It is not surprising that ecommerce has become an immensely strong force in retail.
Making purchases over the internet is simple and comfortable, and when done successfully, it can produce a nearly effortless shopping experience right from a person’s couch. It is expected that online sales will constitute 24.5% of all retail revenue worldwide by 2025.
The worldwide attraction to the comfort of online shopping will not fade away, particularly during the hectic holiday period. Selling online is the future of retail.
But competition is also increasing. It is likely that there are other companies that are selling the same product that you are offering unless it is very specialized. It is more and more vital for you to firmly establish your company in customers’ memories, not just with your products, but also with the process of purchasing them.
Change your focus to the perspective of the customer—instead of trying to push a sale, accept one. What do shoppers value most? In many cases, it’s their time. Consumers are requesting that stores be equipped to accommodate the preferences of when, how, and where they desire to shop. You need to offer a consistent experience across all channels throughout the entire customer purchase process.
You must give purchasers a trouble-free buying experience in order to meet the requirements of today’s customers and meet their expectations.
E-commerce should provide the same effortless checkout experience as retail stores; consumers should be able to acquire what they need immediately, without having to put in effort or time to the process. It gets rid of any potential problems that might cause someone considering making a purchase to give up on the idea and decide to shop later (or, worse, to shop somewhere else).
Inspire Customer Confidence
Shoppers get annoyed if they sense that a website may not be trustworthy or have adequate measures in place to safeguard their information from illegal access. They’re right to be concerned.
Online stores receive an estimated 206,000 attacks a month. You must demonstrate your dependability and safety before, during, and after a purchase. Here are some tools to help you do it.
Offer top site speed and security.
It is essential to confirm that your ecommerce platform is offering swiftness, dependability, and safety in order to demonstrate trustworthiness to website users. BigCommerce provides a user-friendly, secure system to manage complexities without fail when you require it. All BigCommerce stores have Level 1 PCI compliance pre-installed, ensuring a safe and secure experience for users.
Route
Route provides a comprehensive set of post-purchase services for web-based retailers that can offer shoppers more assurance. Route allows customers to purchase safeguards against potential loss, theft and damage to their parcels right when they are completing their transaction. Route provides an all-encompassing package monitoring system which allows customers to trace their shipment throughout its journey.
Clyde
Clyde makes it simple to include a guarantee system so that their items remain safeguarded even after they have been sent. This app links extended warranty contracts to the items you are selling and puts them up for purchase in your retail outlet. Once a customer purchases an insurance policy, they will be sent an email from Clyde with details of the contract and what steps to take if an issue arises.
Deliver Surprise and Delight
Prompt, reliable product delivery can have a great impact on whether or not consumers will continue to use your business.
Faster, more efficient shipping.
You desire the product delivery procedure as well as unpacking experience to be as simple and satisfying as everything else in the process until now. It is essential to anticipate any potential shipping delays early on in the fulfillment process due to the supply chain issues that are widespread within the global economy. We discussed briefly above how you can upgrade the shipping experience with the help of tracking resources, but here is your opportunity to genuinely make a positive impression that will stay with your buyers.
Here are some ways to kick it up a notch:
ShipBob and Ware2Go
Amazon has trained customers to expect their orders to arrive within two days or less. Third-party logistics solutions can help you compete. ShipBob makes it easy, fast, and cost-effective for ecommerce companies to receive two-day fulfillment thanks to their extensive network of fulfillment centers in the U.S.
Ware2Go’s NetworkVu can help improve your shipping by providing you with the knowledge to create a distribution system that fits the needs of your customers while still meeting your work process standards. The app can suggest the most suitable choices for fulfillment delivery that provide expedited shipping for places that need it the most by utilizing information about client orders, seasonal demand trends, and potential business development.
Make it Easy to Buy
Your marketing worked. The shopper is on your site. They identified something they are passionate about, and are all set to go ahead and purchase it. All the hurdles are cleared, right?
Not exactly. The potential of a purchase may be more uncertain than it appears, even after the item has been placed in the buyer’s shopping basket. Approximately 70% of online shoppers abandon their cart, according to Baymard’s results which were based on 46 statistics.
In order to encourage people to make purchases and give customers an effortless retail experience, these are the things you need to do.
Prime your site for purchase.
The journey to buying begins prior to customers reaching the checkout page. Your website needs to be beautiful and instill trust in your brand, making customers eager to purchase your products over and over.
If you don’t have the technical skills of a web developer, you can take advantage of user-friendly applications such as Shogun Page Builder to craft an attractive website that encourages customers to buy. Shogun provides a user-friendly way to create and manage webpages without needing to code or use external developers. It allows users to design a personalized site simply by dragging and dropping. And it seamlessly connects with BigCommerce stores .
Consider how customers might use mobile phones to access your shop. M-commerce is becoming increasingly necessary for companies aiming to engage in e-commerce. Make sure your site is set up to work on both desktops and mobile devices in order to give your customers the best experience possible.
Personalize the experience.
Think about making the experience for the consumer specific and suited to them. Consumers anticipate that if they have previously shopped with your business, they will not be treated like a stranger and their transaction will be made simpler.
