Let me start by asking you a question- What would you do if there was never a concept of eCommerce? You can simply say it won’t bother you, but we all are, in one way or the other dependent on online transactions.
Internet world has a population of 3 billion users currently and it’s growing 300% faster compared to the global population growth rate; and half of these 3 billion users are also the people who contribute to the growth of eCommerce industry across the world. Since the inception of eCommerce, people are becoming more and more lazy, and this adds up to the opportunities that companies have in front of them to improve on their eCommerce.
Stand out from the crowd
eCommerce is growing tremendously and 90% of the companies worldwide are currently dependent on it for interactions with their customers. Let’s take a deep dive to look into the future of eCommerce:
Search, Search and… Search
One of the main features of eCommerce platforms is what makes users chose over retail stores is that, they can find whatever they need in a very short time. If people are not able to find what they need in a matter of seconds, they often tend to visit the competitors. But in many of the eCommerce sites/apps, segmentation becomes a problem due to the quest of providing customers a wide variety of products. Product findability and also how simplified the whole process is, tend to attract users more. The introduction of ‘size-chart’ is one thing that resolved confusions of the US and UK size etc that the user had.
You’ve Got a Mail
Yes, getting emails about offers and deals is nice. But we tend to delete it even before we read it and miss out on a lot of stuff. But instead of that how about getting Facebook and Whatsapp notifications every time an online shopping platform has something new to offer. That would be great right! Well, these features haven’t been implemented in many eCommerce websites still.
Support
Most of the time, users find it difficult to find customer support while shopping online. eCommerce platforms have customer service option, but it either interferes shopping or redirects you to a different page. Even then, you have to fill a lot of forms and wait long hours for a response. Providing a better support option like online chat or a shopping buddy might help gain more loyal customers.
Progressive Designs
Managing multiple platforms for the same eCommerce player is getting a bit tricky these days. Myntra, one of the leading fashion shopping portals in India, is only accessible through a mobile app.When someone shares a product detail with us, we are being forced to download the app to view that. Either it burns the smartphone space or users are not able to access their favorite shopping portal. These are the situations when progressive designs play an important role. Kudos to Flipkart, one of the first shopping portals to adopt Progressive App Technology.
Just in Time
Time taken by eCommerce webpages to load or even the mobile apps to open, is a major problem that drives away customers to alternative platforms. This happens mainly because of the poor optimization of images etc. The main reason why people chose online transactions, is to save time. As a result, an option they chose to save time consumes most of their time.
Personalization
Online shopping users are usually not loyal to a particular site or app. For example, a person who wants to buy a mobile phone will check both Amazon and Flipkart at the same time, trying to figure out which one has the best deal. Loyalty comes with better engagement and promising deals, eCommerce firms should use customers’ buyer’s journey to give smart results on their searches.
Wish and Click
eCommerce has become an integral part of our daily life. Be it buying groceries or buying a $1000 diamond ring, we go online. Even if the users are not able to find a specific item of their choice in a retail store, they are sure that they can find it online. It would be a great move, if eCommerce players provide a Voodoo kind of feature in the app itself, which acts as a digital assistant helping users to find deals, compare prices, get coupons, and provide recommendations for online shopping.
It’s a whole new era for UX designs, and firms have started realizing that a better user experience is what will improve their business and not just the wide variety of products. We at INKONIQ have helped many eCommerce players to define their business success by adding more usability and intelligence to their product that resulted in a great footfall and fetched a lot of critical acclaim for their brand image.