e-Commerce Retailers and the Ever Changing Digital Landscape

e-Commerce Retailers and the Ever Changing Digital Landscape

Retail Tech Insights | Wednesday, February 05, 2020

Engaging the customer's demands is the key to successful e-commerce businesses today. The customer wants an engaging and memorable brand experience, and managers should aim to invest their money to provide them with the same

FREMONT, CA: The e-commerce sector is exploding with rapidly growing technologies. Amidst features like Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), chatbots, and micro feedbacks it can often get difficult for managers to identify where they should invest their time and money. The answer to this is the customer. Engaging the customer's demands is the key to successful e-commerce businesses today. The customer wants an engaging and memorable brand experience, and managers should aim to invest their money to provide them with the same.

Websites Serve more than One Purpose

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e-Commerce has always been treated as a separate entity within the retail family, which could be because it competes with the marketing and sales strategies of other channels. However, in the customer's sight, e-Commerce serves a different purpose. Customers use e-Commerce websites for various purposes like making purchases, learning about their options, and choosing what's right for them.

An e-Commerce website should be able to serve all these purposes and fulfill the requirements of the customer. It should act as a source of information that can understand the customer and provide them with the information they require. In most cases, e-commerce websites need to pick up where other channels like social media, pay-per-click, tradeshows, and billboards leave off.

For customers, an e-commerce website is not a separate entity from a brick and mortar retail store. As far as they are concerned, a brand is a brand, and they see no further. Their purchase journey may begin on one website, and for various reasons, may end up on another channel altogether. Strictly from a customer experience standpoint, the website should serve the purpose and fulfill what drove the customer to the website in the first place, be it purchase or just gathering of information.

Don't Just Sell Things, Sell Experiences

The retail world is very dynamic today, and yet hundreds of websites sell the same product. Homogeneity is a reality of life, so it all comes down to how you sell a product line that is wholly unique to the market. Products alone cannot capture a customer's attention, experience matters. This is why so many direct-to-consumer brands are so successful. It is the need of the hour to come up with unique points of view for a single product. Lure in the customer in such a way that they believe you have the answer to their problem, a product that checks all their criteria. Good descriptions, excellent imagery, and videos are essential to every website. However, they might not be enough to stand out from your competitors.

Customize the Experience

Customers tend to make snap decisions when it comes to deciding which e-Commerce site is relevant to them. E-Commerce retailers must go through some efforts to customize their websites and offer a delighting experience to the client. The simplest way to customize an e-Commerce experience is through content and product recommendations. This information can be collected from every interaction across every touchpoint, be it online, social media, or in-store. Use data from Facebook to highlight a customer's tastes. Treat each customer differently. Create a separate persona for first-time customers, another one for customers who haven't shopped in a long time, and a different one for the regulars. These personas should be focused on driving your messaging strategy.

See also: Top E-Commerce Technology Solution Companies

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