£1 in every £5 spent in the UK is spent online and during the COVID pandemic online spending accounted for 35% of all retail spending. If you sell a product or service, it’s likely that an online presence is essential to the success of your business in the 21st century. Whether you’re a small family-run bakery or a high-street retailer, if you’re not selling online then it’s likely you’re missing out on business.
E-commerce is the selling of products or services online and it’s grown exponentially along with the rise and use of the internet. In recent years we’ve seen a seismic shift away from high-street retail towards online selling and it’s proved both a blessing and a curse. Any retailer, no matter their size or location, can now reach a national and even a global audience and for the big business at the top this has seen their market share reduced and diluted between the growing number of online retailers.
So, whatever your business angle you too will need to enhance your online presence and e-commerce services either to increase or protect our market share. And thankfully there are no real secrets to a successful e-commerce website; just a great product or service, a website that meets the needs of your customers, and a few best-practice tips to take account of.
Simple & easy-to-use website navigation
Your e-commerce website needs to have a clear, consistent and coherent navigation structure so visitors can easily move around your website. Your product categories should be arranged topically and in an understandable way so customers can easily navigate within and between categories.
A general rule of thumb is that your main product pages should be no more than 3 clicks away from your homepage. This ensures that customers can quickly navigate your website with a clear understanding of where they are in the website. You should use sticky navigation bars, search and filter functions, and breadcrumbs to help aid navigation around your website.
A fast & optimised website
Having a fast website is crucial to the success of your e-commerce website. Almost 50% of customers expect a page to load in under 2 seconds and 40% of customers will leave a website if it takes longer than 3 seconds. This can have damaging effects on your bottom line.
Improving the speed and efficiency of your website is a major factor for ranking in search engines now too. Google’s May 2021 core update will focus around page speed and your website could lose traffic if it is slow and inefficient to load.
Optimisation is another crucial aspect of an e-commerce site. It ensures your website meets best practice guidelines from search engines like Google that increases the chances of higher indexing. Higher indexing leads to more traffic and more traffic leads to sales. A fast and optimised website is a recipe for success.
Compelling & comprehensive information
When taking your brand online you need to ensure that all the information provided about your brand, product and services is comprehensive, up to date and compelling. Without a shop attendant to speak with, if an online customer has any doubts about a product or has a pressing question that they can’t find an answer for, it’s likely that they will leave and go elsewhere.
Your product pages need to be filled with information that both sells and explains the product at the same time. Use pictures, videos, and compelling copy to sell your product and inform your customers. Take a look at this page selling new Kia Sportage models. It breaks down the selling points of the car by area of customer interest and has interactive product information. Here’s another example for a Clarks shoe. The page has a compelling production description that both sells and explains the shoe. There’s also a product spec, handy tips on shoe care and important information on payment and returns policy.
Streamlined purchasing
All too often the checkout process is a huge pain point for customers. According to some reports almost 70% of website shopping cars are abandoned and it’s a safe bet that a poor checkout experience could be responsible for high percentage of that figure.
A good rule of thumb is the fewer clicks it takes to purchase an item the better. Less clicks means a smoother, quicker customer journey that translates into more sales for your business. Customers should be able to add products to their basket, checkout and enter payment details for purchase. It’s simple as that.
Any intermediary stage like account creation, email sign ups and customer surveys should be left until after the purchase has been made. It’s also important to provide as many options for payment as possible, like Paypal, debit and credit card, and finance.
Value-led content strategy
Content on your e-commerce website is all supporting pages and information that relate to your products, services and brand identity. Back in the mid-1990s Bill Gates wrote an essay titled ‘Content is King’, in which he laid out his vision for the internet and all the ‘content’ that Incorporated the web.
In modern times we look at content in a slightly different fashion. Content is a marketing channel used to attract online customers to our website with thoughtful, insightful and unique content that is about your product, brand or industry, and which is of value to your customers. Perhaps it answers a question about a product provides helpful insight into making a purchasing decision. Content has the power to turn prospective customers into buying customers while developing your brand identity and brand trust with an online audience.
