What Kind of eCommerce Website Do You Need?
There’s lots of UK businesses right now thinking about investing in eCommerce for the first time. Many of them will have spent years providing excellent customer service face-to-face. Now they’re having to translate that experience into an online journey for shoppers. In this blog we look at what what online customers want from online shopping sites. Then we ask: What kind of eCommerce website do you need to satisfy your customers’ requirements.
1. Shoppers Want to be Treated Well
Anyone who’s run a bricks-and-mortar store will know how important it is that customers know where to find products. The last thing they want is a disorganised clutter which they need to rifle through to find what they want. Ideally customers want the feeling of being taken care of from the moment they enter the store to the moment they leave.
The eCommerce shopper wants exactly the same thing. The best way to deliver on that need for care and attention is to spend time with your web designer working out the navigation of your site. Make sure everything is clearly labelled, and tabs provide a direct route to collections, items or types of product the customer is looking for.
2. Don’t Keep People Hanging About
Having to wait to be served, or to try out an item, can quickly drain the desire to buy. High Street shoppers are often dashing out in their breaks so the last thing they want is to be hanging about. Ecommerce shopping is exactly the same, except that it’s loading speeds that cause the frustration. Make sure that your eCommerce design delivers loading speeds of 2-4 seconds per page, and that your site works equally well on any mobile or desktop device.
3. Online Buyers Look for Value
Your online shoppers aren’t able to touch the items they’re thinking of buying, but they still look for value in their shopping experience. The way you provide that online value is with high quality imagery or videos, carefully organised product collections, and clearly written copy. Your aim is to keep people on a page, considering your product, making a decision. A poor quality experience will simply lead to customers bouncing off the page after a couple of seconds.
4. Completing the Sale Effectively
The shopping basket has items in it, the shopper proceeds to the checkout – but there’s still some hurdles to deal with before the transaction’s complete. Choose an eCommerce platform that offers shoppers an easy way to buy. If your site doesn’t accept certain methods of payment, shoppers will simply go somewhere else. Likewise with shipping rates; if they’re too high, or your deliveries are too slow, shoppers have plenty of alternative choices.
5. Test Before Launching Your eCommerce Store
Hopefully there’ll be plenty of customers on the day your eCommerce site goes live. And if you get your launch right, there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be. The last thing you want is lots of transactions that get snagged because there’s too many people on the system, or there’s a glitch on the website. Every new eCommerce site will have problems that need sorting – that’s life – so make sure your site is professionally tested before you let the public in.
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