E-commerce sites! Do you really have three months for Christmas? We say No!!!

by Prejushya Kalicharan - 9/9/2012 11005 Views

This is the right moment for eCommerce sites to celebrate Christmas

Ecommerce has become a part and parcel of our normal shopping experience. Everyone wishes to select products which are best, cheap and durable. To confirm all these at the same time, they need to visit at least five shops before settling for a purchase. Why would anyone get tired opting direct purchase, while you could do all these sitting relaxed on your couch at home? Over 65.5 % of the US people have disclosed their wish to do online shopping this Christmas via. smartphones and tablets. 3 out of 5 people in the UK purchase their goods from online stores, and a survey reveals that they have spent more than $5 billion dollars on online shopping and gifts last Christmas. So this is perfectly the time to showcase your site as a scintillating bride to customers, since data and statistics clearly indicate that ecommerce is the single biggest thriving industry in the retail sector.

Tweak the appearance:

Coming on to the scintillating part, should your e-commerce site be taken to a stylist or what? Yes, of course you should take your e-commerce site to a professional Web Designer who is really capable of grooming your site, the way your customer wishes to be. Provide an appealing plot for your ecommerce site. Set up a perfect drop down list covering all categories that you deal with. Exhibit all top offers right on your homepage, so that customers could easily identify.

Keep it simple with possibly a white background. It’s universally accepted that black letters on a white background is the most appealing method to display content in web. Website design matters! Equally important is page loading speed. People just jump away from your site if it takes more than three seconds for the pages to load. On-page optimization solves this problem, making you tension free and helps you not lose even one of your king customers. Bring your site all the way to the Christmas mood, with Santa’s, snow toys, bows,Christmas trees, lights and bells displayed all over your site.

Common concerns of online shoppers:

Most of the people abandon the cart purchase formality owing to three reasons:-never ready to compromise on security issues, the form filling process ishectic, enforcing sign-up before purchase is done. So security credentials should be displayed with proper structure.

Many shoppers complain that the checkout process should be fast, so be careful in streamlining your checkout process without losing valuable customers.

Many are not happy with the lack of customer review pages in shopping sites,especially feed backs from women should be collected foremost.

Many customers are interested in having address auto-fill option.

Also some of them are very particular about timely delivery or else having a 'click and collect' option,which means you can collect your products from a nearby store.

Never confuse your customer:

Think from the customer's side. When you see more than ten items, all having minor differences displayed in the same page of a shopping site, won't you feel confused for which one to select? Yes, you will, and simultaneously what you do is switch the page/ category or even close the site temporarily or forever.It’s never advisable to drive people away from your site confusing them.Instead, have a "similar products" tab near the product on focus, so that it leads the customer to products (minimum five) that do not vary more that 25%. You could even test this strategy on your own site with 20 products at a stretch, displayed in one single page (with bare differences), and a maximum of five numbers (with more than 25% difference) in another page.Compare the conversion rates for yourselves.

The same case applies to sharing options via social media. Don't dump the space with all wanted and unwanted social media buttons. Place the most important ones, like Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn.

eCommerce sites stuffed with social media icons

Never irritate your customer:

There are shopping sites, which send you at least 10 SMS messages and more than three e-mails per day. Even if you block them, God knows how these people manage to reach out to us again and again. This problem mainly occurs when we decide to do an online purchase and log-in to an ecommerce site to select a product, add to cart, proceed filling the form, add phone number and all particulars and quit before transaction is done. The evil spirit catch hold of us right then.They would even dare to call inquiring why we didn't make the purchase. These kind of marketing and business boosting techniques are seriously unacceptable.The customer who had underwent such circumstances is for sure to spread his unpleasant experience to his pals and will manage to spread it to whomever he gets a chance to reach out. Finally, it’s only the brand name of the shopping site getting spoiled.

SEOand social media marketing for eCommerce stores:

Coupon Marketing:

Coupon marketing is one best means of ecommerce marketing which helps increase traffic to your site. Coupon marketing is never limited to discounts, it could also be for free shipping, seasonal offers, buy one get one free, bonus, combo sell-off and so on. Feeding these coupons to coupon submission sites like www.retailmenot.com, www.couponchief.com is vital, so that people rush-for to grab them.

Social eCommerce Stores:

Make sure that you have a notable place in all social media ecommerce sites. Show of your brand and logo in every social media sites possible where people engage themselves on a daily basis. This lets you rank well in any of the search result pages.

Branding:

Building a brand name for your business is not only essential for pulling new customers,but it also helps to hold back your old customers. This is only possible if you remind them of your brand name visually/verbally very often that they never tend to forget any sooner. Perception is the king in the case of branding than what the reality is. Be wise enough while you do branding.

Conclusion:

United States of America tops the e-commerce market value for up-to $177 billion (dated 2010), and this is expected to move to $379 billion by 2015 (approximately 114% increase).While China sore with value estimating $71 billion, and $305 billion forecast for 2015 (approximately 329.5% increase). A surprising online shopping fact from China is that, between years 2007 and 2011, the shoppers’ number has risen from 46.41 million to 187 million. Almost 303% increase. Christmas never falls on December for e-commerce business people. It’s the right time now, plan accordingly and reap your benefits by December.

Category :

SEO News

Tags :

eCommerce sites, eCommerce SEO, Christmas eCommerce, eCommerce marketing, Online shopping, Online sh

About Prejushya Kalicharan

SEO is a challenging field and I try my best to surpass this challenging environment which is unconditionally filled with opportunities, knowledge building and problem solving. I pursue what I .... more info