As promised before, I’m continuing the Must-Haves for E-commerce Success category. This article is going to state 3 more pieces of advice for those aiming to bring their online business to unsurpassed success.

When thinking of starting or managing your e-commerce business, you should always keep in mind such significant success factor as guided search and navigation.

An enormous advantage online retailing has over offline is that customers can quickly and easily find exactly what they have been looking for. And those retailers who realize this undeniable truth and make use of it providing their customers with robust guided and navigation tools are a step ahead of their competitors. E-commerce software is like a salesperson always polite and ready to serve a customer, guide him to the right items on the right shelves. Therefore, enabling a robust search filtering by price, size, color, etc. e-tailors ensure relevant results and satisfied customers.

It is more than just important to conduct your e-commerce business in social-like manner. The phenomenon is called social commerce.

Enabling customers with the possibility to leave reviews on the products, rate and compare them, create “best of” lists and search for the comments of others, online retailers make a measurable difference to the bottom line. First, people are more apt to believe and rely on opinions of their friends, relatives or peers. Therefore this functionality is a surefire way to assist customers in making their buying decisions which results in enhanced retention and loyalty and repeated customers. And second, customer feedback is meaningful first-hand information about the quality of products sold which is far and away an excellent opportunity to quickly respond o trends and meet rapidly changing customer needs and expectations.

And the last but far not the least thing every e-commerce business owner should remember is the term “Dynamic Merchandising”.

One cannot but give heed to the fact that 70% of customers take their purchase decisions right in stores which beyond all doubts plays into the hands of retailers. That is the exact reason why effective marketing and merchandising tools give online retailers a competitive edge and have a definite impact on sales and revenue. The possibility to update and improve websites pages on a regular basis, without involving IT specialists and using complicated applications, match customers with products, offer them various promotions and delivery options creates buying  incentives and turns ordinary browser into conscious  shoppers.