3 things the most effective ecommerce sites consistently do
This time of year is a time of celebration and reflection; celebration of the things that have gone well for us over the past 12 months, but also reflection on the aspects that could have been – and perhaps still could be – better.
The below list isn’t quite a list of “New Year resolutions” for your website. That’s because your decisions and priorities for your own online store will largely depend on what it is currently doing well, and the areas in which it could fare better.
Still, these three inclusions should serve as important reminders of just some of the things your online shopfront should do – not just occasionally, but consistently.
They offer the utmost ease of use
An ecommerce store being simple to use, doesn’t mean achieving such a high level of usability in a website is a “simple” task. Indeed, many online business owners can be rather “usability-blind”, being too familiar with their own websites to be able to perceive them as a new user would see them.
So, ensuring your e-tail store is genuinely straightforward to use might well be one of your main priorities for your brand’s online presence in 2024.
They make the benefits clear to their target customers
It might seem a little too “obvious” as far as advice goes, to suggest you need to communicate to your store’s target customers the potential benefits they could enjoy if they shop with you. Still, a lot of ecommerce businesses aren’t brilliant at communicating such benefits.
This might be partly because online stores often aren’t very good at putting themselves in the mind of the buyer who is trying to make a purchasing decision. Customers tend to make such decisions on the basis of “pros and cons”, rather than the “benefits versus costs” mindset that the online stores themselves tend to have. So, this is an aspect your store might look to improve on in 2024.
It has also long been said by some marketers that a “describe benefits rather than features” approach can help bolster an online store’s conversions.
But this is something of a myth, albeit one based on understandable enough reasoning: that listing a given product’s features alone might cause the target customer to ask, “so what?”, as it might not be entirely clear to them how the stated feature would benefit their lives.
In practice, then, a “mention both features and benefits” approach is likely to be a better driver of conversions for an ecommerce store, than an emphasis on either features or benefits. But of course, the most suitable ethos for your brand will likely depend greatly on your particular store and its offerings.
They can get customers to act straight away
It isn’t always an easy or obvious process for an ecommerce business to activate that “FOMO” (fear of missing out) in its target customers. That can be particularly the case when the products being offered aren’t obviously “scarce” ones that would necessitate the buyer deciding and committing themselves quickly.
However, even if your store’s products aren’t scarce, the offers you present to your customers can be. You might, for instance, offer certain other products for free with the customer’s purchase, if they buy a given item by the end of the week or month. Once this offer period ends, you might then switch to another time-limited offer on another product.
There are various other ways in which e-tail stores instil a sense of urgency in their target customers, such as by including information on their product pages about the numbers of people who have recently looked at or bought that item, to create an impression of competition. You might also convey whether the price for the given product is presently at its lowest level for a while.
The fundamentals of getting your brand’s ecommerce presence “right” go well beyond making sure it accomplishes all the above – but of course, the above make for potent foundations nonetheless.
To learn more about Piranha Designs’ expertise in website design, ecommerce, search engine optimisation (SEO), and even custom software development services in Gibraltar, Spain, and the UK, please don’t hesitate to contact us today.
