Gone are the days when shopping exclusively meant exciting trips to the retail stores and malls to make purchases. Both B2C and B2B segments in today’s transient world are maturing alongside latest technological developments and in a blink of the eye, products and services are selected, purchased and delivered at the customer’s’ doorstep.
These are the conveniences of the web stores and mobile e-commerce applications that have made the concept of a physical store to ancient for shopping.
Retail markets are demonstrating an urgency toward the adoption of mobile application platforms to conduct online business. Besides, with the steady growth of e-commerce platforms, the retail segment is always on the go when it comes to making their websites customer-centric.
Businesses are increasingly spending on e-commerce platforms and customer e-commerce development software services to overcome competition and stay relevant to the times. But one obvious question that most e-commerce firms need ask is what capacities and features of their mobile e-commerce apps and websites help them achieve profitability and conversion objectives?
If you are the CEO or CIO of an upcoming ecommerce business, the below points about solutions that help create a superior e-Commerce website should interest you before making the move:
- Content Management: Most websites need to have their layouts, product content, blogs and other content in a way that is seamlessly managed at the backend. That is the job for the coding team to power the e-Commerce website with superior content management abilities in a continuum. With the adoption of the content management tools, e-Commerce website developers would be able to add and edit images using cropping tools, manage library and update pages and content with content editor tools.
- Customer Management: Customer management tools helps search and sort customers as well as manage their account, view past orders, reviews and delete or create accounts and password.
- Reporting Tools: Every brand or e-Commerce firm has their own set of metrics to track and measure performance of the marketing, sales and other e-Commerce activities. The reporting solutions in the e-Commerce website that can be customized as per needs offers a comprehensive view of all the metrics allowing businesses to take necessary steps on timely basis.
A typical reporting solution will include interactive dashboards that show charts and stats, product, inventory, sales and customer reporting features.
- Catalog Management: An e-Commerce website needs catalog management solutions to make search and sort actions easy for customers. The catalog management tools and features also give a boost to the website’s overall look by managing thumbnails, images, adding categories and sub-categories.
- Search Engine Optimization: A website with content related to product or services information need to be SEO optimized to garner attention of more customers and divert traffic into the site for better sales conversion. SEO also ensures that the brand’s website appears on the top of the searches on any search engine platform, making the brand look more popular and reliable. This may include managing all META tags and configuring dynamic title for all pages.
- Code Tools for Discount, Rewards and Promotions: Apart from showing products and services in a format that simplifies a customers’ journey on the website, e-Commerce developers can provide an additional helping hand to the brands by providing discount, promotions and reward code tools to run promotional and marketing campaigns.
- Email and Social Media Integration: It is true that marketing activities and campaigns of e-Commerce businesses would be less impactful without social media or scalable communication platforms like email. A website with integration with social media and email helps automate marketing communication and promotional activities to bring large number of customers to the website for higher conversion and profitability.
- Multiple Payment Options: Customers that shop online does not stick to one standard methods of making payments for their purchases. E-commerce store and application should cater to the customers’ need for secure and multiple payment options like payment through debit card, credit cards, net banking, online transfers, e-wallets, discount coupons, etc. A website with multiple payment options are more likely to perform better in the current times where mobile-driven payments are on the rise.
The website should include options to activate and deactivate payment types, manage settings of online payment platforms and accounts, enable offline payment, etc.
- Content Marketing with Blogs, Articles and Share-worthy Content: Content marketing these days form the crème of digital marketing activities. E-Commerce website that is backed with superior and SEO-rich content and designated sections for blogs and articles are help ease customers or potential buyers’ decision-making challenges by serving as a single source of reliable and relevant content.
Brands and businesses from emerging segments and developed economies agree that e-commerce and online retail is the future of retail in the modern, connected world. Even small retailers and businesses are chasing this trend to break-free from the conventional methods of driving sales and profitability.
In such a state, it becomes an absolute necessity to build a website that is powered with all features and solutions that promise delivery of better customers service for better business.
Do have more ideas to add to the above list? Let us know.
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Jayaram Bhat is the CEO of Smart Sight Innovation and loves to share his knowledge on business, technology & startups. You can connect with him on linkedIn.