It has become a trend of sorts to use the Internet for everything that one does these days. The social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter have made it easier for people to keep in touch with their near and dear ones without having to meet them in person. In the same way, the e-commerce sites such as Amazon and eBay have changed the way people shop. Though the e-commerce industry has undergone a lot of Interaction design changes since it started in 1994, the basic principle has remained the same. There has been a sudden increase in the demand for e-commerce sites since the Internet became a rage across the world.
Like in other businesses when the e-commerce industry started booming, many new players entered the field tightening the competition. With the competition getting tighter some e-commerce websites started offering various discounts and offers to stay above the others. Though most of them were genuine some tried to fool the customers by charging very high shipping charges to balance the discounts offered. Most of the time such sites would not have the customers coming back which in turn means after a specific period such sites would simply run out of customers. This shows that one cannot opt for such tricks to reach the top.
To reach the top position one will have to put in a lot of hard work. The first thing that one needs to pay attention to is that one must have a very user-friendly website. There are a lot of things that an e-commerce website must have to make it a very user-friendly website. Some of them are listed below:
1) It must have a proper grouping of products so that a customer can compare two products before deciding on which one to buy.
2) The site must have a simple and elegant look. Customers won’t like to surf through a very complicated site.
3) There must be a search engine on the website so that the customer can find the product that they are looking for without any time delay.
4) Also there must be a ready-to-help customer service team available 24 x 7 to help the customer resolve their issues.
5) Also try to make the registration process as short and simple as possible. This will make the customer come back to shop again and again.
6) A proper customer feedback page must be maintained. A new customer would always look for the feedback page before he/she starts the shopping process.
7) Also if your site is offering some special deals or discounts try to highlight it so that the customers would get instantly attracted to it.
Here are some of the latest trends to help an e-commerce site to stay above the other competitors:
1) A simple inbound business calling solution, can help your customers interact with your customer service team at that instant itself and get the problem resolved. This can help reduce cart abandonment rates as well as increase revenue by increasing total sales.
2) Another latest addition to the list is the Live Link Video. It is an interactive video from which your customers can directly purchase by clicking on the item that they require from the video. This would make shopping far simpler and less time-consuming.
3) If you can feature your site and product rates on product comparison sites such as pronto, it can help in increasing the visibility of your site. Competitive pricing would mean an increase in sales by a huge margin.
4) If you can provide a feeling of security for the customers that would help in reducing the cart abandonment rate by a huge amount. A VeriSign logo on your website would make the customers feel more at home and also they would even refer your site to their friends and family.
5) A proper helpdesk will help you and the customer have a healthy relationship during the process of shopping. Zendesk can help you get your helpdesk in order and move you above your competitors.
6) Most of the time the main reason for people leaving a shopping process incomplete is the lack of proper guidance. That is where you can be different from the other e-commerce sites by having a live chat widget like Zopim installed on your site.
7) Another simple and attractive way to attract new customers to your e-commerce site is to upload videos of products on your site. You can create videos with the help of Screenr and can upload them on your site.
These are some of the latest trends being followed by e-commerce websites these days to help stay at the top of the competition.
