Fiercely ambitious and hungry for growth? If e-commerce business is your next venture, then keep the raging fire in your belly. In 2016, e-commerce retailers in the US made $322.17 billion in sales revenue. And by 2020, worldwide economic sales are expected to touch $4 trillion, say experts. You could also dream big, once you arm yourself with right knowledge and expertise. Here are few insights into the best features of an online store.
Low investment
The startup cost for setting up an online store is hugely less as it eliminates the need for investing in buying inventory sales equipment, physical space, too many human resources and others. Online stores need to pay a nominal amount for virtual rent and has the advantage of using e-commerce platform, hosting, free themes, great apps and other perks. A store logo is much cheaper than a store sign.
Lucrative profits
E-commerce makes it easier for businesses to cater to a larger audience at less expense. With your regular ads, you can attract almost anyone anytime around the globe, even those who are exceptionally busy and have no time for shopping in person. Thus, online retailers can boost their sales and make faster profits in a very short period.
Worldwide market
By selling online, you can display your merchandise in any part of the world without additional expense. So, you get the advantage to expand your market to global proportions. Whether you store your goods at a remote upcountry location you can still advertise and sell them worldwide.
Customer Reach
E-commerce can help even a small brand to reach customers easily around the world. Affordable e-packet shipping or free standard shipping that allows you to price and ship your products competitively to a worldwide audience.
Attracting new customers
In an online store, it is easier for you to showcase your bestsellers and lure new customers, who can view the bought stuff and the ratings posted against the buys. Better still, if you want to showcase new products to customers, you can introduce them in yours upsell, retargeting ads or email marketing.
Personalised experience
Depending on your customer’s taste and need, you may choose to personalize the shopping experience. Browse through emails and segregate based on location, amount of money, the customer has spent and the purchases made.
Customers will favour those who ideate bold, smart ways to personalize and elevate the shopping experience. For example, the smart fitting room, which includes a touchscreen, enables shoppers to select a different size or colour of clothing without having to physically step out of their house. Bringing features like this can lure more customers into their online stores.
Retargeting customers
In e-commerce, you can retarget people who add to cart but neither abandon or buy your product. They may have totally forgotten about it. You can collect email addresses easily with an effective pop-up and write an interesting message to them. Or look for attractive ways to remind them by indicating an ad.
Buying habits
It is important to know your customer’s buying habits. Fortunately, an e-commerce store makes it convenient for you to see the purchasing patterns of your customers. The website can record activities of its every visitor, like what pages were visited and what items were viewed or bought. This way, you can develop and nurture a healthy relationship with your customers. Happy with the shopping experience, they keep coming back to you.
Latest information
E-commerce store provides the latest information on products, the ingredients and the background information about its manufacturers. Customers find it very useful before deciding to buy the product, something that is not available in a physical store easily.
Impulse Shopping
Generally, people shop by emotion rather than making logical decisions. Impulse purchasing is popular in online store. Hence beautifully designed sites and apps, multiple checkout options, a parade of special deals, attractive banners, plethora of offers, information, can grab the shopper’s attention, compelling them to buy without many bargains.
Automated inventory
The inventory on your website can be automated through a web-based system. It reduces the operating costs of your online store.
Hassle-free Accounting
With backend software applications integrated, the process of accounting is hugely simplified in an online store.
Multiple payment options
There’s a host of payment gateways available that are very popular in an online store like PayPal, Pat etc. Good e-commerce software has multiple integrations built in – the more, the better.
Customer Relation Management
A CRM allows you to handle all your customer relationships systematically and includes a holistic approach to business strategy. It costs far more to bag a new deal or customer than to maintain the old one.
Brand building
It is imperative for you to fully customize and brand your website to highlight and project the image of your brand Branding is most essential to connect with your existing and prospective buyers and gain recognition. It is crucial to your success.
At Smart Sight Innovations, we have been providing remarkable eCommerce development solutions and services for our clients involved in ONLINE STORE selling in line with our vision of providing innovative and sustainable solutions that will inspire profitability.
Here’s what we aim at while building solutions.
Deriving the end user customer satisfaction while solutions are developed, implemented and supporting of the website.
Personalised experience is important. Recognising that Big data has a big role to play to identify patterns to deliver competitive advantage.
After the e-commerce site is implemented, the client should be able to manage the business operations of their site directly on its own and with ease. The client should also be able to smoothly manage their own promotion campaigns – advertisements, banners, market offers, discounts during festivals, etc.
Solutions that would be given need to overcome the technical limitations that the e-commerce sites would have. These may involve creating Plug-ins to overcome the limitations.
The client team should have ease in configuring and managing its pricing strategy of the Products. Additionally, the invoicing and automated alerts management should also be done with ease.
When you have an online presence, even a local business can become international and all just through a competent e-commerce strategy.
