How To Measure E-commerce Success?

Since the past few years, e-commerce business has hit a spike, and is continuously growing. Pandemic adds more value to the ecommerce business than ever. This also increased the competition among various ecommerce development companies. Developing an ecommerce website or app is not sufficient. They need to do a lot of work on marketing strategies to achieve success. Here we’ll discuss some key factors to measure ecommerce success. These factors give a real insight into ecommerce business at every stage of its growth. 

Factors To Consider While Measuring E-commerce Success-

How to measure ecommerce success?

1. Personalized Buying Experience-

Personalized customer experience is a trend in 2021 and can continue onwards too. It can boost your e-commerce business to the next level. It has been analyzed that, 64% of consumers want customized buying experience and expect that you will predict their next step. This way, you will adapt their experience as per predictions. Localization is a way to start personalization experience. It is an important factor to satisfy the growing expectations of today’s users. If you’re selling your products, you can prove more ecommerce success. Hence it is important for e-commerce development companies to know their customer’s behavior and adapt the experience i.e., descriptions, prices and so on. This will help companies to achieve ecommerce success. 

2. Conversion Rate-

Conversion is an ecommerce metric to measure. Simply, conversion rate is a number of site visits you get divided by total number of transactions. For instance, if you receive 1000 site visits and 250 of those purchase an item, then sales conversion rate is 4%. Converting visitors to buyers is one of the biggest indicators that your offerings are attractive to target audience. Conversion can also be used to track success of specific marketing efforts. 

How to measure?

It is good to take a funnel-based view of conversion and get a better understanding of what’s happening on your ecommerce website. Ecommerce shopping is a journey of series of entering your website, browsing product pages, checking FAQs, adding product to shopping cart, and lastly transactions. Knowing the details of where and when you’re seeing a major drop-off in customers will tell you that where to focus conversion rate optimization efforts. 

For instance, if conversion rate drops after site visitors look at your FAQs, this warrants further investigation. If ecommerce returns policy is strict where competing retailers aren’t, you might require to adjust this to remain relevant to potential customers.

3. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)-

Ideal scenario is to attract customers by organic, but this is not for most businesses. As e-commerce grows, brands are focussing to spend more on acquiring customers. Customer acquisition can cost you up to 7 times more than selling to existing customers. 

How to measure CAC?

Customer acquisition is a sum of total sales and marketing costs for a particular period, divided by total number of new customers. It includes email marketing, paid search, social media campaigns and any other investment that is designed to increase the number of visitors and conversions on ecommerce website/app. When cost starts to outweigh the gains, you need to analyse whether or not your sales sand marketing efforts are paying off. But there are some warnings.

Only acquisition cost can give you an inaccurate perception of ROI. If high CAC is outstripped by your average order value and customer lifetime value.

4. Keep An Eye On Social Media Trends-

Social media helps to increase online visibility of any business. This plays  important role in e-commerce success. As per research, it is expected that approx. 2.5 million people will be using single or other social media platform in 2020 for ecommerce success.  

Reason behind this is, businesses know need of social media platforms for their ecommerce success. Ecommerce campaigns can grab the people’s interest very quickly. 

5. Percentage Of Repeat Customers Vs. First Time Customers-

Percentage of new vs existing customers shows the customer retention rate and is closely related to customer acquisition costs. If returning customers are already familiar brand and offerings, cost of acquisition will be lower. 

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Why You Should Use JAMstack For Ecommerce?

Though the Ecommerce industry is the fastest growing industry, online stores are facing lots of challenges. They compete with each other with increasingly demanding customers. Fulfilling these demands and overcoming challenges is getting harder as it needs flexibility, readiness to make changes fast. Online store face some challenges such as- poor user experience, slow page speed, high maintenance cost, developing new features take more time. But JAMstack evolves as a solution to these issues. So here we’ll see the reasons to use JAMstack for ecommerce. But before digging into it, let’s see what is JAMstack?

What Is JAMstack?

JAMstack is an architectural pattern of web app development. It is a tech stack that includes client-side javascript, reusable APIs and prebuilt markup. Chief components of JAMstack are explained as below-

Javascript- It is the most widely used language to write web apps and it includes lots of frameworks and SDKs. 

APIs- APIs carry out the HTTP requests to transfer data to server-side of the application through interface or resource.

