The e-commerce market across the globe continues to grow each year as more and more consumers discover the benefits of shopping online. In the United States, the market is particularly healthy, as evidenced by a third quarter of 2016 report released by the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Why Women Should Look to E-Commerce
According to the department’s report, e-commerce growth is soaring, with total online sales in the U.S. growing 15.7 percent year on year in Q3, reaching over $101 billion. In addition, online orders accounted for a significant 8.4 percent of total retail sales in the same period, up from 7.4 percent in the same quarter in 2015.
E-commerce is, then, a fantastic sector for entrepreneurs to be involved in, and is particularly popular with women who enjoy the possibilities of working from home and around their familial responsibilities. However, with the barriers to entry in e-commerce having become so low for entrepreneurs over recent years, the competition has only increased to boot. As well, small business owners have to try to keep up with market leaders like Amazon and eBay, who continue to find innovative ways to please the diverse needs of consumers.
If you’re an online seller in today’s market and want to keep your sanity as you build your business, it is important that you do everything you can to ensure your website is streamlined, up-to-date, and as effective as possible. While shopping for products to sell on your site is fun, the real keys to e-commerce success tend to lie in how that merchandise is presented to consumers. Read on for three of the key boxes your online store needs to tick today before you worry about anything else.
1. A Mobile-Friendly Website
In this day and age, you’ll never get the results you’re after in e-commerce if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website. Most shoppers now use their smartphones and tablets to research and buy online at least some of the time, whether at home, at work or on the go. Apart from searching for products and services, consumers also use their devices to compare prices, read customer testimonials and product reviews, and share buying experiences with others.
To truly run a competitive online store, you must make sure that your e-commerce site works seamlessly with all the different types of device interfaces. You must provide a seamless experience for users across all browsers, and make it easy for customers to find and communicate with you on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, SnapChat, YouTube, and the like. It is also necessary to make it easy for people who want to use their smartphones (by way of mobile applications) to pay for purchases.
2. Multiple Payment Options
Another much-needed component of a successful online store in today’s market is multiple payment options. Gone are the days where customers were content to pay with cash or a simple Visa or MasterCard. Now, shoppers want flexibility when they get to the checkout of your e-commerce site, with a variety of payment choices on offer.
To make your store as competitive as possible then, you should expand the types of transactions you offer. Think about letting customers pay by debit cards and all types of credit cards (including American Express and Diners Club cards), plus PayPal, direct deposits, BPAY, EBPP (electronic billing, whereby you email invoices out for payment), mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, and so on.
Customers are keen to ensure that their payments are secure, so providing them with a variety of transaction options means that you’re more likely to satisfy their concerns on this front, as well as their payment needs at the time. And with today’s innovative merchant solutions, it’s easy to make these options available for your customers.
3. User-Friendly Website Design
The design of your e-commerce store is another incredibly important part of making sales and being competitive. With so many online stores available now for customers to choose from, shoppers will simply click away from your site if it doesn’t appeal to them straight away, if they can’t see what they’re looking for quickly, or if they find your site hard to navigate. The right kind of design will also convey your brand image to shoppers, and help them feel that your business is trustworthy, credible, and selling quality products or services.
Design that works for users has a navigation that naturally takes them from one page to another, so that they don’t have to spend a long time searching for the information or products they’re after. It also has:
- Plenty of white space on each page (that is, the areas free of text or graphics that stop pages from looking cluttered or being hard to read)
- Consistent branding throughout
- Short paragraphs with lots of subheadings to make the copy scannable
For those women looking to make a break into the business work, e-commerce is really the best option once you overcome these hurdles. Soon you’ll be fulfilling orders and building a customer base that loves your mobile-friendly website, diverse payment options, and friendly design.