happy.

Have you ever wondered why onsite search is an important feature (or must-have) for your online store? An effective search feature offers a lot of potential benefits that can make your store online user-friendly.

As a store admin, you should always see the search feature on your site as a valuable communication system that provides answers (search results) to your customers on the spot depending on what product / item they are looking for. A lot of times, retailers pay more attention to search engine optimization (SEO) and forget about onsite search on their online stores. It is certainly a good idea to pay attention to SEO because that’s how the potential shoppers find your website on search engines. But, when customers are able to find your store site quickly via search engines and land on your site, they will expect a similar experience on your e-Commerce site. So it is quite important to make sure that your customers are not getting disappointed using the onsite search feature.

Here are a few tips for a better onsite search feature for your e-Commerce website.

For many new store owners, the idea of starting an online business is an exciting experience and potentially rewarding in terms of finances. With all the excitement of starting a new online store, many store owners make some common mistakes by taking some crucial things for granted or do not consider taking some important actions carefully.

It is quite understandable that why these mistakes are made by new owners. Store owners are so much focused on getting off the ground with their new online stores that many times some important things are overlooked that can impact the business down the road.

If we try to take a closer look at these mistakes that new store owners make, there is a common pattern or trend that is being followed all the time repeatedly. Today we are going to discuss these common mistakes.

Product reviews are great for online businesses even the ones that are not positive. According to a 2009 study conducted by “The Nielsen Company”, 70% of the shoppers do trust consumer opinions / reviews posted online. These days, majority of customers look for online product reviews before purchasing a product. Statistics shows that e-Commerce stores that offer product reviews have increased their average order rate as compared to other online stores that do not offer this feature.

Today, we will discuss some reasons that makes product reviews a must-have for any online store.

What comes to your mind, when you hear the term” wish list”? The application of this feature is exactly how it sounds like: a list of things that you wish to get. As an online store owner, would you like your customers to be able to save products in a wish list so that they review or buy them later? Would you like your customers to be able to share their wish list with friends and family for gift giving?

Offering your customers a feature of wish list as part of shopping cart is a great way to build loyalty to your store site. Having the feature of wish list on a store site allows online businesses to engage with their customers in a smart way as it allows the shoppers to create a list of what they desire and their preferences for future purchase.

Many times, the benefits of offering store gift cards (or virtual gift cards) are overlooked by merchants. Gift cards are vouchers that holds a certain money value, personalized with the recipients information and can be used as an alternative to payment method.

Businesses that look forward each year for the holiday season boost, gift cards can significantly make a difference in increasing their sales. One of the main advantages of store gift cards is that they can be easily branded, personalized and customized along with giving a full control to the store admins to track the usage in order to understand where the customer likes to spend money via gift cards

According to merchantwarehouse, gift cards eclipsed $118 billion in 2013, an eight percent increase over 2012. While e-gifting fueled a significant portion of the overall growth (increasing from just $300 million in 2012 to an astounding $3 billion in 2013), traditional retailer gift card volume grew as well, rising from $36 billion to $39 billion.

Today, we will discuss some key benefits of offering store gift cards.

These days customers are educated, knows how to do comparison shopping and just a click away from the competitors. In today’s economy when customers are looking for save as much as possible, customer loyalty programs or reward programs are more important than ever. Remember, for any business, it costs more money to get a new customer as compares to getting revenue from your existing customer.

There is no doubt about the fact that every business needs new customers but the easiest way to get more sales/revenue is from your existing loyal customers who knows your company/brand and the products/services that you offer. So, it is quite important to make sure that your loyal customers who are buying from your store instead of going to competitor’s site are being rewarded.

These days’ people prefer to shop online because it is one of the most convenient ways to buy anything from anywhere. Online shopping gives the power to the customer, to quickly compare the prices with other stores and find unique products at lowest prices. An important part of online shopping is the checkout process. Every business owner’s target is to get better conversions, more sales and reduce shopping cart abandonment.

We have discussed earlier that shopping cart abandonment is quite prevalent in an online business and it can be very frustrating for any business owner. One of the main reasons for the shoppers to abandon their online shopping cart is a poor checkout process. A poor or complex checkout process often aggravates online customers and they leave the store site without buying anything.

Today, we will discuss some latest checkout trends that e-Commerce websites should adapt to optimize the checkout process for a better user-experience.