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Improving your customers online shopping experience
More and more people are taking advantage of the convenience of shopping via the Internet. The advantages are obvious: you can shop when you want, 24 hours a day, you can source unusual items from across the globe, pay with ease and receive promptly despatched goods. Why then, do some people hesitate to purchase over the web? Is your business losing potential sales because of missed opportunities? Does you website professionally and accurately display your products, thereby instilling confidence in your business?
Zarr websites offer several features that can help convey the look and feel of your products thereby enhancing your customers’ shopping experience on the web. Taking advantage of these features gives your website the edge over the competition, to ensure you are achieving the maximum possible online sales.
These features include:
- High quality photographs
- Accurate product descriptions
- Zoom facility
- Sophisticated display options
- Searching by keyword, manufacturer etc.
- Strategic use of cookies
- Encouraging cross selling of related items
- Customer wish lists
- Gift finder
- Tell a friend
- Subscribers
High quality photographs
As an online trader you need to ensure your customers can see the product they wish to purchase. It’s very important to use high resolution photographs, optimised to reduce download times. Providing alternate images will help depict your product to potential customers.
Accurate product descriptions
Include as much product information as possible; this will help prevent customers from having to ask questions and reduce the number of returned items. Details such as: dimensions, weight, colour and size availability, and shipping options should be made available.
Zoom facility
Zarr websites set themselves apart from the competition by offering this facility. With the click of a mouse, customers can zoom in on any part of the image they choose. This a great option for showing the intricate details of your products.
Sophisticated display options
Use your Zarr website to impress potential customers with this option. For example, if you sell t-shirts in 10 different colours, you could have 10 photos each displaying a single colour. A more impressive option would be for customers to be able to see the same photo appear with whatever colour t-shirt they would like to see. This is done with ‘mouse overs’ which give the customer additional viewing options when they hover the mouse over an image.
Search facilities
Make it easy for potential customers to find what they are looking for. This is particularly important if you have a website containing a lot of information. Zarr websites have the option of searching by keyword, manufacturer or category. Zarr can help you to organise the information in your site in a logical way.
Strategic use of cookies
Give customers a more personal shopping experience using cookies. This is a feature which allows your Zarr website to collect key information a customer provides on their initial visit, usually during the registration process. When the customer returns to your site, the site will welcome them by name and will not ask them to provide the same details again. Cookies are essential for retail websites and are commonly used on banking or auction websites as well.
Encouraging cross selling of related items
Let your Zarr website do your marketing! Your site can be programmed to remember what a customer has previously bought and suggest items that may be of interest, whether as part of a set or products that work well together. You may have seen this feature used on major retail sites such as Amazon under the heading, ‘customers who bought this also recommend…’
Customer wish lists
Major department stores offer gift registry services for events such as weddings or baby showers. Similarly your Zarr website can allow customers to write a wish list of potential gifts they would like to receive from amongst the products on your retail website. Their friends and family can then be assured of giving a useful and wanted gift, and can prevent recipients receiving duplicate gifts.
Tell a friend
This feature could be linked in with the wish list so you could tell your friend about your wish list or just notify your friend about something you found interesting on a Zarr website. It’s a great way of advertising your site-let the users do the work for you.
Subscribers
Encourage visitors to subscribe to your website. You could collect visitors’ details and then have the ability to contact them via newsletters with special offers or other news. You could encourage interaction with your visitors by asking them to fill out a brief survey rating your website. In this way you can learn about how to improve your site directly from your customers.
As you can see Zarr has a wealth of ideas and the practical know how to give your website the competitive edge. Why not contact Zarr today to discuss improving your customers’ shopping experience?
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