Today, consumers have more options than ever when considering purchasing products online. Similarly, businesses need to have multiple e-commerce storefronts in order to satisfy the abundance and span of consumer purchasing. As changes in buying behavior and technology continue to evolve, the latest challenge for small business owners is to keep pace with how and where their customers shop for products. The good news is that you can sell everywhere today, and it may be easier than you think. However, in order to effectively maintain a presence everywhere your customers want to shop, your business needs to support multiple storefronts from a centralized back end location. Consider these “Big 3” storefront locations:
Traditional E-Commerce:
Traditional storefronts include e-commerce sites that can be easily pasted into your website or WordPress blog. The page should be highly functional, and offer expected features such as multiple images on product listings, credit card integration and shipping calculations. Quickness and functionality are a must, as these translate into quicker conversions and fewer abandoned shopping carts.
Mobile Storefronts:
Your mobile storefront should be readily accessible across a variety of devices, as the number of tools used to access the internet expands. In other words, your website needs to be accessible across all genres of mobile devices, tablets and PCs. The best approach for small businesses is to initiate a responsive web design which is compatible with all internet devices. This technology detects the origin of inbound traffic and creates a version of the page for the user which is compatible and easy-to-use. Shopping carts are now following suit, by dynamically adjusting storefront layouts according to a device’s specific features.
An example of Responsive Website Design:
Social Storefronts:
Of course, no business can ignore the power of social media platforms when considering shopping cart integration. For instance, research shows that 44% of U.S. consumers are most likely to discover new products on Facebook. On average, business which set up social commerce storefronts see an additional 10% revenue from these sites. However, the best merchants are able to secure 30-50% of their total sales from these social networking entities.
In order to take full advantage of today’s social, mobile and multi-device commerce opportunities, your business needs to operate multiple synchronized storefronts simultaneously and manage them all centrally. This equates for easier administration, as well as facilitates effective back-office operations such as multiple-channel inventory management. The e-commerce landscape is changing- to maximize productivity, it is critical that you sell wherever your customers want to shop online, and on the devices they wish to use.