Today we are discussing the top 3 common factors that affect e-commerce businesses. Running an e-commerce business may take away some concerns associated with maintaining a physical workplace, but it still requires a lot of care to do successfully. Whether you’re contemplating a new endeavor or want to improve customer retention with an existing online business, you should know the common factors that affect e-commerce businesses. This will help you identify areas that need improvement and allow you to reach your goals.
Site Navigation
Your website is the face of your business, so you want people to have a positive time interacting with it. Think about the website’s layout to make it intuitive to visitors. Include a side or top bar that links to category pages where you can arrange your products and other information about your business. Keep things simple and attractive to eliminate confusion. Customers should be able to easily locate what they’re looking for, as this will make it more likely that they’ll purchase something from the site. You can have someone test out the site navigation as well.
Loyalty Programs
The presence of loyalty programs is another common factor that affects e-commerce businesses. You want to maximize customer retention while reducing customer churn so that your base of returning shoppers continually expands. This will increase sales in a stable way. Loyalty programs are effective for this purpose, since they directly reward people for buying from your business repeatedly. In the e-commerce world, some examples of advantages you can give to loyal customers include product discounts, free shipping, and even the ability to try out new products before you fully release them.
Shipping
The quality of shipping that you provide is of utmost importance. Even if everything else about your business is perfect, long or expensive shipping will turn off many potential customers. You should offer a few options for people during checkout. Many businesses allow people to choose between longer shipping times and lower rates or expedited times and higher prices. Your ultimate goal is to provide both low costs and speedy deliveries if possible. You should also aim to make returns quick, easy, and free so that there’s less risk for new people who want to try out your products. You can make free shipping into a loyalty reward as well, if it’s not feasible to offer it for baseline customers.
If you want to learn about other elements that can affect your e-commerce businesses check out these articles, Most Useful SEO Tips for Beginners and How to Make Your E-Commerce Business More Sustainable.