Markup- It is HTML rendered before time through a static content generator. Markup is responsible to impart the appearance of web app’s pages. it is either built with the static-site generator or it is dynamically assembled when the page loads. 

With traditional website development systems, APIs controlling the plugins and extensions for web platforms were limited by boundaries of the monolithic systems. But JAMstack gives more freedom to APIs. One of the main goal of JAMstack is to help developers in fast building, securing and scaling the web solution. It does this by providing a possibility to use tools and workflows that support productivity.

Also know- Best Ecommerce UX Tips For 2021

Why You Should Use JAMstack For Ecommerce?

1. Best-Of-Breed Approach-

JAMstack is a great solution for the developers who are going by best-of-breed approach. Best-of-breed solutions are flexible and economical also, because you pay only for what you need. This lets you choose the best tools, tech stacks and CMS to offer best services to your clients. Best aspect of this approach is that every tech stack has its own individuality and functionality. Though tech stacks are performing in integration with other tools, any update, issue or change in one tool won’t affect others. If you don’t need one specific tool in the whole group, you could keep the rest. This makes the best-of-breed approach safer compared with all in one solutions.

2. Faster Loading Speed-

JAMstack provides a simple setup as the static files are hosted on CDNs. It ensures that the static websites works with speed and maintain higher performance. Speed of website impacts SEO and user experience also. According to the SEO, even a one-second delay in page loading speed will reduce the conversion rate by 7%.

3. Better Developer Experience-

Developers don’t have to be full-stack developers who take care of implementing layout to connect it with the backend layer. JAMstack eases this makes it possible to use APIs, programmers can depend on ecommerce solutions such as Shopify and concentrate only on creating front-end layers. Thus the development time and cost reduces.

4. Improved Time To Market-

As mentioned above, better developer experience results in improved time to market. JAMstack improves development process and helps to-

• Add new touchpoints without needing to use extra software.
• Develop new features or implement changes quickly because it is possible to work on front-end and back-end layers at the same time
• Build user interfaces according to your choice
• Personalize customer experience 

5. You Can Sell Your Products Everywhere-

Developing an eCommerce store means decoupling the front-end layer with the back-end layer. So you can publish and display your products and contents on various platforms such as Amazon, Facebook and so on. Such a possibility accompanies the simplicity of managing all digital sales channels at one place rather than checking data in each channels independently.

https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/why-you-should-use-jamstack-for-ecommerce/

How To Secure An Ecommerce Website And App?

Ecommerce industry is booming worldwide and is not showing signs of returning. So developing an ecommerce website will be advantageous for your business. But one thing that most of the entrepreneurs overlook or perhaps even forget is the security of their eCommerce website. You shouldn’t think that your website is safe just because it’s small at the moment. In fact, small businesses are actually targeted more often than the larger ones. Financial fraud, data damage and security breaches can damage your brand’s reputation. So whether your website is small or large, you must secure it. Here are some easy tips to secure your ecommerce website. But before that, let’s see what’s see ecommerce security?

What Is Ecommerce Security?

Security is one of the most important features of an eCommerce website. In case of any security issue, owners put their brands and their customers at a risk of financial or reputational loss. If you will not spend money on an insecure site, why should you expect your customers to feel secure while making money transactions on your website? And once a threat happens, it will be difficult to gain your customer’s trust back. 

Most Common Ecommerce Website Attacks-

1. Cross-Site Scripting(XSS)-

Cross site scripting is a client-side code injection attack on a website. Goal of an XSS attack is to execute malicious, harmful scripts into a web browser by injecting the code into the web page. Generally, website becomes a delivery system for malicious scripts. This attack is most harmful and effective when used with forums, message boards or any web page that allow user input or comments. Also, XSS attack may change you content or redirect your website to another website.

2. SQL Injections-

SQL is a standard coding language which is used to access database. With SQL, user can manage databases and execute queries like data retrieval and record removal. SQL injections are the most common attacks that use rogue commands to get access to sensitive data stored on a database. There are 3 types of SQL injections- In-brand SQL injection, Inferential SQL Injections, Out of Band SQL Injections.

