E-commerce is the topmost medium for sales in the world right now, and the values are expected to top $4 trillion by the year 2020, as per the studies conducted by Marketing Enthusiasts. To say, we are already approaching that mark is an understatement with the statistics proving that over 70% of consumers account to online shopping, with the stakes going even higher.
E-commerce stores provide the consumers more freedom to think through and they have the convenience of getting what they want on the go. If you are planning to start or develop your existing E-commerce site, there are several progressive ideas to consider on how to implement the best trend that makes E-commerce work for you and to grab the attention of customers in 2018.
Planning to start an E-commerce site in 2018 can be a huge tedious job, what with there being millions of E-commerce site online where everything from everywhere is sold. And, there are the bone-crushing steps to go through to plan, design, index, invest and execute a warm-welcomed innovative e-commerce site that would suit your budget or, if you have more to invest, the perfect technologies that would help you with making your site the best start-up.
If you are going into launching an E-Commerce site in 2018, the following are the latest trends and, things to include on your site.
1. Make Sure You Sell A Unique Product
As there many e-commerce sites that are well-established such as Amazon, Alibaba which sells millions of various products, there is a more than likely chance that people want a change in online shopping that provides a market for only what they came to buy in the first place. As the e-commerce industry is ever growing, niche markets, which refer to a market that belongs to a specific kind of products or services, are emerging more in number since 2017, because having a typical e-commerce site cannot compete against big marketing giants such as Amazon, Wall mart or Ali Baba.
Planning a Niche market can be as easy as choosing a dish on a menu – Bottom-line: It can be a little tricky to find the best line of products or services to determine that will work for your taste, efforts and your budget.
The right kind of niche market can be found by following through some research and marketing ideas that are in trend and through areas of interest of people through search engines, mainly Google. First, you need to pin down on a unique line of products that might be useful for people and look for some of the most bought items online.
If you already have an idea for a line of products or services, then all the easier to narrow down the ways of promotion that you might want to consider, target audience and seasonal demands for that product.
2. A User-friendly Site With Seamless Interactions
Creating a successful E-Commerce site in 2018 would be the toughest thing to ever do. As the years pass by technology keeps improving and as the online medium has become the major mode of communication, a very simple website, to pinpoint accurately, a very simple e-commerce website would be overlooked upon. You have to stay in the TREND to BLEND-IN.
You can either choose to hire a group of professional well-trained Web Designers and developers to design your site from scratch or you can start by adding your extra ideas and improvements to an already available set of CMS (Content Management Systems) such as WooCommerce (a WordPress plug-in), Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, Big Cartel, PrestaShop, ZenCart, VirtueMart (a Joomla Plug-in).
As per the trends, a flat mobile-friendly responsive design would be the most expected in 2018 and as an online commerce site, it is advisable to have your own set of designers to add more clean design to your site. The main objective of the oncoming websites should be to build a Mobile-Responsive site design, so basing your site on that principle would be an advantage. As a mobile-responsive e-commerce site for a niche based market to thrive in the online sector, also to get a good ranking in Google’s SERPs would be to make your site fast loading and less-noisy.
3. Security Should Be Your First Priority
We live in a world where all our information’s are stored online, even by some companies that we might have visited once and forgotten sooner, but which might be stolen or compromised any day. Online theft of personal information or critical details like the bank- details is more common as much as a new site being opened every day. An E-commerce site without an encrypted address is as abandoned as ever. As an e-commerce site, it is essential for you to install EV SSL Certificate to provide a highly secured shopping experience that will make them feel gratified and safe.
Our customer satisfaction lies in providing assurance and trust, which will make them, convert as a positive sale. That level of trust can be given, only by providing them safe shopping as your site might require the transaction of critical information such as credit cards, passwords or personal ID.
In addition, even if you decide that you can provide security if you choose to opt for simple methods such as requesting your customers to change their passwords every 90 days, there is the primary concern that Chrome flags your site as unsecured if you have not installed an SSL Certificate, even so, more as harmful if your site requires crucial information’s such as Credit/Debit card data and passwords.
It is advisable to buy EV SSL Certificate from some of the highly trusted SSL providers to make sure you get a bump in your SEO ranking as well.
4. leverage The Power of Social Media Platforms For Promotions
An E-commerce can expect the possibility of a long-standing and thriving future, but the base needs to be strong. To build a stronger base, promote your brand as if you love it as a customer should love your product.
Register with Google Adwords, create Social Media accounts for your brand on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram and try to be present everywhere. You cannot expect to gain anything with organic promotions, hence register with Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Twitter ads and sponsor your products. Be active everywhere and select your target audience cleverly.
Make sure you provide quality content to market either for the product descriptions on your website or for the posts. Attract the customers by posting content and news related to your products. If you market your site strategically, you can quickly attain further promotions from news agencies and other forms of media.
5. Engage With Your Customers
You can engage with your customers in many different unique ways.
- You can use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) services provided by your CMS.
- The third-party integrated software like Live customer support from Tawk can be really helpful to your business and to your customers.
- You can also directly engage with your clients and customers via Social Media.
- Last but not the least newsletter subscriptions and customized email messages. Using both of these mediums you can deliver handcrafted, personalized emails to your customers.
You can make your customer have a seamless experience in your site through Chatbots, but talking to your computer is not the same of keeping a direct contact with one of your employees, this is said to have a lingering impact of a friendly- interaction with your brand for your customers.
You can include chatbots for seamless browsing through the shopping experience, but make sure to add the option of contacting your employees for further queries and always keep a team for Customer Relationship Management. Because, with the increase in Voice Search Interactions and Chatbots with Artificial Intelligence, people are losing the effect of shopping with a personal touch. These kinds of the addition of interaction with an employee might just make your customer last a lifetime in 2018.
6. Hassle Free Check Out Process And Return Policy
Opening an E-Commerce site in 2018 will workout only if you went to make your customer’s experience as smooth as possible while shopping through your website. In addition, with the industry making it more desirable for customers, it is viable for you to adapt and implement an Easy Returns Policy. An easy return policy will make your customer trust you more and buy your products more surely.
The first hindrance that occurs in a customer’s mind as they jump into online shopping is that “what if the product I buy is broken or in a bad quality than that is described?”, So carefully planning a Full Money-Back Return Policy with detailed terms and conditions crafted in your own which makes them feel secure is the best thing you can add to your e-commerce site. Make sure you add the number of days within which you will accept returns and most importantly, decide before you implement a return policy on who pays for the shipping charges, “is it whether you or the customer?”.
The checkout process is expected to be easier in 2018, with just about three steps, without being it tedious like some of the already famous sites. So, make you design a checkout process in which the customer can see which step they are at completing and make it simple.
7. Shipping
Shipping is a primary factor in E-commerce and choosing the right kind of market area with the shipping providers for various sectors and transportations, deciding on the shipping charges, and the types of shipping that you need to rope-in for your business can be tiring. However, there are thousands of options available now on the internet for agents even in the worldwide shipping sector like DHL and Ali Baba. In addition, there are numerous agencies to take care of that based on the area-requirement.
The primary factor to consider is that you are going to be taking care of shipping, not the customer that could become a negative point in this competitive environment. Providing “Free-Shipping” for your customers is the best idea for a better e-commerce market in 2018. Free Shipping means many customers are coming in, which will make the shipping charges an easy one if you keep getting a stable amount of customers.
Creating an E-Commerce Site is not an easy factor, taking into account all these trends and ideas it will be a piece of cake (Or at least a piece of a huge bank account). Building a site without incorporating these technology and interactive ideas in this massively competitive billion-dollar market in 2018 will probably mean more struggle for any recognition.
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