5 Ways Online Merchants can Improve Shopping Experience of Their Buyers

Global e-commerce sales are all set to hit $1.5 trillion this year. The Indian e-commerce market alone is currently worth $3.1 billion annually, and is projected to grow touch $22 billion over the next five years. But amazing market projections are one thing, actually getting a share of this market is something else. The problem is the e-commerce industry is delivering such exponential returns that a certain sense of complacency has entered the mindset of online merchants, who believe shoppers will buy from them no matter what.

But here’s a wake-up call for them courtesy a Business Insider Intelligence report – An astounding $4 trillion worth of merchandise will be abandoned in online shopping carts this year.

What if it’s your online store that experiences this abandonment? Yes, it could be your website that faces the online shopper’s ire. These shoppers might ignore your site for a competitor site. After all, your online shoppers have a smorgasbord of options in the form of sites they can shop at. It’s a buyer’s market out there. You therefore cannot afford complacency and must keep improving the online shopping experience for your target audience.

So, how do you go about doing that? Take a look:

1. Use Design as a Tool for Enhancing Shopping Experience

Don’t look farther than Indian e-commerce giant Flipkart to find out how design can improve user experience. One of the many reasons why Flipkart sales tower over its competitors is that it makes shopping super convenient for shoppers.

In spite of the website offering an immense range of products, the design itself is uncluttered; it has lots of white space, easy-to-use navigation, well-crafted product pages packed to the brim with useful information and perfect placement of call-to-action buttons. The site is a text book example of how you must design a site that comes good on the expectations of online shoppers.

The interesting fact to note is that Flipkart.com went through a redesign some time ago. This is what it looked like back in 2011:

Compare the two designs and you will realize the site has upped its ‘shopping experience’. The current site has better aesthetics, usability and merchandising. What Flipkart did was to make it more shopper friendly than before. The design of an e-commerce site must be frictionless, engaging, convenient, intuitive and interactive. These are the characteristics that take the shopping experience to the next level. As an online merchant, you should spare no effort to offer users next generation shopping experience.

2. Leveraging the benefits of Social Login

Social media is now the top internet activity. People are spending more time on social media than anywhere else on the web. It’s time you leveraged the potential of social media for your e-commerce business.

By implementing a social login plugin on your site, you allow shoppers to register with their preferred social media identities. One big reason why 75% of shopping carts are abandoned before the final purchase is made is because shoppers are asked to register before making a purchase. Many shoppers see this as a tedious process at the end of which they have to remember yet another user name and password. A social login, increases registration conversions because it makes it infinitely simpler for shoppers to log into your shopping site. All they need to do is log in with their social identity.

There is yet another benefit of social login. As an online merchant, you get access to rich first party social data sitting on the user profile of shoppers. So if a potential shopper logs in with his Facebook identity, you can get permission based access to data on his Facebook profile. This data provides actionable insights about the shopper’s interests, preferences and buying behavior. This helps you take steps to personalize product offers, thus making shopping a more fulfilling experience for them.

3. Social Customer Service

As we have mentioned before, people are spending more time on social media. So, you need to look for new ways to implement social media to improve customer experience. It makes sense to do so because shoppers want to engage with brands on social media. One way of doing this is by offering social customer services; this involves allowing people to send in feedback and requests for customer support through social media channels like Twitter. This is what Flipkart.com is doing:

Think of social customer service as an add-on to your normal customer support channels. What you are essentially doing is making it more accessible to people who need it.

4. Create Trust

You can give online shoppers the best onsite experience or blend social experiences with your site, but the true indication of an effective and positive shopping experience is –Trust. If you want to compete against traditional brick-and-mortar stores, your target shoppers need to trust your brand and the products and services it is offering. Yes, this isn’t easy and is always a work in progress. The process of building trust amongst your online target audience continues as long as your business is operational.

So how do you go about building this trust? Take a look:

• Grow your brand: Don’t just focus on building awareness; also focus on building brand reputation. One of the ways of doing this is starting a website blog. Keep publishing high quality posts on it that are not necessarily about the products you are selling, but address the concerns of your target customers. Share the links to these posts across various social networks so that they reach the maximum number of people. Each piece of useful, results-driven content will help you build brand reputation brick by brick. Also think about publishing guest posts on high authority sites. This will do two things – Increase brand authority and bring your business in front of the site’s catchment readers. That’s double the benefit!
• Improve Services: Things like fast reliable shipping are a great way of building customer trust. You must compete with offline stores when it comes to service. If they are offering the best shipping brands for delivery, try offering the same to online shoppers. Using multimedia like videos in product pages is also a good idea as it not only increases the engagement quotient of your website and its product pages, but also product credibility. Did you know 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching an online product video?

Keep thinking of newer ways of building trust amongst your target audience about your brand. The more trust you build, the more comfortable will be your shoppers with the whole experience of buying from your site.

5. Customers Look for the Best Prices

Never underestimate the importance of pricing your product right. Your target customers will compare a particular product’s price across different websites and will usually zero in on a seller who is offering the product for the lowest price. A study conducted by e-tailing revealed 94% of online shoppers invest time in finding commodity products that are available at the cheapest rates. No prizes for guessing that finding products within their budget is an important aspect of their shopping experience. Before pricing your product, try making sure it’s not priced at the higher end of the scale.

Think of these tips or ways as a means of coming good on the customer’s expectations from your online retail business. Online shoppers have become demanding and discerning. Put yourself in the shoes of these shoppers? Will you opt for something that is second best? No, you won’t; you will only pick a first-rate shopping experience. So, make sure you deliver the same to your target customers.

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