In-band SQL injections-

These are simple and efficient, this makes it the most common SQL injection attacks. It uses of a language to communicate with websites database and show sensitive information or even gain administrative access. It launch the attacks on same channels as it does to collect results of the attack. If you’re not protecting the code, hackers can hack the data easily.

Inferential SQL Injections-

It needs an attacker to send data packets to the server and lets them observe the server’s responses and behavior. Through this, an attacker can understand the server’s structure. Generally this type of SQL injection is slow to execute but harmful.

Out-of-Band SQL Injection-

This type of SQL injection can be carried out when specific features are enabled on the server. It depends on your website’s server’s capacity to create DNS or HTTP request that transfers data to hackers.

3. DDoS and DoS-

These are the most common attacks that you might face. It executes with the same goal but technically different. DDoS attacks also clog your website traffic. These attacks uses various devices or botnets to attack. Botnets operate as a group of computers and are generally infected with malware to cause further damage to ecommerce website. DDoS attacks shut down eCommerce website by spamming it with illegitimate traffic.

4. Malware Infections-

It is a common way for hackers to access your eCommerce website. Malware includes viruses, ransomware, spyware, worms and so on. It steal customer data, erase data, infect website visitors and even hold website hostage.

Know the amazing ecommerce platforms at- Top 10 Ecommerce Platforms To Know In 2021

Best Tips For Ecommerce Website Security-

1. Use HTTPS-

It is an online protocol to secure communication over internet and is one of the most easy way to protect ecommerce site. HTTPS websites marked with green padlock icon in the browser address bar are considered secure because they are verified. Meaning that it is not a fake website hosted on the internet to trick users into getting access credentials, credit card details and so on. Obtaining SSL certificate is the initial step and needs to be carefully implemented into an e-commerce solution. It’s benefits are beyond security and reliability. Small and medium scale businesses should plan their e-commerce website’s HTTPS security. 

2. Choose A Secure eCommerce Platform-

https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/how-to-secure-an-ecommerce-website-and-app/

E-commerce Trends You Need To Know In 2021

 

E-commerce has been growing 15% every year but it grew over twice that number in 2020. According to the report the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic in 2020 bring dramatic rise in e-commerce with increased online retail sales. Similarly the potential for e-commerce to grow in 2021 with some key trends. If you are thinking to build an e-commerce website or app, knowing these latest trends will help you to shape your e-commerce development. Let’s see top 10 e-commerce trends in 2021.

Best E-commerce Trends In 2021-

1. Shoppable Video Ads On Social Media-

Shoppable pics and interactive videos are new frontier in e-commerce. Videos provides another dimension to marketing the products. Videos can vary from unboxing videos to tutorials or explainer videos. Product videos can be converted into a slideshow and user-generated content can be reposted to capitalize on the video frenzy. Place videos on websites- stream unboxing of the new product.  

Also the amazing tips to optimize ecommerce checkout page at – How To Optimize Ecommerce Checkout Page?

2. Voice Search-

AI devices such as amazon echo, google home assistant, alexa, and increase in the quality of voice channels for commerce attracts potential consumers very rapidly. Till 2025, 75% of the households will have sensible speakers. Optimizing this voice search in online business is easy and effective too. It is important to encourage organic traffic from voice searches by providing sharing responses to the consumer’s queries. Attract potential consumers by giving them engagement through higher content development. All by itself, in case they are looking at a solution to their inquiry, they will twig from your blog entries. If customers are checking out an answer to their question, they will check your blog posts. Optimizing content, adding new skills within voice channels, language support, voice navigation visibility on websites or apps.

4. Omnichannel Strategies- 

In the e-commerce, Omnichannel strategies  are especially for brands looking to expand. Lots of customers shop online means the consistency and cohesiveness of e-commerce brands needs to get popular across marketplaces and social media. 

With omnichannel experiences you should expect to see more in 2021, including social selling through video content, as customers spend a lot of time in watching videos. Also, as customers watch a product video, there’s more possibility that they’ll buy it, that makes social selling via video. 

Omnichannel eases the work of marketers to verify that their campaigns result in offline sales. Multi-channel attribution makes it possible to meet customers across channels, and deploy analytics across channels to study omnichannel performance. 

In the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic, multi-channel attribution will go a long way in ensuring that e-commerce brands track their omnichannel success with more accuracy.

