5 Key Benefits of eCommerce for Your Business
While physical retail is still more popular among customers, the eCommerce industry is growing at an astounding rate. The outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic contributed to its rapid adoption.
According to statistics, eCommerce sales will surpass $1 trillion next year. Before the pandemic, experts did not forecast the online retail industry to reach this milestone until 2024.
Here are the benefits of eCommerce for your business.
Personalizing Shopping Experiences
Online retail helps you build targeted and data-driven marketing campaigns.
One such example is website analytics. Many popular eCommerce websites, such as Amazon, collect first-party browser cookies. They learn more about customer browsing patterns, past purchases, abandoned carts, product views, etc. By collecting customer information, you can deliver relevant product recommendations and upsell customers.
Brands also use virtual reality to engage users and customize their experiences. For example, numerous beauty and fashion brands let users upload their photos and virtually try on products. That way, they provide targeted shopping experiences and encourage customers to finalize purchases faster.
Finally, email newsletter segmentation is another effective personalization strategy. Instead of sending a generic newsletter to everyone on your list, you break it down into narrower segments. For example, you can segment your list by customer gender, age, location, past purchases, content interests, etc.
Building Trust with Customers
Customers are more likely to purchase from the brands they trust. This is one of the most important benefits of eCommerce. You can build stronger relationships with customers in so many ways. Here are some of them:
- Show reviews and ratings for every product on your website. Today, customers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. For you, that is the opportunity to build trust with them and close sales faster.
- Ask loyal customers for testimonials. Consider adding their photos and names to make the testimonials more credible.
- Use social proof to show how many people are viewing a product on your website. That is how you create a sense of urgency and inspire customers to purchase faster.
- Create reliable and data-backed content. That way, you prove that you are an industry expert and build trust with leads. These could be blog articles, infographics, explainer videos, guides, etc. Besides driving customer engagement, quality content also helps you generate leads faster.
- Display trust seals on your website, such as free shipping, accepted payment, money-back guarantee, guaranteed safe checkout badges.
- Write detailed product descriptions, take item photos from multiple angles, and even create video tutorials. VR technologies mentioned above can also help customers visualize your products and make shopping decisions faster.
CPR Savers is an example of a company that invests a lot in trustworthy customer relationships. For example, say a customer wants to purchase little Anne QCPR. Users can read informative product descriptions, view multiple item images, check out customer reviews, and see the lowest price guaranteed badge.
Optimizing the Payment Process
While some customers use EMIs on their credit and debit cards, others prefer pay-later credit facilities. Additionally, some popular payment modes are UPI, cash on delivery, and card on delivery.
When offering their preferred payment method, you increase their satisfaction and inspire them to take action faster.
Most importantly, you can build trust with customers who have added items to their shopping carts and abandoned them. You can contact them via email, retargeting ads, or phone messages and inspire them to come back and finalize the purchase.
Delivering Better Customer Service
Tech-savvy online customers expect businesses to deliver spotless customer service. They want brands to respond to their inquiries in real-time and across multiple channels. An eCommerce website allows you to an omnichannel customer support strategy. That includes online channels, such as live chat, email, chatbots, phone calls, etc.
Online brands can also integrate their online customer service channels via a CRM solution. That way, they can handle conversations via a single platform and keep customer data in a central location.
That is how you improve customer satisfaction and retention, which are essential to your company’s growth. According to statistics, attracting a new customer is seven times more expensive than retaining a current one.
Expanding Company Reach and Attracting New Customers
Retailers with a physical store can only reach a certain number of buyers. They can create local marketing campaigns and offer home delivery, but there face multiple delivery issues.
Precisely because of that, geolocation should not be the only factor you consider when starting a business.
Online retail websites let you sell your products across the country or even globally. You are not limited to your brick-and-mortar store’s physical location. You can finally market to the individuals interested in your industry, products, and services.
Online retail stores are open 24/7, meaning they are available to global customers across various time zones. To provide spotless customer experiences, you can invest in on-site AI chatbots. These tools deliver quick and accurate customer feedback.
Over to You
Ecommerce is the future of retail. It delivers personalized user experiences, helps you attract international customers, and inspires brand loyalty. Sure, these are just some of the numerous benefits of having an eCommerce website. But if you encash on these benefits of eCommerce then you can grow your online selling business quickly.
