A large number of online shoppers uses the search facility on a website to get what they are looking for. But there are nearly 265 million shoppers in America who prefer to shop by category as they know which category to browse for the specific product they want to buy. The most popular categories that shoppers visit are electronics and fashion. The leading established retail giants today are Amazon, Aliexpress and eBay.
Some of the major advantages of online shopping are convenience, privacy, variety of products, cheaper prices, price comparison and no crowd. Shopping the comfort of your home is always a convenience. You can know all about the product that you want to buy going through product review sites to compare prices and features. You can do all this at whatever time you want and finally decide if the product you selected is right or wrong. The best part is buying it at any time be it day or night and getting it delivered to your doorstep. There is no need to travel to the store, and this saves you effort and money.
Along with the benefits of online shopping comes the challenges that an online store has to face with cut-throat competitions, updating of technology and the changes in customer choices.
There are certain factors that an online shopping site needs to consider and apply to the management of the website, products sold and the marketing strategy:
1. Website Layout: The website should have an appealing design and should speak about what it deals in by the mere layout. It should be fast loading as no one wants to wait. The images should be clear and all links working. If any of the above is not followed, the prospective buyer will leave the site and move to a better alternative.
2. Mobile compatible: Nowadays, everything works with mobile. Even shopping online has become more mobile-oriented. This makes it very important for an online store to be compatible and optimized for mobile users.
3. Inventory and product quality check: To make your website a brand, the products sold needs to be of top-notch quality and the inventory should always be there. Avoid shipping damaged product and double-check it before sending it out for delivery.
4. Multiple payment options: An online store should have multiple payment options for the convenience of the shopper. An online shopper might have a preference to use a specific payment gateway which if available can make abandoning of carts far less.
Security of buyers is important.
– Secure web platform: Online store owners should be sure that the eCommerce platform used to develop the store is the most secured and trustworthy from the buyers’ point of view. Double authentication is a must to ensure the safety of the webserver from hackers.
– Extra security layer: Firewall plays a big role in website security. Setting up a firewall to restrict harmful viruses and to allow just genuine traffic is very important.
– Update it regularly: Updating the software with the latest security patches is a good practice. Also, update the SSL certificates and renew it well before its expiration date.
– Backups: To prevent loss of data during an event of website crashing, backup is a must. If the website does a backup regularly, then the lost data can be easily recovered.
– Secured payment gateway: Using a secured payment gateway with SSL certificate and high-end encryptions ensures that a shopper uses their Credit Card without being worried about it being hacked and that their data is secured.
– Data Privacy: No customer data should be stored in the website database that can invade the privacy of the user. If there are some data that needs to be stored, the website administrator has to be sure that it cannot be accessed unauthorised people.
Maintaining an online store is not an easy task. Anyone who has an online store will be able to tell you how difficult it is to run and stay alive amongst the reputed online shopping sites like Amazon. It’s a very challenging job indeed.