Omnichannel experience ensures that customers’ feelings of disconnectedness brought about by the worldwide pandemic reduces. Shortly, omnichannel technology is a viable solution to customer disconnect and isolation.

Shoppable video and touchless or contactless transaction are great omnichannel solutions that help brands target specific segments and provide more convenience. 

4. Augmented Reality Technologies For E-commerce Stores-

Coronavirus outbreak pushes us towards digital, e-commerce brands will have to work smarter to deliver rich and compelling experiences for customers. Technologies gives brands more opportunities to get creative and innovative with their stores and offerings. Augmented reality is a way that e-commerce brands can opt to deliver the best possible experience. Customers can be immersed in exciting and engaging e-commerce experience through video, AR and 3D technologies, to give better feeling and engagement while giving the customers something they can associate with.

More than 120k stores will be using AR technologies by 2021, that promises a richer experience. E-commerce customers together will drive the take-up of AR technologies in the e-commerce sector.  Also AR technologies can resolve the challenge of inability to see the product firsthand. With AR experiences, it is possible to visualize products they’re interested in and intend to buy. 

Also, AR will help customers to understand their needs and whether the products they want to buy meet needs and demands.

5. Minimalistic Design-

Customers are responding to increasing online clutter with a desire for products that look clean and simple. Most of the e-commerce designs for 2020 include minimalistic design and 2021 will introduce minimalist color palettes including white, tan, grey and other neutral colors. This minimalist design focuses on: Neutral backgrounds, plain text and simple graphics, minimal navigation items, central search, clean product pages with pop-under description etc.

6. Mobile E-commerce Sites-

Shopping from phones is increasing. Mobile e-commerce anticipated to claim 73% of global e-commerce market in 2021. Given this growth, e-Commerce must become increasingly mobile-oriented by design, instead of an afterthought. Lots of brands are investing in mobile apps for e-Commerce to add greater value, demonstrated to increase conversion, revenue and loyalty. 

Know details of mobile e-commerce at- Mobile Commerce App Development- All You Need To Know About

7. User Generated Content-

Word of mouth are always powerful in marketing. Online reviews and other user-generated content directly influences customers’ confidence and trust. In 2021, lots of online buyers will not even buy a product without reading a user-generated reviews about a product. User-generated content include organic social photos and content boosted by brands, online reviews, influencer marketing,FAQ forums and discussion boards. 

8. Smart Chatbots-

Future of e-Commerce businesses depends on customer interactions and so conversational chatbots will be the best to step forward in the direction. Chatbots can take care of a wide range of services from customer service to generate leads for business. Nearly 1.4 billion people are using chatbots. Messaging apps have already got them used to this form of interaction, making things easy for you. There is a need for e-commerce and retail platforms to have conversational chatbots. These can be deploy on the platform as well as various social apps.  

 

How To Optimize Ecommerce Checkout Page?

Checkout is the most crucial stage of a customer’s journey in online shopping. 7 Out of every 10 people who get to your checkout page leave without making a purchase. No matter how good their experience leading up to this, something must be going wrong. There are many reasons like hidden costs, limited payment options, compulsory logins, or security concerts. So how can you optimize the final step in a consumer’s journey for a better customer experience (and more sales)? Let us see the ecommerce checkout page optimization tips to drive more sales.

Know the best ecommerce platforms at- Top 10 Ecommerce Platforms To Know In 2021

Ecommerce Checkout Page Optimization Tips- 

1. Convenience-

Convenience has become one of the most important factor affecting the overall conversion rates. 83% of shoppers agree that they value convenience, hence provide shoppers what they want, even on the checkout page too. 

1.1. Allow Guest Checkout-

Providing the ‘guest checkout’ option next to register/sign-in is great for those customers who don’t want to sign up. Regardless of whether they’re security conscious, a first-time buyer, or have another reason for not wanting to sign up, this will cover it. Rather than seeing ‘register’ and leaving the page, visitor can select ‘guest checkout’ and just provide the details required for purchase.

You can push for them to register after the sale has been completed. Create a custom thank-you page for after-purchase, or use onboarding email. Also providing order number and details where order details will be sent, will help them chance to create an account to keep track of their orders.

