It’s no secret that in today’s world you need a variety of channels to boost the sales and revenues of your business. Such a channel is the webshop or web store—a place which is open 24×7 to your customers come rain or shine. It seems they’ve been around for ages and are constantly evolving, yet there are some basic tactics everyone should know to secure success.
Product Portfolio
Every one of us is different, so make sure that your product offering or portfolio sparks interest, and more importantly, fills the shopping cart of all your site visitors. With more product ranges you cater for more customers. Be careful to always present your products professionally and clearly.
More products do not always mean great business. It is essential to have signature products that are only offered by you. Exclusive products will always bring customers to your site. This will act as an opportunity for bringing them to new products offered by you. Webshops will benefit greatly from a good balance of signature products and other equally important ones for your customers. That is how you will create a great product portfolio.
User-friendly
Your webshop must be amazingly appealing but also user-friendly so that your customers and new visitors can easily navigate through your store. Imagine a real brick-and-mortar store with no aisles, no signage, and no indication of where how, and where to pay! So, add a good search function so customers can quickly find what they need. Then, let it be possible for customers to order without going through a huge registration process. In terms of payment, offer a range of options to make getting paid easier. Don’t forget the huge variety of user-friendly payment apps!
A golden tip. Never have too many elements on your website. It will overwhelm your visitors. Confusion is the last thing your customer wants. Keep it simple and hassle-free. It should be super simple for the customer to search for the item and order it.
Design it in such a way that they get all the necessary information regarding the product. All of this will not only keep your website user-friendly, but it will also encourage the customer to return to your website for more. And that is good for business.
Total Customer Service Approach
The customer is king, so the expression goes. Make your customers feel extra special and royal! Cherish customer experience. If you want to achieve customer loyalty, you need to make sure that your customer service is out of this world.
See it like an offline regular store where you are there to provide information, help, and advice. Post your contact information and react quickly by phone or email, especially during regular business hours. Add an FAQ section to your site so that questions on orders, payments, and deliveries can be answered in a jiffy—effortlessly.
Never take your customer for granted. Help them as much as possible when things go wrong. Big companies have robust customer services. Smaller companies not so much. They have to manage a lot when it comes to business-customer relationships and interactions. Issues with product delivery are one of the most common ones.
That is the area where most of the complications happen. If you ever find yourself in such a situation, which you quite possibly will, never sleep on it. Many companies lose business because of their inability to establish good customer service. Keep the channels open and help them if they cannot find their product. Send them a new one if you can afford it.
Up-to-date and optimized
There’s nothing worse than a site where you have to scroll to infinity or wait for what seems a lifetime for a page or its pictures to load. Keep your store’s visitors engaged with a lightning-fast site, enhanced with clear product photos and descriptions.
Don’t forget search engine optimization if you want to stay ahead of your competitors and rank the highest on search engine lists, such as Google. Include the appropriate keywords to get your products and shop quickly found first. Google offers tools, including Google Analytics, to track your shop’s progress and shoppers on a regular basis.
Think also about the devices used by your shoppers to access the site. It needs to be mobile-friendly to accommodate the ever-increasing number of shoppers with mobile devices. In the UK for example, in 2019 over one third of all shopping was realized over mobile devices.
Shoppers use a huge range of apps for their online purchases, so make sure that your site is easily accessible and optimized for a great shopping app experience for all smartphone and tablet users.
Checkout
There is a wide range of approaches or tactics to make your webshop a success. You can combine and add or remove solutions to suit the needs of your market or niche. It is important to measure and evaluate your actions with time to avoid being left behind in today’s fast-paced marketplace. In the end, it’s about ensuring that customers make it to the checkout, pay, and leave with a smile on their faces…then end up popping back for more.
As mentioned already, bringing your customers to the checkout is very important for the business. A lot many crucial things can go wrong on this step. Most of these are to do with poor optimization of your webshop. It was also mentioned earlier that your webshop should offer as many options available in the payment options. If you can offer all the popular payment gateways and channels on your checkout window, there is no way that a customer would turn away. Keep it simple and accessible for your customer and your business will be taken care of without any second thoughts.
So, if you want your webshop to be a success. Keep the above-mentioned points in the back of your head and apply them in practice. Have a diverse yet concentrated product portfolio, a kind that will satisfy the needs of your existing as well as bring new customers. Have a user-friendly website that allows easy access and hassle-free navigation. Apart from a great customer experience, also focus on providing great customer service. Invest and make your website faster and fully optimized with the latest SEO practices so that you never lose on capturing sales and new customers. And finally, the checkout should be as easy as possible, provide them with all the popular payments gateways and channels so that they can find their desirable option.
