What are 5 important requirements for ecommerce?

Ecommerce is an essential tool for any business, especially if you sell goods or services. Ecommerce puts your business on the map, and allows you to grow your brand, grow your customer base, and sell your products online.

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5 important requirements for ecommerce

In the digital age, ecommerce is only becoming more and more essential, and if you don't catch up soon, your business is going to be left in the dust! In this blog, we'll take you through the 5 most important requirements you'll need to be successful in the ever-changing world of ecommerce, and help you build and grow your business successfully online.

Ecommerce has now become essential for growing your business in the digital age, and can be an invaluable asset if you know how to use it. Your ecommerce website will need to meet certain requirements in order to be successful, otherwise it might end up as wasted potential.

Requirements are at the core of any project. Without a clear and agreed upon definition of what is needed, building the project can be a hit or miss. These requirements will act as a baseline agreement on what is to be achieved with the implementation of ecommerce solutions.

1. A strong online presence

Simply building an ecommerce website isn't enough to start building your brand and impressing your customers. Your website also needs to be visually appealing and user-friendly to create a strong online presence. You may be thinking that having a pretty and user-friendly website isn't as important as its main functionality - selling products - But think again! With so much competition out there, your website visitors are going to be highly accustomed to clean, comprehensive, ecommerce websites that are simple and straight forward to use, if a user visits your website and finds that it's busy, hard to understand, and doesn't function as they'd expect - you're going to lose sales.

To build a strong online presence, you will need a professional and good-looking website. To achieve this, you may consider investing in an ecommerce platform where you can choose a website template or use a CMS to customise your site. You can also hire a professional web designer to build your website for you. With Comgems ecommerce platform, you can choose a template for your homepage, as well as access our built in CMS to personalise your page and create and edit unlimited landing pages for your site. You can also access the expertise of our web developers and designers if you want a more perosnalised and unique design.

Other ways to build a strong online presence is through your social media presence, as well as email marketing. You can use these outlets to advertise your website including special deals, new products, blog posts, or anything you want! Having a more personal connection with your customers via social media and email marketing will help you build your brand persona and encourage customers to feel loyal to your brand.

2. User-friendly shopping experience

Along with a professional looking website and a user-friendly design, you also need a user-friendly shopping experience. This includes the user being able to navigate your website with ease, make purchases easily, and be funnelled through the buyer journey when they reach your site. As well as these essentials, with an ecommerce platform, you can provide even more customised personalisation to delight your customers and entice them to return.

Some ways to enhance your shopping experience include easy navigation, fast loading times, and clear product descriptions. These all provide a smooth and customer friendly experience, and ensures users are not bouncing off your site because they're frustrated with the user experience.

For an even more perosnalised experience and that extra special touch for b2b customers, with Comgem, you can provide personalised login portals and content for your customers. This includes customer specific calls to action, personalised featured products, multiple favourites lists, as well as granular account controls and permissions, so you can have control over what each user sees and has access to, including limiting categories and products that may be irrelevant to them, and allowing accounts to have comprehensive control over their authorisations and budgets.

3. Secure payment options

As well as providing a great looking website that works exceptionally, you also need to make sure the buying process is smooth and secure for your customers, and that includes choosing a secure payment gateway.

Your customers are putting their trust in your hands when they buy from your website, and you are expected to protect their financial information and privacy.

As well as providing trusted and respected third party payment options such as PayPal or Sage Pay, you can also provide different options for payment - such as pay by card or pay on account. This offers your customers flexibility, especially if employees are working from home and need to check out securely.

4. Effective marketing strategies

So, you've made a great ecommerce website, what now? You need to get people to see it, which calls for a great marketing strategy.

Marketing your business is an ongoing task, and implementing effective marketing campaigns is crucial to attracting and retaining customers. Marketing strategies can involve social media, email marketing, paid ads, and optimising your website - to name a few.

Being a familiar brand that people see in their daily lives on social media will increase your reputability and allow you to directly converse with customers and to get feedback in a more casual setting. Social media also allows you to take on a more casual and friendly brand tone to personify your business and encourage customers to feel more affiliated to your business.

Unlike other marketing strategies such as social media posting, email marketing allows you to directly reach your customers in a more personalised and direct way.
Your email can feel like a personalised message specifically for them by analysing your customers purchasing habits and interests and sending the relevant emails to the relevant audience.

SEO can sometimes feel like a daunting subject to tackle, it can be difficult to know where to begin to optimise your content to boost your search engine ranking. But it doesn’t have to be as scary as it sounds. Some key points to remember when optimising your website for SEO are:

Unique and high quality content
Keywords
Mobile optimisation

5. Excellent customer service

Lastly, one of our most important tips for a successful ecommerce website, is excellent customer service. 68% of consumers say they are willing to pay more for products and services from a brand known to offer good customer service experiences, and 93% of customers are likely to make a repeat purchase with companies who offer excellent customer service. (HubSpot) Now those are some figures that you just can't ignore.

As your customers are looking at your products online, you won't have the benefit of your sales team on hand to your customers to answer questions and give their sales pitch, so you need to compensate with outstanding online support and customer service. It's important to always be able to promptly provide assistance and answer questions.

Some ways you can provide customer service online are:

Live chat
Email support
Telephone support

If you're just starting your b2b business, or you're looking to revamp your strategy, these important requirements should help you get the ball rolling and boost your business online. Comgem have been helping SMEs in the United Kingdom and beyond grow their businesses since 2004. In that time, we've helped hundreds of businesses get started and grow into successful enterprises.

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