Building E-Commerce Platforms That Sell

By Ahmed Abousafy, Service Delivery Manager at Robusta

With online retail sales accounting for 14.1% of all retail sales worldwide, e-commerce continues to grow at a rapid rate despite global economic uncertainty. Statista even forecasts that these figures will continue to grow even more to reach 22% in 2023. In a time where consumers are becoming more dependent on online shopping, your e-commerce store should not only be stable and user-friendly but also stand out from the competition by approaching your entire e-commerce strategy differently.

Put yourself in your customers’ shoes

In order to fully understand how your customers think, you need to look beyond traffic and conversion to understand how they view and interact with your brand, even beyond your platform. Your customers no longer “add to cart” right away, instead, they evaluate their needs, read reviews, research and compare products and prices and ask for recommendations before they make their purchase and you go through the same journey in order to design an experience that speaks to your customers on that level.

At robusta, we put ourselves in your customers’ shoes; understanding their problems, journeys and the value they’re seeking from each and every brand we work with, and accordingly we choose the right channel and design a holistic experience fit for their needs.

Nail your technology

Having technology that you don’t have to worry about is one of the key elements of your success for winning at e-commerce. Whether you decide to build an in-house team or work with a technology partner, there are some things you need to consider such as choosing the technology.

As an Adobe solution partner, we always recommend starting with Magento because it’s dependable and foolproof, offering unmatched flexibility with all kinds of integrations and guaranteed support whenever you need it.

There are upwards of 250,000 Magento stores live on the internet handling over $155 billion in transactions every year (Source: Magento IT Solutions, Magento.com).

We believe that Magento is a brilliant option for small and large businesses alike with 7,500 retailers migrating to it from other e-commerce platforms in the last year. You also need to consider choosing the right features; while it feels great to have very unique features that stand out, sometimes they can just confuse your users and add up to your technical development time and investment.

We’ve been accumulating a lot of experience working with different businesses and launching their e-commerce platforms; having done this so many times at this point, we’re able to assess your business needs and develop your store to get it up and running as quickly as possibly while continuing to build on the experience and add new features.

Always work on improving logistics

More than 70% of customers base their decisions to shop online on the answer of these 2 questions: How fast is the delivery? And, how much will the shipping cost be? If your answers are same day delivery and free shipping, you are guaranteeing more and more conversions, as long as it’s sustainable. Of course we’re not saying that you should start this way, but you should be working towards this goal with logistics partners that understand the impact of a great delivery experience on the customers’ overall experience.

Put up great content

From the photos on your homepage down to your blog and social media, custom content has become such an important driver for e-commerce engagement and it’s usually the best way for a potential customer to learn about your product. A good content strategy should attract more customers to follow your brand on social media and help increase conversions significantly. Consider adding product videos since most customers now prefer watching a video over reading product descriptions.

Add personalization into the mix

Personalization records what customers viewed, visited or purchased on their last visit and makes new buying recommendations on every following visit based on their past experience visiting your store. This can also be done based on real-time data such as a location or time. Ethical data usage for personalization purposes has an important impact on customer satisfaction.

As we envision the future of e-commerce, there is much to be excited about, so many opportunities especially for emerging markets even with a lot of challenges to overcome. However, with robust strategies, proper infrastructure and the right partnerships, you are sure to experience exponential growth.