Over the years eCommerce has become increasingly complicated with expectations from consumers rising as Amazon and other leading online retailers incorporate groundbreaking technology such as AI, site speed and lightning-fast shipping. Smaller eCommerce companies are forced to incorporate tech and policies that are not necessarily within their business model and therefore cause strain for companies to keep up. Despite all of the pressure from big businesses and the way the industry is forced to raise the bar, small companies are given the ability to catch up by offering the following 3 features to their customers:

1. Site Speed
   Amazon has taught the world that site speed when it comes to eCommerce can be one of the most important deciding factors between a website that has conversions and a website that doesn’t. According to some internal testing done by Falcon marketing, one of our ecom websites was able to more than double conversion rates by increasing website speed. The quickest and easiest to get improved load speeds are to incorporate a content delivery network (CDN) enabled server for images and scripts on the website, optimize images to ensure they are compressed and enable full server caching. There are many more options on speeding up the website after those initial three steps are taken such as optimizing website code, potentially upgrading plugins/scripts or even replatforming if your website is on an older platform that has less support such as Magento 1.9.
2. Unique Product Offers
   The reality of eCommerce is there will always be a competitor who has better pricing than you will be able to offer on an item that is either quite similar or the same as what you have listed on your website. Looking to be the cheapest is a powerful way to get customers to shop on your website but it’s also a way to set expectations for always having the best possible pricing which is often impossible to maintain.

   One of our websites cwspirits.com has added bottle collections curated by an in-house expert on what customers are looking for when they buy multiple products. The collection sections offer shopping experiences that other websites do not have the ability to offer as easily as this is done in-house creating a competitive edge to the customers that frequent the website in addition to raising the average order value as the collections feature multiple products. The collections also add a simple way for customers to send gifts and find savings from bulk buying without having to do complicated math equations to figure out just how much they are saving.

3. Readily available sales advice
   The next time you find yourself in a brick and mortar store pay attention to how many of the customers will ask an associate for help to find a product or advice on what would be a better choice when comparing a few items. eCommerce needs to deliver the same experience to customers by offering easy comparison between products with descriptions or with sales staff. Many of our clients add on Live Chat, 24/7 email support, phone calls with live people answering quickly and even phone meetings with plugins such as call-page as seen on Rockher.com, a premium diamond ring website where customers can schedule a call with a sales associate to go through the buying experience.

   The eCommerce world is certainly growing quickly and Falcon marketing has seen a rise in the number of customers who want the same personalized shopping experience that they get in the stores when shopping online. By being proactive and offering customer service it not only offers the customer an easy way to get in contact, it also builds trust to the legitimacy of the store so consumers are more confident that the store is legitimate which will certainly increase conversion rates.

If you need some help with eCommerce consulting, don’t hesitate to reach out to Falcon marketing!