It may come as a surprise, but chewing the corners off your desk, screaming until your ears bleed and grinding your teeth down to the bone, is rarely seen as normal behaviour. In fact, it’s precisely this kind of anxiety that would normally end with you swapping your suit jacket for a straight jacket. However, when you’re building an e-commerce empire, pressures from various sources can drive you closer and closer towards the tipping point, and if you’re not careful, you will soon be wearing a tin foil hat and living in fear of contamination and conspiracy. Luckily for you, this article reveals how to remain balanced and reasonable whilst creating your online kingdom, helping you avoid the pressures of business, and make sure that you have the best practices in place to successfully build and manage your empire without stress.
Dont Let Your Customers Get Out Of Site
E-commerce is all about having a well-designed site that gives your customers the best possible experience. When it comes to producing a domain that your customers will want to interact with and return to, usability is vital. Your initial design should be carefully considered, and pay particular attention to the following aspects:
- Customer Service:
You should provide as much help to your customers as possible. Give them a variety of clear contact points: phone numbers, E-mails and Skype should be used to offer the best solutions to diverse customer queries. High quality customer service creates confidence in your brand, and allows you to build stronger relationships with your customers.
- Product Information:
- Checkout Process:
- Innovation:
- With the term only being coined in the late 1970s, e-commerce is still a relatively young idea, and the pressures it brings are still somewhat unknown. Having no physical shops to maintain can give you an advantage in some respects, but it also means that you need to work harder to attract and retain customers. While the challenges of building your e-commerce empire can become overwhelming, creating an online space that is user friendly is a huge step in the right direction. The last thing you want is the weight of the business pushing down too heavily on your shoulders, and sending you over the edge into the realms of cloud cuckoo land.
All product information on your site needs to be as detailed as possible. Remember, customers want to feel that they can almost touch what they are buying. You need to use copy that sells the item, but you also need to include plenty of description: give dimensions, weights, materials, and provide as many high quality images as possible. Make sure you use professional images that display your products to their full potential, as enticing pictures will give your merchandise a much bigger appeal.
The checkout process on your site is one of the most important elements of the customer journey. The rest of your site can be impeccable, but if your customers are frightened off at the final hurdle, then all your glamorous pages mean absolutely nothing. To avoid making the checkout too complex, keep all forms quick, clear and simple. Implementing a progress bar and highlighting each step as progress is made, will encourage customers to be patient and complete the process.
Awareness of technology and implementing innovation is something which you need to keep a close chek on. Following trends in your sector, and keeping up to date with the latest advances, will constantly improve your customers’ shopping experience. This can be done by following relevant Twitter users and blogs for inspiration, and also using customer questionnaires to discover what the end user is experiencing.
Featured images:
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
- License: Creative Commons image source
Adam Wray is a blogger who also enjoys working for a successful e-commerce business. In his free time Adam likes to unplug from the online world, and enjoys going for long walks.