Why Should You Develop PWAs For Ecommerce Business?

With the advent of technology, users expect great user experience and organizations need to target their audience more rapidly. Here comes the need of PWAs for ecommerce development. PWA technology plays a game changing factor in the ecommerce industry. It helps eCommerce brands to concentrate on enhancing the user experiences and develop three times quicker than an eCommerce website. According to the reports, we can experience a vast development in mobile-driven commerce by 2024 and progressive web apps are the main reason behind this growth in mobile businesses. Here we’ll discuss the development of PWAs for ecommerce. But before digging into it, let’s have a look at what PWAs are?

What Is Progressive Web Apps?

Progressive web app is a combination of website and app features. It works and appears like a native application. It offers push notifications, offline functions and you can add it to your mobile phone’s home screen. Dissimilar to a native application, a PWA is a mixed strategy for making a platform that works like an application and a website. You cannot download PWAs from an app store but they are easy to use like native apps. As, for eCommerce stores, the main source of traffic is mobile phones, PWAs are the great solution for Ecommerce.

Also know- How To Optimize Ecommerce Checkout Page?

When To Develop Ecommerce PWA?

Here are some of the cases from which you can get an idea of when there is a need to develop PWA for a webstore.

• To provide a great browsing experience for the mobile user.
• Need to focus on mobile users 
• If store owner doesn’t want to publish their app on store
• Store owner sees decrease in growth of conversion rate on their website
• Store owner wants to develop native app for their webstore but they are on a tight budget

Advantages Of PWAs For Ecommerce Stores-

1. Saves Storage Space And Data-

Users always want to save their internet and data costs, this also true regarding ecommerce. PWAs are rescuers for eCommerce organizations. When an app might take 50MB storage space in the phone memory, PWAs would occupy just some MBs only.

2. Offline Functionality With Service Workers-

Cache and service worker APIs are the USPs of PWAs. Service workers work in the background and are responsible for getting cache elements and sending notifications. They store new content in a browser’s cache and syncs local transformations to the local server. Hence, if yous app users can’t be online  due to the weak internet connection, PWAs would help standard navigation. 

3. Responsiveness And Flexibility-

PWAs have a responsive layout, so whatever will be your device, your website’s design must comply with size and resolution. Great user experience boosts online sales and retains genuine buyers. Flexibility synchronizes with the mobile first strategy relying upon addressing the choices of your targeted mobile audience. Mobile responsive websites have more chances to attract user’s attention and engage them.

4. Saves Time And Cost Of Development-

As PWAs’ architecture lays on reusable codes, programmers might use them again and again. Where, to build an application you need to have different code for other platforms. Also the app must fulfill the needs to get approval from reviewers of both platforms. If you want to use devices with different operating systems to target two groups, you should increase efforts, time, money and resources. 

5. Automatic Updates And No App-Store Costs-

In case of PWA, automatic updates work similar to regular website update that occur at the server end. This enables end-users to have an updated website app. Also you have to spend subscription costs to the app stores where you want to upload native app. A PWA assists you with swearing off these high expenses without affecting your site’s visibility. When you launch a PWA, there’s no need to rely on app stores and their terms and conditions. While a native application probably won’t be visible to your users on the application stores, a PWA can be managed by the search engines to boost its visibility.

6. Payment Security-

PWA provides payment security to the ecommerce businesses. But, tedious checkout processes prevent them from completing an online purchase. Because of the integrating payment request API with a browser, customers can experience secure and fast payments. In this payment method, there is no check-out form and so customers can complete their purchase quickly.

7. Easy To Maintain-

If you want to develop separate apps for play store and iOS, then you might need to spend a considerable amount for hiring a developer because the app needs continuous monitoring, regular error fixing and up-gradation. Whereas, pwa saves money and you can upgrade it by identifying requirements for various browsers.

8. Bridges Gap Between Customers And Merchants-

With PWA, users don’t need to download an app. Thus is lowers the cognitive load that users generally face downloading the app. As users get limited mobile storage space, keeping a minimal amount of mobile apps is the current trend. If there are lots of apps on mobile, it gets slower and clog the phone. So mobile centric businesses are developing PWAs.

Prerequisite To Build Ecommerce PWA–

1. Create An App Shell-

App shell architecture is a way to build progressive web apps that immediately load on your user’s screens, like what user sees in native apps. With the help of app shells, PWA performs so fast with the high performance. This is important element of an application with dynamic content and constant navigation.

