E-commerce businesses should focus on creating experiences

As the IBM’s Cyber Monday report suggests enormous growth in online purchasing traffic, retailers are in far better shape than ever to sell their products online.

According to Business Insider’s report, e-commerce is driving nearly all retail growth in the United States. Thus, retailers should focus more on creating engaging and interactive online experiences to grow exponentially. Let’s discuss a few ways to achieve this.

Personalization is more appealing to the consumer

Although e-commerce platforms offer a wide range of products along with offerings like online-only coupons, exclusive items and express shipping, they often fail to develop a personal experience. It has been proved by research, that many customers expect to have the same personal experience online as they have in-store.

Consider the example of TrunkClub, which is an online clothing store where a real person helps you in setup your own style. It’s like having your very own personal stylist. Another e-commerce platform BaubleBar offers their customers access to a stylist via video chat.

These companies have successfully created a personalized experience that increases customers’ interaction with the e-commerce platform while developing long-lasting customer relationships.

Product-discovery and recommendation sites

“People who bought this item also bought…” is text that you might have seen on several shopping sites. This is an effective way to help your customers narrow down their purchasing decisions. This guided discovery is part of the online experience created for customers based on analyzing user behavior. A lot of retailers are successfully creating this custom guidance for each customer, helping them spend less time browsing aimlessly, and more time finding exactly what they need.

For example, Birchbox has built its e-commerce experience on discovery and recommendations. The website offers beauty and grooming products to the consumer based on personalized preferences.

Emotion driven shopping experiences

It is always handy to tell a story while trying to sell something. There are retailers that tell a story to launch a strong brand identity and to build a one-to-one connection with their customers. Wanelo’s dream shopping list and the ability to share it with your friends is a fine example of an effort to build a more personalized and emotionally attached community.

Creating a social shopping experience

There is a difference between garnering impulse buys and encouraging consumers to join an active and energetic community based on common interests and needs.

Although, social giants like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram are joining hands with retailers in order to build a more seamless shopping experience, integrating existing social networks into an e-commerce platform does not necessarily make the platform inherently “social.”

In trying to create a social shopping experience, merging social media with retail does not always result in a true social shopping experience. For example, offering a one-click buy button or allowing users to use #hashtag when tweeting brands is not equivalent to a social shopping experience. A true social shopping experience should simulate a shopping experience in a mall with your friends, where they vividly make suggestions to your shopping decisions.

Wrap Up

E-commerce platforms need to focus more on creating unique experiences to improve their growth and sales. Imagine the reach, power and impact of an e-commerce platform using a better recommendation engine and sharable, curated shopping lists to help their customers making quick and better purchasing decisions. E-commerce platforms can also create a personalized shopping experience with a branded community to simulate social shopping experience to achieve better results. The experiences we have discussed above can help an e-commerce business grow exponentially.