Create custom storefront experiences with LimeSpot. LimeSpot Personalizer is a personalization platform that utilizes Artificial Intelligence to assist marketing and ecommerce professionals in furnishing shoppers with tailored experiences, from Websites to emails to ads, on any device. LimeSpot facilitates brands in generating an individualized experience for their store for each client.
Optimize your checkout experience.
One survey determined that 17 percent of customers in the U.S. who use online shopping have left their carts behind as a result of a lengthy and complicated checkout procedure.
Contemplate the checkout in your web page like a self-service register at the supermarket; it should be quick, straightforward, and efficient. The checkout process is a crucial area to reduce obstacles, and there are many tools to assist with this. Incorporating a digital wallet into your checkout process is a simple initial move.
Customers anticipate your payment procedure to encompass either Apple Pay, Google Pay, or a similar type of service. Do not go overboard on how many steps there are; the purpose is to make a straightforward buying procedure.
The future of shopping is omnichannel shopping
The drastic change over to online shopping within a short period of time was one of the most compelling tales to come out of the retail industry during the past twelve months. People who were limited to their houses began to purchase items over the internet, and companies responded quickly with the development of new tools and assistance to fit the new style of shopping.
What were these services? When questioned about what their business goals and strategies have been made a priority of, retailers answered with delivering a good omnichannel experience (40%), ensuring speedy delivery and fulfillment (39%) and perfecting their ecommerce portfolios (38%) as the top three.
Out of all retailers, almost 40% have made a long-term commitment to invest more in technology in order to give customers a unified shopping experience.
Retailers are shifting their focus to services that will enable them to satisfy their customers’ demands at every point of contact. Businesses are taking advantage of the Internet by selling their wares and services on their webpages and through social selling, with options for shoppers to purchase items online and pick them up in person, or click and collect. That is the true essence of omnichannel shopping.
In the coming year, we anticipate merchants making more intense investments into their delivery and delivery services, as well as advancing their online business.
What is omnichannel retail?
Omnichannel retail is about giving customers a consistent and smooth experience with their shopping on digital and physical platforms, from the start of their search for products to when their order is completed.
What this means for your retail business
No longer can one choose to do business solely on one platform. In 2020, merchants who had only brick-and-mortar shops scrambled to contact clients by means of other virtual channels such as just-made web stores or marketplaces on social media.
Retailers must have an all-encompassing plan of action to fulfill modern customer desires in order to be successful.
When it comes to putting your omnichannel plan into action, it’s essential to offer a variety of methods for communication and purchasing.
Jacob De Geer, the vice president of products for small and midsize businesses at PayPal, emphasizes that small companies should expand their range of sales channels and adjust rapidly to the revolutionary shift in customer conduct towards the internet primarily.
How jewelry retailer Foamy Wader implemented omnichannel retail
Alexa Allamano had difficulty finding someone to fill a job opening at her jewelry store Foamy Wader, so she resorted to technology to get the store up and running again.
She put QR codes near each thing in her shop window so that passersby could scan and look at that exact item on her website to buy it, which made fast and simple spontaneous shopping possible.
“Windows are now an active shopping space. Finding this technique is as revolutionary as discovering a sacred artifact for sellers as it solves the number one issue — lack of navigability — that causes users to leave a webpage. I also put QR codes on the shop entrance in order to arrange meetings, increase my email list size and consolidate my social media following.
Customers had good things to say about the idea of window shopping using QR codes as well as about Allamano’s choice for buying online and picking up in-store.
A customer mentioned that they found the booking system provided by her to be the simplest one they had ever used.
Other technologies implemented:
- Shopify : When Allamano enabled pickup as a fulfillment option, she used Shopify to tailor post-purchase emails that direct the customer to a calendar to schedule pickup once their order is ready.
- Square Appointments : At her small new location, Allamano is offering private shopping in-store by appointment only with the help of Square Appointments.
Put it in action:
- Find out which platforms your customers use to know which channels to focus on. Use Google Analytics to identify the most effective channels that are driving traffic to your website.
- Ensure every available physical and digital retail channel/touchpoint is shoppable. Make it easy for customers to find and buy items directly no matter the channel they’re using.
- Ensure a frictionless, unified experience between your online and offline channels.
What this means for your retail business
Since a great deal of sales remain largely on ecommerce now, it is imperative that smaller and medium-sized retailers prioritize the effective management of their delivery operations and make sure they deliver harmonious and dependable shopping experiences on both digital and physical platforms.
Gartner has reported that major retailers have over half of their online orders fulfilled either through click-and-collect or by distributing products from the store; this illustrates shoppers’ preference to shop, purchase, and obtain products and services from both physical and digital sources (full details are accessible exclusively to Gartner clients).
Small and midsize merchants need to continue to put money into in-store and curbside capabilities to stay competitive. This increases the ease of web-based buying and guarantees customers have an alternate method of obtaining your item (for example Curbside Pickup, compared to delivering).
The future of shopping is a triple threat of ecommerce, BOPIS, and curbside pickup/click-and-collect
Given the tremendous demand for online purchasing, retailers have had to reconsider the way in-store activities can contribute to and help promote digital sales, resulting in an increase in total sales and revenue.
The past year has seen a very rapid growth in services like buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS), click-and-collect, and curbside pickup. The results of our investigation revealed BOPIS, online delivery, and curbside pickup as the most effective methods of sales delivery.
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