1.2. Single Click Sign In-

No one likes to remember AccountIDs and password. A solution to this is, you can offer one-click sign-ins. Let them use their social accounts like Google and Facebook to register on your marketplace. Cross-platform functionality eases the login process to sopper and get access to some pre-vetted user info. This can be done by using OAuth2 with an Identity and Access management tool like keycloak. It lets the third party authenticate users and you get limited access to user accounts.

1.3. Provide Pre-filled Fields-

Registered customers should not need to enter the same info every time they buy something from your store. Entering the delivery details is tedious tasks, particularly when they are in the middle of a checkout process. This feature adds convenience, speeds up the process and leaves shoppers with less time to think about abandoning the cart. Common practice for pre-filled is to store the user’s info in small packets. With this way, shopper has to select only one of the many saved delivery and payment options.   

1.4. Progress Indicator-

Most of the time,it is not always possible to keep the checkout process short. We know that online shoppers are impatient, then how to stick them through the entire process? Use a progress indicator on the checkout page.  

With an idea of how long the complete process might take, the customer will be mentally prepared to go through with it. Progress indicators works well for all type of checkout situations. Also, you should remember to not limit the progress indicator to three to five stages.

1.5 Checkout Buttons With Products-

With shopping carts, customers can buy multiple products and pay for all of them at once. Add a “BUy Now” or “Go to Cart” option to directly take shoppers to the checkout page. It saves more time and reduces the effort taken to scan navigate to the final process. 

1.6. Save Cart In Wishlist-

Sometimes buyers use the cart as a glorified wishlist. But they don’t often purchase all the cart products at once. For such case, they remove everything from the cart except the product they wish to purchase and proceed to checkout. However, if there were an option of saving other products in the cart for later, the customer might buy them eventually. Provide the option of cart item saving into the wishlist and you might end up selling more to the customer in the long run. You can provide recommendation engine that shows relevant products based on shopper’s preferences. You can easily generate more revenue with additional AI and ML capabilities. 

2. Design-

2.1. Simple Design-

It is easy to create an attractive design but its of no use if the UI of the checkout page is not good at conversions. Create simple design that don’t confuse shoppers. Checkout page should have a clean and elegant design that makes the shopper want to buy the product. You may want a variety of design elements to reflect on your checkout screen, but actually you don’t need that. Rather, just focus on what’s important and highlight the same. So create and improve the checkout page for your eCommerce website.

2.2. Remove Distractions-

Distractions distract the shoppers from their primary goal. It can be a last minute offers, advertisement pop ups, product recommendations, unwanted graphics. This increases the possibility of shopping cart abandoning without completing the checkout process. One of the best tip is to get rid of usual header, footer and menu options from the checkout page and make it blinker for the process.

Unnecessary long process is another common distraction for buyers. Keep it short and include just required fields. 

2.3. Use Single Page Checkout-

One-page checkouts are popular as they speed up the checkout process and improve overall conversion rate. Create a one-page checkout to give customers a path of least resistance. Avoid filling the checkout page with lots of information. It is also important for you to know that one-page checkout form is not for every eCommerce business. It is better to conduct A/B testing to determine if it’ll work for you. 

WooCommerce one page checkout and shopify customize checkout page are easier ways to employ a single-page checkout on eCommerce websites.

2.4. Optimize For Mobile-

Here are some guidelines to follow-

• Design a page for single-handed operations
• Avoid creation of lengthy checkout page. Break the process into smaller stages. 
• Keep the font and form fields large for better readability and CTA buttons big enough to avoid accidental taps.

3. Payment-

3.1. Offer More Payment Methods-

Even physical shops offer multiple payment options like credit-debit cards, cash etc. PayPal is one major player. For many customers, paying through PayPal means they don’t have to go and find their card in their wallet. For B2B companies,  you may find many departments prefer the old-fashioned way of invoicing. If you use that, you’ll draw customers in who might otherwise have avoided you. You can offer over-the-phone payment with a single click to connect to your VoIP services.

3.2. Allow Order Modification-

Order modification on the checkout page can prevent shoppers from leaving the checkout page. You can let them switch other variants, change the delivery address and alter with other modifiable attributes. The more modification options on the checkout page, the less likely they will abandon the cart. This fundamental feature is mostly hard to execute in an eCommerce application. The modified cart has a ripple effect throughout the codebase, affecting inventory and payment status.

