In the ever-evolving online marketplace, it can be challenging to keep pace. Constant new additions to sales systems and modifications to old practices can often leave businesses feeling left behind, unaware of which steps to take. Taking a look at three commonly overlooked and underutilized aspects of e-commerce, we want to explore some simple systems to grow business revenue. For new businesses or those looking to expand their customer base, here are three tips that shouldn’t be ignored.
Improve Trust Via Live Chat
As convenient as automatic systems are, they’re not without some serious problems. The primary of these is that such systems can’t cover everything users need, where even slight discrepancies between what help is offered and what customers need can be frustrating. For this reason, the best answer for helping users and improving trust through this process can be to turn to live chat services. Vastly preferable to most customers, live chat boasted a 73% satisfaction level in one survey, with email and phone contact lagging at 61% and 44% customer satisfaction respectively. Of course, the issue of cost can come into play here, but this can be aided by technological solutions. One popular example here could be a system that is automated when predictable and easily solvable questions are asked, where live chat is only connected when customers act unpredictably.
Reduce Transaction Abandonment by Installing Biometric Authentication
Transaction abandonment is a surprisingly common occurrence in modern online ordering systems. Despite being so much more convenient than older internet or traditional offline purchasing options, customers have become so used to automated systems that even slight inconveniences can drive them away. This idea was supported by a recent Visa survey, which found that 49% of transaction abandonment events were the result of simple lost passwords. On top of this, another 16% of abandoned carts were the results of annoying checkout processes. Combating this problem can be as simple as implementing one of the rapidly expanding biometric authentication systems. Essentially acting as password managers, biometric systems are not just convenient enough to avoid common cart abandonment issues, they’re also some of the most secure digital systems ever developed.
Add Trust Badges Throughout the Checkout Process
Sometimes online sales seem too good to be true, and with the abundance of unregulated and fake sales sites, they often are. While these websites might have succeeded in the early days of online ordering, today’s customers are much savvier when it comes to websites proving themselves. Illustrating this concept is a recent survey that revealed that 61% of respondents had refused to go through with a purchase because a website lacked trust badges. Taking this into account, it can be well worth adding popular trust badges to a checkout process, to maintain customer confidence and drive greater completed sales rates.
Though these methods don’t indicate every possible avenue which businesses can follow to create interest, they do cover three common underestimated components. All of these suggestions are easier to implement than they might seem, and the payoffs in the long and short term are easily worth the investment. Just be sure to double-check providers before leaping, and you might be surprised at how much of a difference these hacks can make.
