Achieving ecommerce excellence is mostly a matter of creating the best possible customer experience. If you can take the risk out of the purchasing process and make the experience as positive as possible for your buyers, you will likely be successful in the long term. Here are a few of the best tips for achieving ecommerce excellence.
Make it Simple for All Buying Levels
Some people want to arrive at your website and buy right away. They want to land on your page, pull out their credit card and be done with the whole process immediately. Others will want to come to your website and do a lengthy research. Your site needs to be able to accommodate both. For example, Amazon makes it very easy for people to order right away with its buy button above the fold. However, people can also spend ages researching reviews and related products to find the perfect item.
Trust and Security
Trust and security is a big issue online when credit cards are involved. Make sure you have 128-bit SSL encryption and that you have a secured server certificate. What that means that your checkout page should say https:// rather than http://. Also make sure your website is very well designed. Poor design indicates lack of trustability.
Finally, work on building your brand. That is not something that can be done overnight, but plays a big role in conversions. Amazon converts twelve percent of their visitors into buyers, not because of brilliant copy, but because of a brand that has built up over years.
Simplicity
Visitors shouldn’t feel that it is difficult to order from you. Try to take as many steps out of your checkout process as possible. People who land on your website should have one or two choices. They can browse products or they can search. They can keep shopping or they can check out. They can pay by credit card or by PayPal. Try not to overload them with choices. Avoid crowding your site with too many features. Make it as simple as possible.
Your Return Policy
Make your return policy as clear and as generous as possible.
One place you clearly can see the effect of return policies in action is eBay, which is often filled with people selling similar products for similar prices. The margins are so low that it is very hard for anyone to undercut anyone. However, one area where certain sellers get an edge up is their return policies. Sellers with generous return policies will almost always outsell sellers with stingy return policies.
The same is true with ecommerce. If people know that they can get a full refund if they are not satisfied, they will be a lot more likely to want to order as the risk to them is greatly reduced.
These are some of the top tips for achieving success in ecommerce. If you provide exceptional customer service, you will achieve exceptional results in the long run.
