Businesses and retailing has taken a newturn by involving the internet and that has opened up the market to a wider reach of people within a shorter time and at a considerable lower expense than with locating branch stores everywhere. It is advisable to keep in touch with the trend of e-stores in order to stay afloat with the changing economic needs of customers and to go about this effectively stores need to know if their e-stores are fulfilling the expectation of modern consumers. Market statistics have been carried out to help provide an answer to this question and to provide insight on how to have an effective e-store.
Online shopping expectations that consumers have
With online consumers, there is no face-to-face interaction and so business effectiveness cannot be drawn from body language and retailers have to make deduction from purchase patterns and online responses usually gotten from polls and cookies. The following have been drawn up as important expectations that consumers have from e-stores.
The speed of the shopping website: consumers being asked about the things they need from an online store responded that they expect a fast service when purchasing their needs. This has also been investigated by noticing shopping patterns of consumers to note that consumers are likely to leave a page if it is taking too long to find what they want or for the page to load. Improving speed is one of the tactics used by amazon to have more consumers buying from them.
The question is how exactly this speed is improved, this can be done by having an effective and professional web design so that visitors to the site do not have to wait long for pages to load before they can proceed from stage to stage and finally to check out.
Highly convenient shopping experience:many consumers opt for the online shopping experience as a more convenient option than visiting offline stores. The convenience sought after by e-store consumers include the speed of the website as mentioned earlier, clarity of productdescription, transparent and well defined price of products and a fast inclusive shipping service. Online consumers do not have the luxury of checking their goods first hand before purchasing and as a result a high percentage of them try to read up reviews of other customers about the product and in their search they have to rely on the shopping website to provide them with as much information as possible about whatever they are trying to purchase.The convenience of their shopping experience is also affected by the website design and layout and how user friendly and self-explanatory it is to visitors.
Easy navigation and alternative to products: Consumers now want to be able to easily find the items they are searching for without having to scroll through products they are not interested in, also availability of similar suggestions to the goods they bought helps to improve their experience. An example is that an online consumer trying to purchase a phone will appreciate being able to enter their desired specs in a search bar and then be redirected to a page that has been filtered to contain what theyneed and a follow upoption of perhaps similar phone types and phone accessories that can complement the product.
Clear payment and shipping details: statistically analysed it has been shown that consumers prefer when they can get information about what it would cost to purchase a product including the shipping without having to go far into clearing out only to see price hikes as a result of shipping costs. Products that come in suites should include a comprehensive information of their prices from the first click along with the shipping option available. Consumers prefer that shipping can be delivered directly to their doorsteps and will compare online stores with others that do that even if they do not offer the same kind of goods and services.
Reliable customer service:Just as with any type of outlet, customers will have questionsabout their purchases and aboutproducts, consumers indicated that an online shop with an accessible and trustworthy customer service is one of their requirements to shopping there.
At the end of the day, when properly handled, an e-store is the perfect way to stay on track with economics of business retailing at the moment and it is essential that it is handled rightly to draw in the target market. Simply be taking note of consumers expectations of their e-shopping experience