4. Security-

4.1. Implement Data Validation-

Data validation makes the checkout process more secure for shoppers. When you make it binding for just a specific kind of input, decreases the capacity of conmen to interfere with it. Also, it prevents customers from making errors while filling those fields and saves them from further iterations of process.

Hence, proceed and set up validation rules for form fields. Mark out the necessary fields and display input errors if buyers miss or enter incorrect information.

4.2. Show Reviews And Ratings-

Customer words are the most convincing among all promotional techniques. Hence most of the eCommerce portals show customer reviews and ratings with the product descriptions. Display product ratings in summary to show the customer’s feedback. Showing reviews on the checkout page can be tricky though. One can also include a summarised version of reviews.

4.3. Ask About Exit Reason-

You can use exit-intent pop-ups to know the reason of – why shoppers left your cart. The data collected can help you in the improvements that users want to see in your online store.

4.4. Testing And Improving-

There’s no one size fits all solution for a perfect checkout page. Most effective way to ensure you develop the best version of checkout page is by continuous testing. Consider the different metrics, test them and see if you can bring  a positive change for your business. Perform A/B testing and discover what works best for your eCommerce store. Go ahead and try page optimization techniques for your business.

Know the details of ecommerce testing at- How To Test An Ecommerce Website/Application?

Final Words-

Building an ecommerce website or app is easy but optimizing it to grow sale is not a simple task. Following the above optimization tips will help you to create an optimized checkout page for ecommerce store. If you’re facing any difficulty to create ecommerce website or app, consult with Solace experts. We are here to help you through consultation and development. You can hire ecommerce developers of Solace team for an effective ecommerce solution development. Connect with Solace and get a free quote for ecommerce development. We will be happy to help you.

Best Ecommerce UX Tips For 2021

 

User experience is one of the most differentiating factors between  ecommerce businesses. Ecommerce trends are continuously changing and customers are more picky and discerning than ever before. The secret of ecommerce business success is “win over customers and they will take care of the rest.” According to the report, 38% of online shoppers will leave a website if they find design to be unattractive. Smarter businesses focus on this aspect right from the eCommerce development stages. So the businesses are working hard to come up with a website that is clean and easy to navigate so as to make the purchasing process easy and attractive.

Here we’ll see various UX sections that you need to focus on to get most of your eCommerce store. There are some tips about- how to improve UX features and give a better experience to users. Before digging to its details, let us see details of ecommerce ux.

What Is Ecommerce User Experience?

Ecommerce user experience incorporates all the interactions that a customer experiences during the product purchasing process. It begins with them visiting the site or the application and goes beyond the product purchase. It includes post-purchase interactions like product delivery, customer support, return, or exchange of product and so on. In short, anything that a shopper has to do with online store comes under this category.

You should also know the best ecommerce platforms in 2021 at- Top 10 Ecommerce Platforms To Know In 2021.

Need Of Ecommerce User Experience-

Most of the online stores are selling products that can be found on some other eCommerce store too. Some of the times, prices would be similar to these online stores, so just one thing that differentiates online stores is the kind of user experience they provide. This keeps you ahead of others in terms of success. A pleasant ecommerce user experience improves the conversion rate and makes shoppers return to your store for future purchases. Here’s a list of benefits of great UX for eCommerce-

• Improved rates of returning customers
• Reduced cart abandonment
• Reduced customer support cost
• More satisfied customers

Let us see the prominent features of great ecommerce UX and how to implement them to ecommerce store.

Great Ecommerce UX Tips And How To Implement Them-

1. Enhance Load Speed To Increase Conversion Rate-

Page speed refers that the time it takes to load your eCommerce page, whereas site speed is the average time it takes for a page on your website to load. It is important to take care of both. From the UX perspective, fast loading pages add a smoothness to the entire experience. According to researchers, 57% of the customers leave a website after waiting for 3 seconds and 80% of them will never come back to the website. Every customer has their own unique worth; this may create significant losses in terms of revenue.

How to improve page load speed?

1. Optimize images-

Images are important for ecommerce site. There are some of the ways that you can use to optimize images like- compressing the images, decreasing thumbnail sizes, getting rid of unnecessary images, uploading images in CSS sprites and so on.

2. Use CDN-

CDN stores cached versions of website in the global server network and results in faster loading speeds.

