Are you looking for ways to improve your online store but are running out of ideas? Consider keeping track of market trends to see what new technologies and strategies are being deployed. Be the first to spot a new market trend, and you’ll have the edge over the competition. For example, did you know that the average shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.8%? You could use cart abandonment marketing emails to combat this common practice.
Market trends are constantly changing, but pay attention to the right ones, and you’ll stand a great chance of increasing your market share. Currently, the trends you should investigate include using multiple platforms to accept credit cards, voice search SEO, WordPress eCommerce plugins, and dynamic pricing.
Conversational Writing for SEO
Creating content for your eCommerce store increases traffic from search engines. When writing, choosing a conversational tone is beneficial for SEO. That’s because people use conversational phrases when typing a search phrase.
The challenge is to modify your content strategy that naturally uses conversational phrases. Consider using eCommerce SEO services for insight into how to prepare content that generates great search engine traffic. Utilizing their expertise gives you more time to work on other profitable tasks.
Accept Credit Cards from Multiple Platforms
Credit cards are the most popular way of handling online transactions. However, not enough eCommerce stores provide the payment gateways to support all customers. You can accept credit cards using various payment processors such as PayPal, Stripe, and Square. Adding more options may increase sales beyond what it costs to improve your online infrastructure.
Here is an overview of why adding payment processors is worthwhile:
- Security: The security of online transactions is handled by payment processors, and they have different techniques. Customers will have various opinions about the most secure payment processors. If you choose one they dislike, then you might lose the sale. However, you can ensure that your customers will trust the transaction’s security with a choice of options.
- Convenience: Buyers may have an account with one payment processor and won’t have the patience to create more. Adding more options increases the likelihood that every buyer can conveniently complete the transaction with an existing account.
- Avoid downtime: Payment processors are not invincible from scandals and other problems that may render their service ineffective at short notice. Therefore, you need to protect yourself from unforeseen outages by offering several options.
Ecommerce platforms are a great way to add a lot of payment processors in one go. They also come with other cool features that are worth checking out.
WordPress eCommerce Plugins
Improving the functionality of your online store helps when using the latest tools available at your disposal. If you’re running a WordPress based eCommerce website, then plugins are a great way to add value. The plugin library is constantly being updated, so it’s good practice to keep an eye on the latest trends.
Here are some ideas for choosing the perfect WordPress eCommerce plugins:
- Community: Look for a plugin that has a great community with plenty of tutorials, reviews, and case studies. It indicates the plugin has been stress-tested as is one of the best at what it does. For example, Easy Digital Downloads and Cart66 Cloud are popular eCommerce plugins with a community.
- Page speed impact: One of the most important metrics to monitor is page speed. 79% of online shoppers won’t return if the website has performance issues. Therefore, you can’t afford to install a plugin that could significantly reduce your page speed.
- Backend support: Plugins can crash or fail to execute a transaction correctly. The support from the plugin development team will come in handy if you’re having issues.
Complete background checks before installing a plugin. The best eCommerce plugins have a community and many reviews worth investigating before making your decision.
Dynamic Pricing
You’ll notice that an increasing number of online stores keep changing their prices. They might be using a dynamic pricing model, which considers factors such as demand, inventory, and other market conditions. The automated pricing structure means you don’t have to manually inspect the prices of each product to determine an appropriate number. Here are three advantages of using dynamic pricing:
- Learn about customers: Do you want to know your product’s maximum sale price without reducing the sales volume? Dynamic pricing allows you to find the point at which you can’t increase your prices further.
- Increase sales: Getting rid of low inventory items can be difficult. For example, when selling clothing items, the extra small and large sizes can be hard to sell. Changing your prices will help you sell items that typically linger for far too long in your warehouse.
- Remain competitive: You need to stay in touch with what prices competitors are charging. Reacting quickly to competitors gives you a better chance of fighting for each sale. Dynamic pricing is a fast way to undercut the competition, so you provide the best deal consistently.
There are also a few drawbacks to the dynamic pricing model that you should know about. Price wars could quickly get out of control as both sides keep reducing their prices. You’ll quickly lose your profit margin, and that’s not a healthy way to compete.
Also, customers can get frustrated with a store that’s constantly changing their prices. It’s especially true for customers that buy from you repeatedly and reliability.
Final Thoughts
Keeping an eye on eCommerce market trends should be an ongoing process. However, don’t just focus on what’s going on in your industry. Look around at what technologies and strategies the industries around you are using. Implementing a strategy that’s working in a different marketplace may give you a competitive edge.
Finally, don’t be scared to experiment with new approaches. Test them on a small scale over a meaningful sample size. Once you find something that works, deploy it to your entire eCommerce operation.
