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Customers shopping on the internet are busy. They want convenience, flexibility, and ease of use. As an e-commerce business, these are concepts you have to become intimately familiar with if you want to succeed. Here are some basic do’s and don’t to get you started.
Put Some Effort Into Your Website
This may seem obvious, but many companies don’t invest the necessary time and money into making their website attractive and intuitive. This is the easiest way to scare off customers, who will quickly find another website that feels more trustworthy and is easier to use. Even worse, those customers aren’t likely to return: 88 percent of consumers are less likely to shop with you again if they had a bad experience the first time.
Don’t Try To Be Too Unique
While you want to stand out from the competition, many e-commerce startups make the mistake of going too far. Customers want familiarity. They want to go to an online shop and find an experience that is similar to every other online shop they have used.
Using an established e-commerce platform is a good way to ensure you are keeping things simple and familiar. This Websitesetup.org review guide can help you choose the best one for your business.
Do Focus On Easy Checkout And Payment
If you make the checkout and payment process more complicated than it has to be, you are going to lose customers. Think about Amazon’s 1-click delivery, a game-changer in its time, which helped cement the company’s success. Remember that you’re competing against 1-click, so keep things simple, smooth, and streamlined.
According to Forbes, the elements of a great checkout experience include (among others) transparent safety measures, multiple payment options, 24/7 support, flexibility to go back and make changes, and clear, realistic expectations for shipping and delivery.
Do Send Them Relevant Offers
If your customers agree to receive marketing emails, that’s probably because they want you to do the work of letting them know when you have something that might interest them. Keep them updated and make sure your emails are interesting, relevant, and engaging.
One of the ways you can do this is by using segmentation strategies to target only those customers who are likely to be interested in a particular email. Also, make sure you are sending your emails at the optimal time so they don’t get lost in the inbox. Research suggests that that’s usually on a Tuesday.
Don’t Spam
This is the biggest caveat to the previous tip. Busy customers don’t want to spend time cleaning out their inbox from an avalanche of promotional emails, which is why the number one reason people unsubscribe from mailing lists is because companies “email too often.” Test out different frequencies, but remember to err on the side of caution and never “blast” your customer with emails.
Of course, you also don’t want your emails going straight to the spam folder. There is plenty of advice online on how to avoid this: start with this guide by leading email marketing service MailChimp, which has some great insight from an insider’s perspective.
What this all boils down to is that you should always aim to make things as easy as possible for your customers. The internet is an insanely crowded marketplace, filled with distractions and thousands of competitors. The more you focus on making your shopping experience quick, simple, and pleasurable, the less chance you have of losing a customer on the way to checkout.
