Online shopping has been gaining momentum year after year. Well, it’s not a surprise because once you enter a site; you get to browse on galleries of different items. It’s just like stepping into your favorite store but in a digital version. The shopping experience is way better than your brick-and-mortar store; so-to-speak.

A lot of online stores would have the same appeal so it’s up to you how to stand out from the competition. Explore on your edge as a brand and let that attract the right audience or customers.  While online shopping is the trend of now and the future, there is still a large population that enjoys the traditional shopping experience in physical stores because they get to see first-hand as well as touch and feel the products before actually purchasing them.

Don’t Lose the Human Element

Shoppers would want to feel a personalized or human connection when shopping. This is essentially what draws them to brick-and-mortar stores. Just because transactions are online, doesn’t mean you must lose the human element of e-commerce. Having that human touch is what would help you establish trust and draw in people to your business.

Fast Loading Speed of Websites

Even if you have a gorgeous website, if the website speed is not up to standards or it takes more than 10 seconds to load then very few customers would actually sit around and wait that long. This would probably explain the abandoned carts or people just taking off because of the sluggish website speed.

Remember that speed is now the new name of the game. Time is a currency and people wouldn’t want to waste time and just look the other direction. The acceptable website load time should be less than 3 seconds. To avoid slow website loading speed, you should make sure that your site display or other third-party applications are not causing any slow-mo in speed.

Make Your Website Beautiful and Functional

Admittedly, it’s still the aesthetics or a beautiful website that attracts or captivates customers. So, if you have a gorgeous and interactive website in place then you have already stepped up your game. By having a beautiful website, this means a mix of the right design, palettes, great or user-friendly navigation, right fonts, logo, voice, and with the images and videos or blogs that would provide customers the best user experience an online shop has to offer. This is what entices or encourages your customers to check out other pages or browse more.

However, don’t focus just on the aesthetics, you have to be dedicated to the customer journey or experience as well. You have to invest in making your website not just visually appealing but palpable to your audience.

Personalize Your Engagement

Revamping your online branding should always focus on personalization. Around 59% of digital marketers or e-commerce stores actually get a good ROI just with the aid of personalization. You can enhance touchpoints with your customers by focusing on these key areas:

• Communicate using your customers’ native language
• List of recently viewed items plus recommendations
• Personalized SMS, notifications, and emails
• “Wish List” section
• Providing information based on location or other demographic data
• Providing welcome coupon codes or other promotional discounts or freebies.

Consider Offering Upsells

When you create upsells, you have to make sure that your recommended products are compatible with or relevant to what is in their shopping carts. Do not bombard your customers with too much influx of messages because this can overwhelm rather than encourage them to shop more.

Be Mobile-Friendly

Creating a mobile app for your online shop would help your customers purchase your products even while on the go. This would be an easy, convenient, and speedy way to shop anytime and anywhere.

Use a Facebook Bot

If you haven’t tried this then you’re greatly missing out on what Facebook has in store for e-commerce stores worldwide. With a chatbot, you can easily automate your processes for customer support, order confirmations, and in attending to other inquiries or issues about products and services.

Try Live Chats

Providing real-time support with a Live Chat does not just put the human element into an online shop but also provides customers accurate and up-to-date information on the spot.

Let Your Customers Try Products Online

You can allow your customers to try out different looks and designs of products with the aid of Augmented Reality (AR) technology that helps out in comparing products in terms of colors, styles, and designs such as when trying out furniture styles or wardrobe.

Offer Free Shipping

Offering your customers free shipping can definitely make a huge difference in meeting sales targets. You can set the price bar on how much customers should spend in order to take advantage of free shipping. Let’s face it, freebies can certainly attract than repel so it would be a great idea to add this to your customer’s shopping experience.

While the strength of a physical store is the human or face-to-face interaction, online stores can provide you that edge in terms of speed, security, and convenience. In fact, online shops can provide you the flexibility and human element as well while shopping virtually anywhere. Some businesses would start online and then proceed to have a brick-and-mortar store. However, having both a physical store and a digital presence can actually work to your advantage as it builds up your branding consistency.