3. Code minification-

Poorly written code can adversely affect the load speeds. Minification  process helps you to get rid of poorly written HTML, CSS and Javascript on webpages. This results in optimal performance and increase in page speeds.

2. Product Discoverability Saves Time And Increases Sales-

Product discoverability gets more important when shoppers with higher buying intent are involved. If the customer feel that he/she is wasting their time trying to find the right product in your store, they are more likely to go somewhere else. It is important that they easily find what they are looking for, else they will bounce away.

How to improve Product discoverability?

1. Make useful homepage-

Use the sections on the homepage to help shoppers. For instance, you can show trending products for a region with some great deals. 

2. Focus on navigation-

eCommerce navigation helps visitors to simplify their hunt. If someone is visiting your eCommerce site to purchase shoes, make sure that you are showing them different categories of shoes you have. To do this, use a Flyout menus. 

3. Product attributes-

Product attributes will help your customers to find the products. Rich product attributes makes easy filtering. It brings in the element of multi-faceted search to the equation. Try relying as much information about the product by using  product attributes and you will make shopping easy.

3. Product Description To Build Trust-

Product page tells all about the product. If you neglect to give adequate data, the customer may leave your store. Whereas, if you are providing a misleading information, the reputation of the store will badly affect. Product page should have the right balance between correct and sufficient information.

How to improve product description page-

1. Images are important-

Product images are important for eCommerce UX. You must ensure that displayed images are informative too.

2. Don’t miss out on the variants- 

Provide the variants of product like- color, size.

3. Let user reviews help you-

Honest user review sections on the product page will help you in the long run. 

4. Think For The Ways To Get People Back To Your Website-

Imagine that you have developed a strong website, but what’s next?-

• How will you attract more visitors?
• How do you convert site visitors into customers?
• Also, How do you keep them coming back?

Here are some of the tips to increase customer retention-

• Personalize your website- include customized landing pages, featured sections, voice search or an email subscribe pop-up.
• Highlight new and popular with rich product details
• Give public recognition through social media
• Engage users on regular basis

5. Customer Service Is Important For Online Too-

Offering better customer service results in increase in sales, improved brand and product value, improved retention rates, increase in user trust and so on. 

How to improve customer service?

1. Use chatbots-

Shoppers like smart chatbots so, use them to assist about shopping queries.

2. Self support-

Everyone is not interested in interacting with customer rep. Some people like to handle problems on their own. It is for these people that you should also have self-service portal. It can be FAQ to chatbots.

6. UX For Mobile Commerce Is Also Important-

Mobile commerce is set to make up for more than 50% of online sales by 2021. Working on mobile commerce UX will help you to sell more products. Use the following features for better mobile commerce experience-

1. Use of double tap and pinch- 

People expect images to expand on pitching and tapping on mobile devices. So you must provide a feature to do that.

2. Dial pads for number fields-

Form filling on mobile devices can be made easy by providing dial pad rather than QWERTY keyboard for filling form fields.

3. Provide bigger buttons- 

Small buttons can be tiresome on small screens of mobile devices, when they are very close to each other. So use bigger buttons to add fluidity to the customer journey.

Wrap up-

These are some of the important ecommerce UX sections for better sales. If you are having an ecommerce store and thinking to boost sale with these u strategies or thinking to develop a new ecommerce store with a great UX, consult with Solace experts. We are here to help you through skilled developers. Connect with Solace and get a free quote for an effective and best performing ecommerce web solution development. We will be happy to help you.

Top 10 Ecommerce Platforms To Know In 2021

 

To sell any product online, you need an ecommerce platform. A regular website provides everything you need to promote your business but people can’t pay for products, as it needs integrations with shipping providers and payment processors. A solution for this is an ecommerce platform that includes basic features like shopping cart tools, web hosting and payment processing. Depending upon your budget, sales volume, or industry, you may need extra features, like bulk upload or real-time stock inventory tools. When selecting an ecommerce platform, ensure that it suits your tech skills, provides features to improve customer experience and offers customization options. There are variety of ecommerce platforms available in the market, so it is important to consider the basic features that an ecommerce platform should provide you. Let us see the features that you can rely on, to choose a winning online shopping platform.

