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The eCommerce industry has witnessed a phenomenal rise in recent years. eCommerce web design and development industry are witnessing a heavy influx of new technologies and trends. The focus of technological innovation is towards enhancing the user experience, improving conversion rates and reducing cart abandonment.
Brands and businesses that are adapting to eCommerce are most likely to see maximum growth in the near future. Reacting to early trends and visualizing business in the coming few years is what successful entrepreneurs do. But, focusing on the right steps is critical to the success of any industry, and the same goes for the success of eCommerce businesses.
Here are the Essential Elements of eCommerce Web Development Strategy
Defining your Goals
Defining a goal and strategy right from the word go allows making the right choices. It is important to have a clear roadmap about achieving both your long-term and short-term goals. Just stay away from all ambiguity. Get answers to basic questions such as target market, products, and services to offer, and expertise/capabilities to serve your chosen market.
High-Quality Execution
Once a company has its strategy in place and knows what it needs to do, the next step is execution or action — making things happen. Clear organizational goals for all team members, a means of measuring progress toward those goals, and clear accountability are the basic requirements for good execution.
A successful culture of execution that can govern itself is created when everyone has a clear sense of their duties, timelines and next steps, and is working as a team to achieve the company’s overall vision.
Highlight Value Proposition
With a complete understanding of markets, competitors and customer preferences, companies can define highlight the value of innovation offered to the market. Describing your target buyer, the problem you solve, and the reason you’re better than your competitors is the first step to an effective market opportunity assessment.
Having a persuasive value proposition is the primary reason a prospect buys from an online store. It is important for a business to cultivate what is unique.
How eCommerce Stores will Change with Innovation
Physical Store Heatmaps
IoT sensors and heatmaps are now getting mainstream. It allows effective tracking of shopper touches of products/aisles and time spend in specific sections can track down to square inches. Such technologies provide reliable information and data that can be analyzed quickly.
Heat maps and value are easy to demonstrate, the real value for a store lies in dramatically improving the employee throughput across functions like product scanning, price lookups, and stock-out discovery. Computer vision is increasingly finding applications beyond the eCommerce storefront or the aisles and is moving into operational functions, making it more efficient and cost-effective to run such stores.
Create Personalized Experience
eCommerce continues to be one of the most fiercely competitive spaces. Everything is now boiling down to incorporating new technologies and creating highly personalized and contextual experiences to stay ahead of the curve. Consumers often have goldfish memory when it comes to brands who fail to deliver on their demand for personalization. In the world of eCommerce, there are no second chances.
Here are ways to boost personalization and, ultimately, improve your eCommerce conversion rate optimization.
- Augmented and Virtual Reality: Consumers are hyperactive and no longer willing to buy—increasingly they want to test before they buy online. AR/VR can help merchants provide this option to gain trust with buyers and ultimately convert.
- Artificial Intelligence: Brands are incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to heighten consumer experience. Chatbots help brands answer questions in real time, assist with product selection, and more.
- Upgrade Your eCommerce Platform Capabilities: Keep your eCommerce platform up-to-date to leverage the latest functionality in order to improve conversions.
Smarter Payment Processing
2019 will see an even greater increase in the number of online payment options available to shoppers. This trend follows increasing consumer demand for frictionless payments that put shoppers in the driver’s seat when it comes to choosing how they’ll pay. As such, payment options that extend beyond traditional models, such as digital wallets, cryptocurrency, and smart payment buttons, are expected to gain greater market share in the year ahead.
Convenient, quick payment methods like such as PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay are replacing tedious billing forms, and have shown to significantly increase conversion rates. eCommerce merchants need to keep a close watch on Cryptocurrency developments and implement cryptocurrency payment methods to enhance customer loyalty and security to increase conversions.
Smart payment processing solutions that offer ease of use and robust security will particularly reach to the top of payment options in 2019. Merchants who incorporate these solutions are likely to see improvements in eCommerce conversion rate optimization.
Rise of Voice Commerce
Voice Commerce isn’t dominating the market yet, but it’s getting there. In fact, a recent study found 85 percent of respondents were compelled to buy based on virtual assistant’s voice. And around 50 percent of searches will be voice-based by 2020.
As such, merchants who grab hold of the voice trend will likely see a boost in their conversions. That said because voice commerce is not as advanced as, say digital wallets, fully making the leap to voice may not be feasible for all merchants just yet.
Conclusion
The online store is a key part of omnichannel shopping and fulfillment experience for the shoppers. Retailers and even modern, digitally native brands are recognizing this. Investments are going into in-store experience and analytics. Top retailers are betting on technologies like computer vision and drone/robots to keep the costs low at the stores.