eCommerce Website Design
In 2008, just before the Great Recession hit the world, retail ecommerce sales totaled 132.3 billion in the US. Fast forward to 2016 and and sales have almost eclipsed 400 billion and ecommerce has doubled its market share of total retail sales.
Year over year, shoppers are opting for less-than-traditional places to buy, and brick and mortar shops are starting to become advertisements for their online stores—but why?
Here are just a few of the reasons:
A large portion of millennials, those born between 1980 and 2000, are coming into their prime spending years (30+).
(Huge changes in-store, more like it.)
Gen X / Y / and baby Boomers have crossed the chasm into online shoppers. Here’s the percentage, by generation, who prefer to shop online over in-store:
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67% of Millennials
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56% of Gen Xers
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41% of Baby Boomers
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28% of Seniors will click to purchase.
The social media economy continues to grow. Have you ever noticed how often someone on your Facebook feed, Instagram feed, Twitter feed, Pinterest, or any other social media platform, has been willing to share a recently purchased product, share something from their product pages, or simply brag about their favourite new item? This is the social media economy, where great products achieve organic followings from raving fans, because sharing with the world has never been easier and companies are getting smarter. Savvy e-commerce businesses are continually looking for new ways to encourage social sharing.
“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is — it is what consumers tell each other it is.” — Scott Cook
Here are a few examples:
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Testimonial contests
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Referral incentives
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Share 4 discounts
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Influencer campaigns
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Real-world guerilla marketing
Mobile consumption of the digital world: 125 Million U.S. consumers own smartphones, and of those consumers, 62% have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last six months.
Here are more stats about Mobile Commerce:
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67% of consumers start shopping on one device and finish on another
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On Facebook alone 33% of people who showed interest on a mobile ad converted on desktop
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More than 60% of adults in the USA have 2 devices, — a quarter have 3
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People are moving to bigger devices to make purchases
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50% of people are multi-screening while they watch television
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The mobile world comes with fragmentation
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The average person has 194+ channels they consume content from
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Facebook and Instagram account for more time spent on mobile than the next 10 channels combined.
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…. So build / market with this in mind.
The “On Demand Society” — We’re now in a society who understands the power of now (Hi, Eckhart Tolle), where we value our time more than our money, and so convenience is the key to a consumer’s heart.
If you can save them time, they will open their wallet for you.
“The internet makes human desires more easily attainable. In other words, it offers convenience. Convenience on the internet is basically achieved by two things: speed, and cognitive ease. If you study what the really big things on the internet are, you realize they are masters at making things fast and not making people think.”
— Ev Williams, Twitter co-founder
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But now, wait for it…
Everything we just told you only includes the United States, which isn’t even 5% of the world’s population!
When we look at where China is with online sales, you realize something staggering (and what should be incredibly exciting to a business owner):
This is a market on the verge of an explosion, ripe for the picking.
You could say it’s just waiting for someone — perhaps someone who looks eerily like you — to come in and snag a chunk of the market share, before it’s too late.
Online retail sales in billions by country
Especially when you consider that China is the world leader in online shopping, but they have only 2% of their population shopping online.
And when it explodes, do you really want to be left saying “nothing to see here?”
Okay, so you’re convinced that you need to move your retail shop online, or at least sell some of your products online. What do you do now? What do you need to know? Where do you start?
I want to sell online, but where do I start?
To find success in the world of e-commerce, especially in such a rapidly growing and progressively competitive market, you’ll need a platform that can do the following well:
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Content Management: A system that is easy to use, user-friendly, intuitive, great for blogging, and more.
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Search: People who come to your site knowing what they want must have an obvious, easy access point to find their product. That’s the search bar. A place for highly-qualified and motivated shoppers to start buying.
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Shopping Cart: The shopping cart must be optimized with one goal in mind → completing the sale.
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Product Management / Invetory: Not only do you want a platform that can manage, track and organize your products, you’re also going to want to consider the best option for integrating it with your in-store sales.
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Pricing: Ask yourself: how much per month is it? How does that compare to other platforms? What percentage of the transaction am I losing to the platform? Do they have trial periods?
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Payment: You want a trusted, recognizable platform that users trust enough to freely give away their credit card information.
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Integrations: Apps are how you customize your store to increase conversions. Your platform must integrate with apps well.
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SEO: Google is one of the best traffic streams you’re going to find out there today. In order to capture that traffic, you must be ranking on google. As the ol’ saying goes, the best place to hide a dead body is on the second page of Google (the second best place is on your old Twitter account).
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There are a few more higher level things to consider, but this would be a great starting point.
And what is, in our opinion, the only platform that can do all these well?
“Shopify is hands down the best ecommerce platform. And as the ecommerce industry has grown, Shopify has grown with it.”