2. Service Worker-

It helps PWA to work in offline mode or poor internet connection mode. Hence it is a main component that PWA should include. This network script keeps scanning the system and it determines where it should download content from cache or server. 

https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/why-should-you-develop-pwas-for-ecommerce-business/

Must Know Do’s And Don’ts For E-commerce Website Development

These days, e-commerce business is booming and since Covid-19 pandemic, it is reaching its high peak. Most of the offline businesses are moving towards e-commerce business and so the need to develop e-commerce websites increases. A user-friendly, feature rich e-commerce website will allow to deliver and sell products more efficiently. Also, it makes it easier to connect with potential customers. Developing an e-commerce website is not as easy a task as it looks. You need to use right tools and technology, secure foundation, use effective keywords, domain name selection, search engine optimization and good web design. Though you are an entrepreneur or e-commerce developer, you must know some do’s and don’ts for e-commerce website development. Let’s see which are those.

Do’s For E-commerce Website Development-

1. Choose A Catchy Domain-

Domain name reflects the standard of your services to the world. It can either attract customers to the website or drive them away. So, it is necessary to select a attractive, easy to remember and inviting domain name for your website. Avoid the domain names that can misspell or confusing. Domains that are long and stuffed with keyword aren’t good.

2. Mobile First-

Make sure your website is 100% mobile friendly. You must perform various pre-launch testing from various devices to ensure that no matter where your customer is trying to buy, they can process with your website very smoothly. Keep in mind that, mobile users browses website with their fingers. Place important elements on the fingertips as as to easy to reach and click on with their thumb. 

You can know- How To Test An Ecommerce Website/Application?

3. Develop Your Content-

Content is one of the most important element of any website. Use catchy titles for front banners of your website. You should provide descriptive content for each product you are selling. Add quality and sensible content to your website.

4. User Experience-

Not all the users are tech savvy. Make the purchase process as simple as possible. To increase the likelihood of getting these orders, website’s shopping and checkout process should be simple. Ensure that people can easily browse items by a search function. Also the checkout page should be simple and it is a best practice to use 12 form fields or less and even you can offer a guest check out.

Know the ecommerce UX tips at- Best Ecommerce UX Tips For 2021

4. Use High-Quality Images And Videos-

Always use high-quality images that show your customers you mean business. Low resolution product images will look sloppy and buyers may get confused whether to buy it it not. Also, you should add videos of a product which describes the product from each angle. Product videos are great way to make prospects stop in their tracks while scrolling and spend more time on your website.

5. Consider Your Marketing Plans And Budget-

High online sales need a proper sales funnel and use of online marketing forms complementing your business strategies and your advertising plans. For instance, if you sell your product through social media, it will be easy to set up ecommerce store. You just need to add some analytics features and take your budget a little higher for reaching more targeted audiences. It needs surplus funds for marketing and website development.

6. Personalization-

People prefer a personal touch. Artificial intelligence and machine learning automates, personalizes shopping experiences. AI continuously collects data on how customer shops, when they buy purchases and they’re looking for in a product or a service.  You can also build trust by ensuring you shipping information, warranty information and money back guarantee reference on your website in easy-to-locate spots. 

Don’ts – E-commerce Website Development-

1. Don’t Feature Any Products That You Don’t Sell-

Most people list products on their e-Commerce store, and when a customer visits the site, they go to another website to order that product. Hence, your online store should feature only those products that are available to sale. When the item featured on your is not ready to ship, your store’s reliability and value will affect.

2. Spending All The Money Without Planning-

Do not spend your complete budget on building a website. You can go with the ecommerce website development company, who can easily create a well-designed website. It is necessary to have some amount left over for online marketing business so that you can ensure a significant return on your investment.

3. Be Intentional, Not Random-

If you have a “Featured Items” or “Recommended for You” section on your website, don’t recommend random products. Products in that feed should be directly related to the main product. Cross-selling can be valuable, as it can lead to higher average order value- but only if done appropriately. Hence, always be careful and take help from an outsourced marketer if needed.

4. Making Visitors Think-

It you’ve added the content to your site unexpectedly and unevenly, there are chances of losing potential visitors. Visitors expect to reach a particular part of information quickly. If the visitors can’t find the exact are searching for, there’re hire the chances of bouncing back of the visitors, and also they may not return to your website.

Know more at- https://solaceinfotech.com/blog/must-know-dos-and-donts-for-e-commerce-website-development/

 

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.