Important Features Of Ecommerce Platform-

• Run on a unified and single platform- ecommerce platform that you choose should offer unified ecommerce, order management, financial, accounting, POS, customer service, inventory, and marketing, merchandising on a single cloud-based eCommerce platform.
• Customer view- Ecommerce platforms must provide good customer service, targeted marketing, and deliver consistent experiences. All customer communication should be in single view across all channels and touchpoints.
• Good customer experience- You should choose an online business platform that creates personalized, friendly and responsive, and rewarding mobile, web and in-store experiences for customers for your store to stand out customers’ expectations. 
• Content creation- Creation of smooth and easy content creation on new or existing pages is important as it provides a convenient interface to create and publish content on the stores. 
• Support of bottomless expansion- Ecommerce platforms should fully support various business models, channels, brands, currencies, locations and languages on the same platform.
• Dedicated support and document- Best ecommerce platform should provide the support wherever you need. For instance, Shopify often provides support through various channels like email, phone calls, live chat etc.

Top 10 Best Ecommerce Platforms of 2021-

1. 3DCart-

It is a secure and powerful ecommerce platform that has served 22,000+ online businesses in 20 years of its service. This platform has helped online merchants to build online stores for ranking higher and selling more. It includes 200+ built-in features, highly rated SEO options, 50 free themes and support of more than 100 payment processors. 3Dcart is one of the top ecommerce platforms to provide intuitive features, mobile-friendly themes and marketing ecommerce tools to your store for higher conversion rate. It is a great platform for advanced ecommerce users. Some of the notable features of 3DCart are-

• built-in SEO tools.
• offers 24/7 expert eCommerce support.
• Customer-friendly
• Secure and scalable
• mobile-ready themes
• No transaction fees
• Free domain for one year

2. Bigcommerce-

BigCommerce was founded in 2009 and is a leading open SaaS solution, that provides merchants sophisticated enterprise-grade functionality, customization and performance with ease of use. Nearly ten thousand companies across 150 countries and various industries use BigCommerce to create attractive and engaging online stores. It is best suited for SMBs & MM who need more from their ecommerce platform with large or complex catalogs. Like other platforms, it allows the platform to be extended with third-party applications. It also supports both B2C and B2B businesses on the same platform. 

This platform is easy to use for beginners. BigCommerce makes it easy to edit and modify SEO-related features like custom URLs, page titles and like. It’s multi-currency feature allows merchants to set prices in multiple currencies. BigCommerce also supports various Headless Commerce capabilities, CMS’s and DXP’s for merchants and agencies to build unique shopping experiences. Here’s the list of features available from BigCommerce standard plan- 

• Unlimited product listings
• Unlimited bandwidth & file storage
• Multi-currency sales
• Reporting 
• Custom domains
• 12 free themes and 160+ paid themes
• Gift cards
• Integrations with shipping and POS software
• Page builder
• Ratings and reviews

3. Square Space-

It is a popular platform for online business that is completely integrated with a built-in for each plan except for the entry-level option. With Squarespace, it is easy to build a beautiful website. You can install multiple templates,and switch between them any time. It works well with new ecommerce shops that are not sure what it looks like in future. This is because, squarespace helps its users to scale or pivot the direction of their sales strategy. One of the main drawback of using Squarespace is that they don’t have app store where you can add any other integrations or extensions. You can find useful and popular built-in applications, but one should check the complete list of features if they want something specific. 

Here’s a list of squarespace benefits. 

• Unlimited products
• Sell physical & digital products
• 24/7 customer support
• Built-in applications

4. Magento-

It is one of the most popular open-source ecommerce platform released in 2009. In 2018, it was purchased by Adobe and now available in two versions: Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce.  Magneto is a best ecommerce platform for small-to-medium businesses having library of more than 5000 extensions.

Prices in Magento are in two tiers:

• Magento Open Source is free to download and use. But, expect to pay for everything else associated with the site like hosting, themes, development, add-ons, etc. 
• Magento Commerce is the enterprise-level solution. Prices are quoted by a sales rep, and are reported to run anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 annually. 

Some of the popular site building features of magento are:

• Mobile-optimized shopping
• Integrated checkout, payment and shipping
• Global selling
• Instant purchase
• Catalog management
• Extended Functionality via App marketplace
• Site search
• Customization options available

5. WooCommerce-

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