— Ezra Firestone, CEO of Smart Marketer, digital marketing expert.
Shopify — The Ecommerce Platform Made for you.
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It has, by far, the most users out of any other platform
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Most third party developer support, so if you hit a snag, you know there is someone out there to help you — “I have tested quite a few e-commerce platforms in the past, and I must admit, Shopify has the most thought-out feature set I have ever encountered.”
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A vast, and growing, network of apps, programs, and add-ons at your disposal.
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Simple and intuitive user interface. So often, as digital marketers (who work in the industry, no less), we come across platforms that have us scratching our head. Nothing about them is intuitive, and unless you can code in SQL, Java, Javascript, C#, Python, C++, PHP, and IOS (did I miss any?) simultaneously.
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The best pre-defined theme selection and page editor. A great theme is what separates the weak from the strong and the failing from the successful.
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Built in merchant processing. Shopify has built their own payment system called “Shopify Payments” which is powered by Stripe. With this, you’re able to integrate with over 70 different payment method, including credit cards, google check out, PayPal, and more.
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Phone & tech support, content and training.
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Innovation. Shopify is no stranger to innovation. As the market adjusts, so too does Shopify (and Shopify is sometimes the one dictating that market adjustment.)
“Out of the three hosted ecommerce platforms, I believe Shopify is without a doubt the best one.”
— Haris Bacic, Forbes
Okay, so you chose Shopify, now what?
You need marketing experts to make (or optimize) your website, drive traffic, capture leads, convert those leads, and scale your business into a money making powerhouse.
If you can picture for a second your website. What is it, for you? What should it be?
Traditionally, people saw (and still see) marketing and websites as separate, but really, your website is your main marketing brochure (and, if things go well, where you make your money).
Whether you’re e-commerce, brick and mortar, or a business to business company, before a consumer buys, it is the main thing they will know you by. So make your first impression the right one.
What do you need?
You need a company that knows online marketing AND websites…
You need Social Lite Communications.
The only company that offers a holistic approach — designed to find, capture, and convert leads — to web development, social media marketing, email marketing, blogging, email marketing, and more.
We’re going to be honest here: One, all websites are not created equal, and two, to most of our clients’ surprise, the better looking website is not always the better website.
They must be both beautiful AND functional.
When a viewer lands on your site, they must follow a logical sequence of events.
How does that look?
→ Cold traffic lands on your homepage, an SEO-heavy page, a page re-directed from social media, or a paid advertisement on google ads, display ads, and more.
→ The cold traffic is directed to a product page.
→ The cold traffic puts a product in their cart.
→ They purchase that product.
→ They return to your website through a series of online advertisements, retargeting, social media, email marketing, and more.
→ Over a series of recurring purchases, they become brand advocates.
→ They now utilize word of mouth, social media shares, testimonials, and more, to share your products with their circle of friends and circles of influence.
→ You exponentially scale your business.
→ You retire at a ripe young age.
Seems easy, right?
At any point, you can lose that customer down your chain of events. Bringing your potential customer from a state of cold traffic to brand advocate is, say it with me, extremely difficult.
Let’s take another look at how it looks:
You need a company who is an expert at every level of the customer journey.
And why is that so difficult?
Just take a look at some of the things that you need to understand to make your website a conversion engine, which is only a single part of the customer journey:
The parts of a website.
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The perfect header
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The perfect footer
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The perfect front page
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The perfect product page
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The perfect categories
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Optimizing your store
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Key Content Pieces
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Return Policy
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Checkout
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Shopping cart
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Shipping policy
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Integrations / tools
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Search function
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Video
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64% of all internet traffic is video
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On average products w/ video enjoy 88% more time spent on page
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1 in 3 millennials purchase a product as a result of watching a product video
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50% of users who watch videos on their mobile devices use them to decide on purchases
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Product videos are watched 60% of the time
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Average of 19 hours per month
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⅗ will spend at least 2 minutes watching a product video
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Shoppers who view a product video are 174% more likely to purchase
That’s 13 different aspects of website design that will improve your on-site conversions.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve found juggling 3 balls to be difficult, let alone 13. But luckily, we’re not juggling balls here, we’re juggling conversions…
And we’re pretty good at it.
But it doesn’t stop there (it never stops there!) That’s why they’re called eco systems. They’re living, growing, and self-sustaining (and by self-sustained, we mean Sociallite-sustained) circles of life, meant to foster and convert an ever-expanding list of customers.
To sum up: you need a company that is…
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not only an expert in website development
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not only an expert in online content
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not only an expert in email marketing
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not only an expert in on-page lead optimization
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not only an expert in social media
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not only an expert in online ads
You need an expert in everything.
