Today, many youngsters want to set up an online business. The reason being, it is a growing industry and therefore offers a higher possibility of earning good revenue along with freedom.
Undoubtedly, the perks of the online world are quite tempting, to say the least. But you will have your share of challenges as well.
Online stores hit the scene frequently, but a vast proportion of them fail to sustain and disappear as if they never existed. Having said that, many successful online businesses are thriving like anything. They may vary in terms of their products, but all of them have a few things in common. So let’s find out the success recipe of online brands:
-
Highly visible shopping cart
When a customer is engaged in shopping, he can easily forget the number of items he has purchased. That’s when the customer reaches out to the shopping cart immediately to know what does the list of items includes. But if you make it hard for people to find out the shopping cart, they are more likely to leave your site frustrated and without making any transaction. What’s more, they might never return.
Apart from being visible, the shopping cart of successful businesses includes the following options:
- Total number of products
- Check out button
- The price of all items
Typically, easy access to the shopping cart leads to more sales.
-
Positive brand reputation
Sometimes consumers don’t fall for the quality of your product but your brand. There is no way you can manage to attract customers without a good brand reputation. Especially when you are selling an expensive product, your brand reputation becomes essential. It is just because of the good reputation of brands that buy cars online.
People know that in this day and age, it is a mounting task to maintain a positive image because it does not take much before people start running negative campaigns against you all over social media. So if a brand has somehow kept its customers from doing so, people consider it must be doing a heck of a job and turn to it.
-
Fast loading time
Even in the era of super-fast internet speed, flourishing businesses still pay attention to their website’s loading time. The reason being, not all the customers have access to a speedy internet connection and high-end devices. To top it off, people don’t like waiting and want everything on the go. Despite their slow internet, and they expect your website to load faster.
Statistically speaking, 53 percent of the users leave a website if it takes more than three seconds to load. If you are facing the issue of bouncing rate, much of it could be the by-product of slow web pages. You may subscribe to the following methods to increase your website speed:
- Optimize images
- Delete all the unnecessary plugins
- Reduce server response time
- Pick the quality hosting option
- Reduce image size
- Active browser caching
-
Easy navigation
There are so many things that you need to consider while building a website. But easy, easy navigation tops the chart. What’s the point of putting too many products for sale on your website if people have a hard time to navigate through them?
Bear in mind, visitors are ultimately going to skip your website if you don’t provide the quality customer experience, and good navigation heavily contributes to it. All the leading brands make it a point to include options like search bar because some consumers will come with a specific item in their mind, and having a search bar means they will not have to through the painstaking process of scrolling.
Apart from that, easy navigation comprises filters, clearly divided categories, clickable links, alt text in images, and so on.
-
Robust customer service
Given the current demands of customers, no business can expect to survive with poor customer service, let alone thriving. You may be giving your best shop to keep your customers happy and satisfied. But something is bound to go wrong once in a while. It is not humanly possible to be perfect.
For example, what if you delivered a wrong parcel and customer demands refunds or replacement at the earliest? It would not be possible to cope up with such awkward scenarios without having a robust customer service system in place.
Leading brands have realized this fact, and they are never caught napping. Take any successful business; they are always active to serve their customers any minute. Remember, nothing triggers a customer to switch brands more than mediocre customer service.
-
Multiple payment methods
Of late, customers have become very skeptic about online transactions due to the increasing number of frauds. This is one reason why people feel safe using their favorite online methods. Hence, successful businesses make it a point to keep customers at ease by providing multiple payment options.
-
Bots to assist customers
Live chat is a relatively new phenomenon, but it has done wonders in such a short span of time. Bots have become more engaging ever since they have been able to personalize communication with visitors. Sometimes a customer could be overwhelmed by too many products or options and look for real-time assistance. Successful businesses are relying on chatbots for this job.
It is also recommended not overdo here because customers could be annoyed easily with too much undue input of bots. So programs your bots to only appear at the time when they are required. For example, when a customer abandons the shopping cart and suchlike.
-
Staying in touch with analytics
One standout thing about booming brands is that they keep launching new products even when they are doing well with old stuff. It is because they know change is essential for survival in any walk of life and business is no different. Analytics helps them do take on with this adventure.
They get signals from their analytics about which products have dropped in the sale, and therefore it is time to introduce the new stuff gradually. Moreover, analytics helps them to know their audience more closely, and more insight about your targeted audience leads to more sales.
Final thoughts
There is nothing out of the box that successful brands are doing. They are just sticking to the basics, and that’s about it. Many brands are ruined because they try to do too many different things too soon. If you want to achieve glory in the world of online business, we have given you the footprints to follow and reach the top.
Author Bio:
About Michelle Joe: Michelle Joe is a blogger by choice. She loves to discover the world around her. She likes to share her discoveries, experiences, and express herself through her blogs. You can find her on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook