The increasing competition in the business world has always driven companies to seek innovative and new ways to keep themselves updated to maintain their position in the market, attracting and retaining customers. However, this means that businesses should keep themselves abreast of the latest trends and technologies, know what’s in demand, and where their business industry is headed. Regarding the digital world of eCommerce, the trends are even more volatile. Such industry dynamics put eCommerce companies on a constant push to update themself with the growing needs and expectation of the customers.
The reason for this increased competition in the eCommerce world is because of the increasing number of webstores with each passes day and the ecosystem of the eCommerce world that is always expanding with it. With so many entities involved in the ecommerce ecosystem innovations in this domain are inevitable setting new standards and expectations. Therefore, any eCommerce business that does not adopt or adhere to these risks loosing itself in the world of competition. In this article, we’ll see some of the areas where eCommerce businesses should be vigilant and where bringing themselves in line with the latest trends can benefit them.
Make your webstore accessible on different platforms
The advent of cell phones and their growing popularity is shifting the way people access the internet. With smartphones in hand, you can browse your favorite products and webstore anytime from anywhere in the most convenient way. According to an estimate around 60% of all eCommerce sales are made using a cell phone. This shows the importance of ensuring that your webstore is compatible with cell phones and can be easily accessible on mobile platforms. This calls for a mobile responsive design of your webstore such as using the fonts, pictures, and aspect ratios for the elements on your webstore that align with mobile platforms.
Another way to make your eCommerce store easily accessible and usable on mobile platforms is to create a dedicated app for your webstore that is compatible with popular mobile platforms. Having an app for your webstore will help help you retain customers and deliver a more seamless experience for your customers as well. Having an app makes it easier for customers to track their orders, get notifications about the latest discounts and promos, and get a personalized shopping experience. Another important aspect of mobile commerce is that it makes the payment process more seamless for customers allowing the business to enable customers to pay seamlessly using existing payment apps on their cellphones.
Align your webstore with discounts and promos
The immense competition in the ecommerce space means you need something to keep attracting people to your eCommerce store. Discounts and promos are common things that people expect. You might have seen this yourself when browsing different e-stores as you land on its homepage: it’s always showing some ongoing discounts or promos. Seasonal discounts and promos are another way you can offer promotional offers on your webstore. There’s no doubt that sales increase during the holiday season and different occasions of importance and customers are expecting discounts during such times. Therefore, by offering discounts during these periods you can ensure that you meet the expectations of customers. This will also enable you to grab more sales and maintain your position in the competitive marketscape when the sales are high.
Offer the latest and trending products on your webstore
The latest and trending products are usually the top-selling products. People are looking for them at good prices and if your store has them to offer then this can help you meet the customer expectations. Therefore, as part of running any retail business, it’s important in eCommerce as well to keep yourself abreast of the latest products and offer them on your webstore. This will enhance the reputation of your webstore as being up-to-date and help you build a loyal customer base. Of course, having trending products on your webstore is also good from a business point of view as it helps you get more sales and improve your profits.
Meeting industry standards
While the heading above sounds obvious, meeting industry standards means knowing what facilities most others are offering their customers and providing your customers the same. If you’re not providing services and facilities that most others are in the eCommerce industry it’ll be hard to get customers. Therefore, you must always keep an eye on the latest things coming out in the eCommerce world aimed at providing customers with a seamless experience and try to incorporate that into your business as well. Some areas that you should look into:
Payment methods
Look what kind of payment methods are becoming increasingly popular and offer these to your customers.
Delivery options
Product delivery is getting faster and faster. If your delivery timing doesn’t match with your competitors then you can lose customers.
Website design
One important area to consider is the design of the webstore. With time we’ve seen eCommerce stores becoming more interactive and incorporating new tools to enhance the customer experience. Try researching what latest tools and technology can be useful for your customers and include those on your webstore.
Conclusion
The need to gain and maintain market share in the eCommerce market asks us to keep ourselves aware of the latest trends, tools, and technology that is present in the ecommerce ecosystem. By doing so we’ll ensure that we keep on meeting the customer expectation and remain ahead in such a competitive environment presented in the eCommerce domain. The points discussed in this article shed some light on the few ways that eCommerce businesses can look into but many others must be considered as well. Each business and its customers can differ depending on various factors and thus each business must ensure that what it adopts as part of keeping itself aligned with customer demands is also specific to the customer in their niche as well.
The x2xeCommerce being an expert in providing eCommerce solutions can help you establish an eCommerce store and also integrate with your other business solutions to help you realize a unified business management system with its integration solution. An example of an eCommerce solution by the x2xeCommerce includes the x2xeCommerce RMH-Shopify Integration Solution. Reach out to the x2x team for any query or a free demo.