We’ve been trading online for well over a decade now. While 2020 might have been a watershed moment for those businesses who hadn’t made the jump into the digital world – forcing them to do so because of the pandemic restrictions – we’re all used to buying and selling online.
Indeed, we’re so used to this form of an online marketplace that we’ve become complacent about how we manage our own stores. Thousands of eCommerce stores and platforms look tired, old, and decidedly off-putting in 2020. As such, here are five ways in which you can transform your online business for the 2020s.
Aesthetics
You’ll not need reminding that web users decide the trustworthiness of your website in less than a second after your home page loads. This is the biggest reason why web users don’t explore your store: they simply think that it looks old, or ugly, or poorly designed. As such, this should certainly be one of your focus points in your online business revamp: making your website sleek and modern.
Bells and Whistles
How many features – often called plug-ins or widgets – do you currently have on your website? It’s likely that you either have too many or too few. No website in 2020 should have widgets for feedback, or a widget showing the number of times your website has been visited. Plug-ins facilitate different forms of payment, which are hugely appreciated by your customers – so this is where your feature focus should lie: on the trade side of your business.
Web Development
A catch-all phrase for the plumbing behind your website, this is as important as it gets for businesses that operate online. You might not understand a thing about coding or web development, but you need to consider this when you’re doing a website revamp.
Indeed, with the help of expert practitioners at Blackbelt commerce, you’ll barely have to think about your web development at all: they’ll take a look at your back-end, and they’ll give it a comb through to make your entire website more functional and more aligned with SEO principles that’ll net you, customers, in the future.
Integration
Do you have social media pages? Do you have a presence on the larger eCommerce platforms, like Amazon and Shopify? Are you aware that you can integrate these onto, for example, Google’s marketplace? These are all steps that you can take to make your website more integrated throughout the online marketplace that is the internet. Integrate to find more customers across different channels.
Customer Service
Finally, you do need to be able to open a line of communication between your company and your customers, a ‘Contact Us’ page traditionally does this on your website – but it should also be done through social media. On social media – like Twitter and Facebook – you’re able to converse with customers casually, transforming your relationship with your most reliable customers.
Use these five tips to drive change in your online business in time for 2021 and the challenges the new year will bring.