One of the biggest industries in the North American landscape is retail, with more than $5 trillion on the line. It’s still an industry that’s growing, and it’s going to continue to show awesome growth over the next few years. A big part of continuing growth in the retail industry is in stepping into the shoes of the consumer and learning how you can make sure that their online shopping experience on your website is the best they could possibly have.
The experience that a customer gets in store is very different to the one that they have online. For example, when shopping for guns online, you want to ensure that the ecommerce FFL checkout is a smooth one – as it would be in the store! The convenience of an online store can only serve to enhance your retail business, and whether you are looking at making your shopping experience a virtual one or you want to open a flagship online store, you need to think about the tips below to ensure that you are doing all that you can to enhance that online shopping experience. Let’s take a look
- Consider Your Brand Look. The first impression that you give to your customers really does matter, and it’s for this reason that you need to invest your cash in the appearance of your website. You are going to have a ton of competitors looking to do the same thing that you are, and you want to do this, but do it better. Get the right professional web designer on your side and make your website stand out. When you do this, you are going to impress every customer that clicks through to your website.
- Be Responsive. Not only do you have to make sure that you are responsive to messages from your customers, you need to ensure that your website is responsive. It should be enabled on mobile and web so that when your customers click onto your site, you are going to be able to show up immediately. Mobile isn’t going anywhere, and if you don’t optimize your site properly, you’re going to put your customers off instantly.
- Mind Your Speed. You will only be given seven seconds by your customers to impress them. That is how long they will open your website for before deciding to go elsewhere, and if you do impress them here, you’re going to end up with lost customers if your checkout process online is slow. You need to be mindful of how slow your website is so that you don’t disappoint your customers.
- Add Reviews. You need social proof on your website to show customers that people just like them are shopping around. Adding reviews allows your customers to see that there are others shopping with your brand and this will allow them to feel secure that buying with you is a good idea. There are strategies built around influencers to help them to influence customers, and you can do the same thing. Can you build reviews into your website? Do it!