8 Essential things Customers look for in an Ecommerce Store
Any Ecommerce company realizes the stiff competition in the market today. To combat this and make sure you that you stay ahead of the crowd you need to be smart and efficient. Your best bet would be to outsource to a professional company that has a skilled workforce to update and maintain your site.
Experts in data entry, catalog indexing, catalog conversion, data mining, order processing, related IT services and a myriad other services, will help your website function efficiently and stand apart. Here are 8 essential things customers look for in an Ecommerce store/site:
- Minimum waiting period
Nobody likes a site that takes ages to load. An average visitor to any website stays for hardly 5 to 8 second, and moves on thinking that the order processing is going to take too long for their liking. A slowly loading website is akin to slow customer service, which no customer will tolerate. Slow loading time is bound to reflect on the bottom line of any Ecommerce store. It is wiser to invest in optimizing your site as well as opting for the best hosting solutions available in the market.
- Easy Navigation
All customers visiting your website need not be Internet or tech savvy. In fact only a small percentage of ecommerce customers know how to navigate through the labyrinth of product display sections on your website. Proper product selection and catalog indexing play a crucial role that can make or break an Ecommerce store. The best thing to do would be to have your inventory categorized according to brand or type, which makes searching an easier task for customers. Too many choices cluttered in one place can often leave customers confused and lost.
- Responsive web design
The Smartphone is taking over, pushing the laptops, desktops and other Internet devices to the backseat. Hence, if you want your Ecommerce store to be a real success it is high time you thought of responsive web designing for your website. Today’s young crowd would like to use an online store while on the move, hence to get better conversion rates your site has got to be mobile friendly.
- Live chatting and customer support
A customer likes to be pampered at all times, and what better way than to offer live chat assistance and efficient customer support to answer all queries? Any Ecommerce store wanting to establish itself in the highly competitive market has to offer 24/7 customer support, with live chat options. Although an Ecommerce store cannot offer personal support like a regular store can, the best that can be done is to offer online support.
- Payment method and shipping
The method of payment (credit card, debit card, net banking or cash on delivery) needs to be clearly mentioned in all pages. You have various software and payment gateway that are safe and secure, choose one of them for your website. Also, it is important to inform the customer about shipping costs, as it can vary from product to product, and would depend on the distance as well.
- Catalog indexing
Your Ecommerce store may already have an attractive catalog, in spite of which it may not be that easy to view any of your products unless proper indexing is done. Outsource to a professional company that offers excellent indexing and cataloging services, which will help with building a functional database for your store. There are professionals who are good at applying the correct product codes along with compelling content that carry matching images.
- Image services
When you outsource to a professional company they will take care of the images for your products. When quality images appear on your online store sales of your products picks up automatically. Image editing by professionals who are experts in touching, tagging, cropping and clipping image helps in enhancing the image quality of the products displayed.
- Order processing
It simply is not enough if you sell great products and have a website that displays your products really well. An online store cannot be a real success unless the orders are processed effectively, and your best bet is to outsource it to professionals. Order processing plays a very important role in the success of an Ecommerce store, and the multi-step process involves capturing the order information, checking for immediate availability of the products ordered, and processing the electronic purchase that can speed up shipping of the product to the customer speedily.
