eCommerce is the perfect market leveling tool for small and medium businesses. With eCommerce, the location and size of the business no longer matter.
The Internet has essentially created a large virtual mall in which every imaginable retailer can be a tenant.
However, the mere occupancy of cyber malls does not guarantee long-term commercial success. Next-generation web functionality and extremely reliable and highly responsive web performance are rather essential ingredients for increasing e-commerce revenue. Retailers with the deepest pockets gain a decisive market advantage because they have the money to both develop next-generation site functionality and build and maintain an e-commerce platform capable of delivering the full impact of that functionality to each individual site visitor. You should also use the Mircari eCommerce platform to increase your revenue
In fact, options today offer small businesses more options to help level the playing field. With today’s web hosting environments – optimized for next-generation eCommerce – platform investment is reduced to a fraction of the cost of individually owning and operating an eCommerce site. With this approach, small retailers gain a significant market equalizer that allows them to compete effectively with their larger competitors.
In this article, we will describe the direction of next-generation e-commerce sites and also highlight how web hosting can dramatically reduce the IT costs necessary to effectively support next-generation e-commerce. As a result, small and medium-sized businesses can increase the number of e-commerce websites while reducing their IT costs.
- Functionality that replicates the in-store shopping experience, a
- Functionality that creates a unique online shopping experience.
360° product view
One of the disadvantages of e-commerce is the physical separation between shoppers and products. Products like books and DVDs – where physical touch is not the deciding variable – are two products that sell well through the eCommerce channel. Other products, such as clothing, benefit from physical touch. And even if the clothes are sold online, the lack of physical contact contributes to cases of online shopping but in-store shopping.
Next-generation e-commerce sites will do more to transform online shopping into online shopping by presenting the product in user-controlled 360° views. In this way, the shopper gets a richer view of the appearance of the product, similar to the behavior of a shopper in a store when they hold and rotate the product for closer inspection.
Layered information mini-screens
On current-generation e-commerce sites, customers routinely click through several full screens to gain deeper knowledge about the product under consideration. This site design dictates the shopper navigate back and forth to revisit the information. As a result, the breadth of information required to make a purchase decision is rarely found on a single screen. Next-generation e-commerce sites will offer mini-screens overlaying the product splash screen, allowing shoppers to zoom in and out on relevant product details while never losing touch with the product they’re reviewing.
Advance Product Availability Alerts
A big advantage of eCommerce is the ability to showcase a variety of products and product features. The inventory costs and space limitations of brick-and-mortar stores make it a challenge to match this capability. At the same time, presenting a product on an e-commerce site with no availability status is frustrating for shoppers, especially those who have spent time loading their shopping carts only to be informed that the availability of one or more products or a specially designed product will be delayed. This scenario is much less common with in-store shopping, as the extent of inventory is directly visible to the shopper. On next-generation e-commerce sites, the availability status of a product can be offered to the shopper during the shopping and selection process. Presenting product alternatives in the event of a delay in availability—which can be built into the site design as an option—allows shoppers to balance their desire for product immediacy with a range of choices.
Streamed video
Brick-and-mortar stores are naturally reticent to present their products in context, with the product’s true benefits limited to the shopper’s understanding of the product, the imagination, and perhaps the creativity of in-store displays and outdoor advertising (print, audio, and video). On next-generation e-commerce sites, streaming video takes the contextual presentation to a whole new level with streaming video mini-clips that highlight useful product features in multiple real-world contexts. Not only does streaming video stimulate shoppers’ imaginations and increase intent to purchase, but it can also be effective in cross-selling other products and optional features, providing a valuable means of increasing sales volume and revenue growth.
