The Importance Of Ecommerce Websites

Ecommerce websites are vital strands in the larger network of the global marketplace. With the click of a button, a customer in India can purchase an item from a Canadian web store, and busy parents can find last minute Christmas gifts for their children without having to visit a brick and mortar shop. Because it is more cost-effective to open a virtual shop than it is to run an establishment with a physical address, the number of online stores is growing. This increasing competition means that now, more than ever, it is imperative for both long-standing businesses and new start-ups to anticipate evolving consumer expectations. In the following paragraphs, I will first outline consumer expectations by age group, and then I will address two …show more content…
Obviously a business can only cut its prices so far before quality and profits are seriously affected. For this reason, free shipping is a good alternative that can save customers a significant amount of money without affecting the quality of the purchased product. Free shipping is very attractive to customers of any age, but it is especially important for college-age customers and forty somethings (the latter are often responsible for purchasing items for other family members). In addition to saving money, middle age buyers are also concerned about saving time. How can companies help their customers reduce shopping time? The first way to do this is to make the website easy to navigate; I will return to this topic in a moment. The other way that companies can offer their patrons a quicker shopping experience is to reduce the time it takes for a customer to actually purchase an item. After browsing a webstore for half an hour, a purchaser does not want to spend an additional half hour entering credit card information, coupon codes, and shipping addresses. Several companies have found ways to reduce time in this step of the shopping experience, most notably the virtual superstore Amazon.com. Amazon lets buyers save multiple billing and shipping addresses and …show more content…
One of the challenges that every online business faces is accurately depicting the products that it sells. Perhaps one of the greatest drawbacks of shopping online is that customers cannot touch and “test-drive” an item before purchasing it. Customers often worry, especially in situations involving clothing and expensive items, that the purchased product will not look as it did on the website’s pictures, or that the sizing information given is inaccurate. Thus, customers rightly demand that companies offer accurate, in-depth product descriptions. With the increasing sophistication of technology, it may one day be possible for customers to project life-size, holographic images of items they would like to purchase. Until then, it is vital that companies provide honest, detailed descriptions and high quality pictures to save customers time, money, and frustrating