Three Reasons To Love E-Commerce

October 5, 2013

In this weeks blog post we will cover three of the leading reasons why customers are ditching retail, and shopping online and offer a few tips as to how you can improve your digital performance.

Ease of Product Comparison

When we are talking about comparison, it is much deeper than simply comparing the price of product A with the price of product B. It now takes a matter of minutes to flick between five or six different retailers and compare the warranties, shipping times, styles and many more aspects of each companies offering.

This poses both an opportunity and a threat for many online retailers, they have the ability to differentiate themselves in an endless number of ways, and have those USP’s (unique selling points) recognized.

The threat however is that if companies are putting their heads in the sand and are not aware of their place in the market, they will be in a lot of trouble.

Tip: AT LEAST once a month, check out your five largest competitors online and see how they are positioned in the market, and where you fit in. Having this information is critical to ensuring your offering has a solid unique differentiator.

Shopping Convenience

In the modern world where information can be accessed instantaneously, and convenience is key, people want to be able to buy when it suits them, and this is often outside of the traditional 9-5.

While this can be a headache for many business owners, for those online it presents the unique opportunity to make money while you sleep.

With these customer trends in mind, the easiest way for E-Commerce stores to improve their performance is to ensure their online buying process is simple and intuitive, so anyone from an eight year old, to an eighty year old can easily purchase items from your store.

Tip: Generally, a good rule of thumb for a new visitor to your site is that they should be able to find, select and purchase a product in five clicks of their mouse or less.

Low Prices

At the end of the day, price is king when it comes to online shopping. The reason people go online is because they know E-Commerce stores can beat their bricks and mortar counterparts, nine times out of ten.

With low staffing costs and less rent to pay, online simply makes sense if you are on a budget, or just love a good deal.

Now this is pretty well known information, but the thing to take away from this post is, if you are running a bricks and mortar store and also sell online, you will know that the margins you make on each online sale are significantly more than in-store.

Coming up with ways to encourage your customers to purchase your products online should be one of the key focuses of your marketing.

Tip: A good idea for business owners with both a physical, and a digital presence is to work out the margin for an in-store purchase, and an online purchase. This will allow you to calculate what you can afford to spend on online customer acquisition.