Avoiding Holiday Blues: Boosting Your Online Business
- Oliver Richard
Introduction
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, and that can only mean one thing: holiday shopping has begun! One of the biggest hurdles that e-commerce sites face during the holidays is the sheer volume of traffic. This means that it’s more important than ever to have a site that can adequately handle the additional traffic.
As per Forrester, Almost one-quarter of US online adults expect to spend more for the 2022 holiday season than they did in 2021.
The inability to physically view a product before purchasing, is one of the most difficult aspects of online shopping. To promote a positive online purchase experience, retailers should provide the following resources to customers:
Provide aesthetically Pleasing Pictures
Use high-resolution images to improve consumer confidence when purchasing online; Include images for all possibilities. If the product comes in numerous sizes or colors, include size comparisons to popular things.
Take it a step further by allowing to view items using Augmented Reality (AR) Consider including product videos as well. According to Forrester, 44% of US adults believe product videos boost the customer confidence.
Boost customer reviews for further reinforcement
If you can’t change the imagery at this point in the game, think about enhancing your customer reviews section. 66% of US online adults think customer ratings and reviews are an important feature for a retailer to have on their site, as per Forrester’s February 2022 Survey.
Add gifting option during checkout
As the Christmas season approaches, gifting becomes more common. Some shoppers will choose this option to give gifts to people they may not see during the holidays. Enhance your site’s capabilities by allowing customers to add gift coupons, gift wrap, or messages with their orders.
Make in-store inventory available to online shoppers
Having an in-store availability is an essential feature to have on an e-commerce website. Some customers intend to check online for in-store inventory availability before visiting the stores during holidays.
Buy online and pickup in the store
Nowadays, it is common for customers to purchase products online and then pick them up at the store. Retailers need to recognize this trend and begin to simplify the process by allowing customers to filter search items eligible for in-store pickup.
The Innovation Starts Here
In the world of e-commerce, it is not enough to have a great product. You also need to have a great system to keep them coming back for more. This is where Innovature comes in.
Our AI-powered product recommendation solution for a large e-commerce company enables the client to collect and analyse purchasing habits from all customers, including the store’s sales history, and enabled them to study what the customers are interested in and most likely want to buy, using machine learning. With advanced recommendation algorithms, the application automatically suggested the right products to the right customers.
We also had the opportunity to develop a truly immersive, user-centric customer loyalty reward platform for our client based in Japan. The platform supported customers to purchase items using mobile money. The solution was one of the first application which was using mobile money when the concept was introduced in Japan. The mobile money payment is enabled with providers like AU and Softbank.
We hope you enjoyed reading about how Innovature helped e-commerce businesses. With our bespoke solutions, we know that we can help you create a better shopping experience for your customers and improve your business. So what are you waiting for? Get in touch with our experts at sales@innovature.ai
