Online retail has been one of the biggest sectors in the explosion of tech companies since the turn of the century. While Amazon and eBay were launched before 2000, their true impact is more visible now in 2020.
The world leader in online retail, Amazon, is now one of the biggest companies in the world eclipsing companies from many other mainstream sectors. The tech industry is by far and away the only industry that has seen rampant innovation.
Online retail has now been simplified to the extent that an individual sitting at home can legitimately run an online retail business with relative ease. Buzzwords like dropshipping have become far too common and many are jumping on the bandwagon.
Of course, only a few who jump on the bandwagon manage to accomplish much. Some do take their e-commerce business seriously and manage to create a solid base of customers.
With success also come a few headaches. In order to optimize each visit to a website, marketers try to introduce changes in UI and UX to increase the odds of a purchase happening. Every e-commerce website, big or small, needs a few key optimizations. In this article, we discuss these three essential optimizations.
Simplify Product Categories
If you are running a small e-commerce website, it probably doesn’t have a hundred different types of products on it. One reason many people don’t buy something is because they cannot focus their attention upon coming to the website.
The first optimization marketers must bring to a website is simplifying product categories. Make sure you don’t have thirty different categories which don’t really need to be independently listed on the homepage. For a small e-commerce store, five to six categories are ample and give the visitor less of a headache.
Fix Server and Website Errors
It is always possible that a website may report certain errors. HTTP 404 errors are most common. The trick is to not just redirect someone to an error page. Instead, make sure the option of returning to the home page or browsing through some product categories is always available, even if the server is returning a 404 error. This will keep visitors on the website for a longer time.
Don’t Make it Necessary to Create an Account
As a small online retailer, do you really need a customer to create an ID on your website. No. All you really need is the contact info, name, and address of the customer. Do not make it mandatory for people to log in to your website. This makes for an unnecessarily long experience and also mandates the customer to remember another pair of username and password. Thus, allows shoppers to order products as guests.
In Conclusion
For many years, even before the digital age came along, marketers have sought to understand the different factors which affect business. Today, marketers use website optimizations on online retail stores to improve sales made. In this article, we discussed three key website optimizations that can help improve sales made online.
About the Author – Gaurav Heera remains one of the most authoritative voices in the field of digital marketing. His record as an entrepreneur and consultant remains unparalleled. He currently works as a corporate trainer for DelhiCourses.in, an institute known for its popular digital marketing course in Delhi and other programs in fields like cybersecurity and SAP.