If you are engaged in network marketing activities, and even if you are not yet, you will not be able to ignore marketing and sales. As a business that markets its products or services – the options available to you to sell through the network. E-Commerce has evolved over the past few decades, building huge empires, opening markets and turning companies into “overnight” globals. Bringing masses of small businesses and entrepreneurs to become companies marketing products. In this article we will help you make your online sales activity efficient and profitable, and open additional revenue channels for your existing businesses. Or start new ones.
Benefits of e-commerce – for marketers and customers
Customers are increasingly active on online platforms, as well as as “buyers” and as information reviewers about products and services. They are much more “open” to look for and find solutions, and take out their wallet. The main benefits for customers in online shopping are centered around the vast supplies and availability with a click. They can search for products, locate them in other countries as well, test their features, get professional reviews, read user reviews and compare them to other products. Comfort plays a key role in this process.
If we are not active in e-commerce, our competitors probably will be. Not every marketer should invest their entire funds in e-commerce activities. But we need to prepare the necessary infrastructure for meeting with customers who want to buy online. Or start the sales process, which is happening at higher and higher rates. It all begins with a good website and software. You may want to look at WebX360.com for example.
Where are they sold? What are the main platforms to display my products?
So you have products or services that you want customers to purchase through the network. What do we need to do to view them? In order to simplify things, we will list ways in which we can operate in order to sell products or services. Then we will detail about each of them:
- Marketplace, or “online marketplace”.
- Our own trading site.
- Sale through other shopping sites.
E-commerce website design
Once you have decided on the platform on which you will build the site (or you have decided to develop it from the ground up), and sometimes even before that – you will have to design it. Here are some guiding questions you should ask yourself:
- Will the site be a mere sales site, or will the sales be just a part of it? If the second option is correct, the site should also be designed according to its other purpose, which may be an image site, a site for managing relationships with customers, and more.
- What is the scope of activity on the site?
- What are the important categories?
- How do we provide a unique user experience, one that aims to increase visitors’ buying activity?
- Where will the traffic to the site come from?
The user experience mentioned earlier is especially important. These components, or parameters, should be given a very considerable weight when designing your sales website.
What influences customers’ purchasing decision
If we knew exactly what was going on in our prospect’s minds, there probably would not have been much work for marketers. From reviewing the behaviors of visitors to an e-commerce site, salient trends emerge that repeat themselves. Let’s look at the main trends that influence purchasing decisions:
1. The site visitor usually has a purpose – the surfer came to your site because they were looking for a particular product, because they wanted to find out details, compare and sometimes really to purchase. We must try to define for ourselves how to meet their expectations according to the purpose for which he came to us.
2. Trust is an essential commodity – the customer wants to buy where they feel confident in buying. Both in terms of information security, both in terms of information reliability and in terms of the feeling that “there is someone to trust” even after the purchase. Our job is to provide this sense of trust, in words and “deeds”, ie in the structure of the site, its appearance and the experience of use
3. Design has a role – the design of the site takes part in building the trust we mentioned, and also in the “credit” we receive from the visitor. This is beyond his contribution to the user experience (pleasant colors, comfortable elements, spaces, typography and correct titles, etc.) and the convenience with which he can locate the items and information he was looking for.
4. Shortening Navigation Time and Processes – Website planning must take into account convenient navigation from anywhere to anywhere. The visitor does not always have a strong desire to find something, and your contribution to “leading” them to the things they may be looking for is important.
5. Website loading time – One of the major causes of website abandonment (not necessarily commerce sites) is the time it takes for a website to “go up”. Slow sites “win” a significantly higher abandonment rate. One of the things we need to examine (there are quite a few ways to examine this) is how quickly the site and its various pages load, and whether the browsing experience is not likely to be impaired.
6. Social Evidence and Symbols – We tend, consumers and as human beings, to attach importance to symbols. Status symbols, brands, large organizations. All of these affect the degree of importance we attach to the body with which we produce communication. The same goes for commerce sites. Icons that indicate that well-known brands or organizations do business with the site or that reputable magazines have complimented it.
7. Price – This is the section that most of you are probably familiar with, and yet it is our duty to specify it. Price is still a crucial parameter in purchasing decisions. Sometimes even as an element that indicates that the product is more prestigious, but in many cases out of cost-benefit calculations. Your job is to create the feeling that this is a price worth taking advantage of. We will do this by using correct embossing, smart typography and adding a “previous” price for comparison. Ancillary parameters here will be promotions, limited availability (in time or quantity), loyalty programs and more.
What do you think?