Lessons From Ecommerce Giants

eCommerce is a landscape where all kinds of businesses can thrive. From small startups, to gigantic corporations, the internet is open for anyone to sell their goods. However, when companies such as Amazon, eBay & Alibaba are on the scene, it’s important to know the standard that is expected. As a small business, if you want people to purchase from your store over Amazon, you will need to make it worth their while. At the very least, you should be offering services on par with those of the giants. Or adding something unique and extra. Here we will take a look at lessons learned from eCommerce giants that can help make sure other eCommerce stores can compete.

Loading Time

In order to have a site that matches up to the giants, make sure that you have an effective page loading speed. If shoppers have to wait for your page to load before they have even seen the website, they will lose interest fast and the bounce rate will be high. 

There are methods of increasing page loading time, such as using SSR (server side rendering). This kind of smart rendering system uses cutting edge technology to reduce the page loading speed associated with CSR Javascript. There are some platforms that offer SSR without lengthy and backend development, so there is no excuse not to utilize the potential of this performance enhancing option.

This is a basic lesson to learn from the eCommerce giants: it’s great to have a sophisticated and creative site, but if it takes too long to load, shoppers aren’t interested. Make sure that you don’t neglect the basics, small elements account for a lot.

Ready Availability

Despite their size, eCommerce giants are amazingly supportive and contactable. They have many methods of communication that allow their shoppers to feel safe and heard. Their use of conversational commerce is sophisticated and goes a long way.

These giants all employ chatbots and chat technology, which are becoming increasingly popular. If your business isn’t using these yet, it’s a great idea to consider it. The more available you are, the more your customers will trust your business. This will lead to lifelong customers, and repeat buyers.

Chatbots are a great solution as they offer 24/7 support, and can easily answer questions regarding returns and delivery statuses, as well as other FAQs. This frees up human representatives for phone lines with more difficult queries. Combining this with FAQs and other information clearly available on your site is a good lesson to learn from the giants.



Top Personalization

All eCommerce giants use personalization within their strategy. It’s simply not an option to disregard this. Amazon was one of the first major platforms to use things such as personalized recommendations, as well as the simple solution of welcoming shoppers by name. Also offering a personalized homepage means that each shopper feels valued, and is more inclined to spend when the products are relevant to them.

If you’re not using personalized recommendations, or personalized outreach marketing, it’s time to start! These eCommerce giants have been doing it to a high standard for a long time, and a little personalization goes a long way for any optimized eCommerce experience.

Superior Site Search

Top retailers all use, without fail, an advanced site search solution. A clear, optimized, usable site search is essential in allowing all customers to find the products they need. Using high quality images within the search, as well as natural language processing is a must.

For an even more advanced search solution, you can use vector search or multimodal search to give the shoppers more range of search potential. A standard site search that doesn’t have any extra capacity will be an indicator that your site isn’t up to scratch. Don’t let this happen to you.

Regular Testing

The final lesson to learn from the eCommerce giants is the importance of testing. Running regular A/B tests is crucial in order to know that your site is running up to standard, with no issues. The more regular you test, the more you keep optimizing your site.

It also allows for you to be more creative in your web page, as you can run tests to see what works or not. The more you test, the more inventive you can be and the more memorable shopping experience you can create. All of the eCommerce giants employ this technique, so it’s useful to pick it up too!

This innovation is one of the main secrets of all of the giants. They got to where they are by trying new things, and pushing the eCommerce world ahead. In such a rapidly evolving and growing market, this is one of the key elements that keeps the eCommerce industry thriving.

These lessons from eCommerce giants are applicable and valuable to any eCommerce business. Making sure that you use these techniques, as well as constantly push the boat out is a great way to ensure your customers will be happy. These companies are giants through their own hard work, and following in their footsteps will certainly lead you in the right direction.