XXI century is all about shopping online. Almost every shop, retailers and manufacturers have transferred their services to the Internet and made shopping possible for everyone.
Besides, shopping online can be more beneficial, as customers are often offered huge discounts, free shipping, and many other great buying conditions.
The majority of consumers prefer to buy most of the products online, especially when it comes to purchasing electronics, accessories, personal care products and, beauty supplies.
It has also become very popular among the consumers to order and buy cars from online dealership stores. But buying a car sounds a little bit tricky, and you may hesitate whether this is a good deal.
However, in fact, purchasing a car online is way more beneficial than going to a dealership store. But the choice between these two options lies behind the experience customers want to have when buying a car.
So how can you attract more customers to buying a car online? What will make their great shopping experience great? Here are top worthy principles for creating amazing retail experiences and attract more customers.
Principle #1: Make sure that your website loads quickly.
According to a survey, 47% of the visitors expect that the website will load in 2 to 3 seconds, and 40% leave the website if it’s loading too slowly. So working on the optimization of your website should be at the top of your priorities list.
The biggest threat of any retail website isn’t their competitors, it’s the customer hitting that “Back” button. And only after that they start searching for a website that is quicker and more optimized and offers the same services.
Here are some tips to help your website load faster:
- Internet-friendly images: change the resolution of the images, compress, crop them and work on their design.
- Use caching: store static files and create your website’s history to help your customers access your website when it’s under maintenance.
- Reduce website baggage: eliminate unnecessary images, external scripts and plugins, spam comments and other trash.
Principle #2: Use wireframing
When you’ve figured out how you want to place information and images on your website, it’s time to use wireframing to actually put your website to life.
Wireframing is a pattern you follow to place all the information about products and how to purchase them. The simpler wireframe looks, the easier it will be for your customers to shop.
This image represents one of the examples of how to do wireframing. It basically represents all the sections with products or services and all necessary purchase information.
A wireframe is a blueprint of your website, which allows you to see the draft of how it will look like and make any changes if something doesn’t look right to you. It helps you make sure that the content is readable, clear, visible and accessible.
Principle #3: Interests of your customers are the basis for your website design
When you’re working on designing your website, you should first think about what you want your customers to see.
If you’re promoting a particular service or product, they should be the central feature of your website that will capture the attention of your customers.
Cars.com, a website specializing in buying and selling new and used cars, has recently renovated their website, making it more targeted at the audience they’re working with.
Their motto was to make their services more visible and accessible to their customers. This is exactly what you need your website to look like: everything should be at hand.
The key to creating a great consumer-oriented website is knowing exactly what your customers want to see when they scroll down your website. But be simple, you don’t want to overload your website with tons of unnecessary stuff.
Principle #4: Put up only original content
There’s so much content online that it’s very hard to impress a consumer. But if you use somebody else’s content to promote your services or products, you’ll only spoil reputation and lose potential customers.
To create original content you need to remember what makes your product special. “We often work on creating original content for websites”, says Anne Perris, a developer at Prowriting. “Before we start working on the content itself, we always ask our customers to tell us more about their products and services. It really helps figure out what type of content their websites need.”
Principle #5: Improve product display
When it comes to a great online retail experience, the success is always behind the great product displays. The best way to do it is to see all the features of the products you want to display.
Toyota is one of the best examples of creating a great display for the products they offer.
image credit: Toyota
Toyota has done a great job with displaying their products. Each car is displayed on their website in a way that helps the customers to see every detail. After selecting a car, you can also customize it, see all available colors and order to build it. A very detailed display of a product is the key to successful and beneficial deals.
Wrapping up
Customers are always looking for originality when they shop online. Make it the main focus of your website. The more you concentrate on what makes your products or services original and creative, the more customers you’ll attract.
About the Author
Lucy Benton is a marketing specialist, business consultant who currently works at www.assignmenthelper.com.au. Now she is writing for marketing and business resources. If you’re interested in working with Lucy , you can find her on Twitter.