Over the past few weeks we have worked with many clients on updating their websites, particularly adding new features to ecommerce sites.
If you’re not sure – ecommerce sites are online shops.
These are websites which typically have a range of products and categories, you can add them to a shopping cart, and you can then checkout and pay.
Examples of popular ecommerce platforms are Woocommerce, Shopify and Magento.
So as more people look to sell (and order) online what can you do to make your store the best yet?
Custom emails
One of the ways your store interacts with customers is by sending out emails.
For example when a customer orders you will send out an email confirmation.
When goods go out your store should also send out an email to the customer to let them know.
As well as the above you can actually customise and develop your emails further to give a better experience to your customers.
Well designed emails not only look more professional, but you can also add content which is more relevant to your customers journey.
You can add shipping information, returns information, links to tutorials or how to guides – there’s so much possibility.
Bespoke text messages
Taking the emails a step further, many popular websites also integrate text confirmations.
It’s surprisingly easy to add custom text messages to your store, and they are a really nice touch for your customer.
Text confirmations typically will revolve around delivery times and schedules, but you could potentially add more information.
If you feel your customers journey would improve by texts to their phone (which may otherwise be missed on email) then it’s definitely worth looking at.
A popular SMS provider is Twilio and we can connect their API with your store to send out messages automatically at different stages of the order process.
Automatically add products
Platforms like Amazon and Ebay are really successful because they have such a wide choice of goods.
Depending on what you sell, you may have some core, bespoke products or you may actually want to add a large variety of items.
Adding products manually into your ecommerce store can be time consuming so importing feeds can be much quicker.
Using a platform like Inventory Source will mean you can easily add thousands of products in less than an hour, saving you all the headache and cost of doing it manually.
Not only can you import products from your suppliers easily, but you can also keep stock levels up to date as well as pull through latest images and descriptions.
Ebay & Amazon integration
If you are looking to drive sales further then getting your products listed on Amazon and Ebay could be a great strategy.
Both platforms receive millions of views a day and if your products are available through them there is a high chance it will help you sell more.
Of course, although you’ve got more visitors to Amazon and Ebay you’ve also got more competition.
However, as they are both fairly low cost to use it is worth thinking about how they can work to complement your store.
Both Shopify and Woocommerce offer integration options to allow you to easily list your products automatically, for example using WP Lister.
Blogs and new content
Online stores are more than just products and a shopping cart.
If you really want to develop your brand and attract more people to your store through online searches, then custom content like blogs and pages can be just what you need.
Many sites have blogs where they can add how to guides, tutorials, latest trends and other information to help customers find the right products for them.
Connect with social media
Many of your customers will be active on social media so it makes sense to use these platforms to set up profiles for your business too.
Common types of integration with social media platforms include auto-posting products, sharing coupons and deals, and even competitions to encourage people to share your site with their friends and family.
If you are smart you should be able to use social media to get more visitors to your site and encourage more sales.
Special order statuses
Customising your store isn’t just about the frontend experience.
In many cases improving the backend system can make life much easier for you (such as with automatically importing products).
One very useful way of updating your store’s functionality is with custom order statuses.
Many sites have a simple order process – customer orders, you take payment, you ship the goods.
However, some sites have custom steps – from picking the goods, requesting extra information from the customer, taking a deposit payment, or other manufacturing processes.
Adding custom order statuses means you can better track the status of an order and you can also integrate the above mentioned strategies for a better user experience.
Get in touch with us for more help
If you want to build an online store or you want to develop your existing store then get in touch with StudioRav.
We can do custom web development to help make your store stand out from your competitors, and we can also guide you on the best tools and integrations to give your customers a great experience.