- Welcome to The Journey,
today, we're gonna talk about advanced e-commerce features
to add to your online store.
- Starting an online store is just the beginning.
Once you get into the groove of marketing your store
and handling your orders,
it's time to consider adding advanced e-commerce features.
So, you know, you can sell more products
and increase your profits, win-win.
Going beyond the basics and adding advanced features
to your store is going to help
improve your customer experience,
it'll also help you to sell more products.
So here are seven, yes, seven advanced e-commerce features
to consider adding to your online store.
- As we say with every video,
your business is not something you set and forget
by adding powerful reporting tools,
you'll be able to see which of your products are doing well,
which orders are pending, the state of your inventory,
and so much more.
They'll also allow you to stay on top of your store
and avoid running out of stock
or stocking up on the wrong category of products
that aren't selling well and focus on the ones that are.
And this includes traffic analytics
that shows how your customers are finding you.
So you can set something up like Google Site Kit
on your website and get all sorts of awesome data
about the traffic, conversion, search engines,
all that good stuff.
- Another advanced e-commerce feature that you can consider
is integrating a blog, I love a good blog.
If you're not blogging for your online store,
well, it's about time to get on that bandwagon.
Blogging is one of the easiest ways to promote your store
while providing customers with a ton of value, right?
Share your expertise and entertain us with a blog.
You can create posts that talk about,
oh, one of my favorites behind the scenes
that is so intriguing.
Also you could talk about your customers stories,
share those, another one of my favorites,
you could share how your product is meant to be used
or cared for.
And you can also create gift guides
and link to the products to your store.
An active blog gives search engines,
more opportunities to index your online store
which, hey, that increases your chances
of showing up in search results, SEO for the win.
- Our next advanced e-commerce feature
is abandoned cart recovery.
So cart abandonment is one of the worst problems
for almost every online store owner.
And while you can't completely eliminate it,
there are ways to reduce it.
Simply by setting up abandoned cart email reminders,
you can remind customers about the products
they left in their cart.
Chances are you have one sitting in your inbox right now,
so you can send reminders out on a schedule
and offer a special coupon or a deal
to encourage them to come back and complete the purchase.
Hey, did you leave something in your cart?
Here's 20% off, go ahead and place that order.
Get them to buy, get them to buy,
'cause that's what you're trying to do
with your online store.
- Which takes us to our e-commerce feature,
advanced search and filtering options.
So it goes without saying that your store
should include a search bar and product filters.
However, there are ways to improve on both of those.
I love a good search bar,
I know one of the sites that I get a lot of,
like my surf gear,
they have just an abundance of products
and everything surf.
So for me to get to what I'm looking for specifically
and quickly, bingo search bar.
So I encourage you all to have that,
for example, a live search that suggests products
as the user types is more effective.
That's another one that I've seen as well
as I'm starting to type in "long board",
it starts to populate and so this is, again,
it's more effective than a static search bar
that returns a list of dozens of products
and also offering the ability to filter not only by size,
but also by color, also by brand and materials.
Another smart way to add more advanced filtering options
and what essentially does no brainer.
It makes it easy for your customer
to find the exact product that they want.
I use filters all the time.
I'm often short on time, but in need of a product,
so if I can use that search bar, that live search bar,
as well as additional filters,
I'm gonna get to that product
that I wanna spend money on more quickly,
which means you, the business gets my money.
- This one should really go without saying
with more than 50% of all internet traffic
coming from mobile devices,
your site needs to have a mobile optimized checkout.
A few tips to keep in mind
when it comes to optimizing your online checkout process
for mobile users include confirming that your form fields
are large enough to type on smaller screens,
not asking for unnecessary information,
they're clicking on it with their thumbs or fingers,
I don't judge, use a larger size for your buttons
and calls to actions.
And lastly offer a variety of payment options
such as Apple pay and Google pay
that just make it that much easier to pay on your website.
- And let's not forget social media sharing,
having sharing buttons on individual product pages
makes it super easy to drive more traffic to your store.
And take it to the next level.
I mean, add even a deeper integration with social media,
by connecting your Facebook page to your store,
and then make it easy for those Facebook users
to buy from you, right?
And you can also set up Instagram shopping.
So your Instagram followers
can go directly to your product page and check out,
they got money to spend too.
Plan to devote some time to your stores SEO,
to ensure that your product titles, page titles,
product descriptions,
and those images that you're using there
are optimized for search engines as well.
That's going to help you to get noticing and get found.
- Finally, consider adding video
and in-depth product demos for your store.
So one of the biggest drawbacks of online shopping
is not being able to see or touch the product in person.
By adding these you'll bridge this gap
and really make it easy for your customers
to visualize what they're buying.
Videos that enable you to show how other customers
are using your products,
while the demos allow customers to see the product
from all angles.
Both options make the decision to purchase that much easier
and ultimately help you sell more.
- So features like reporting tools,
integrated blogs, abandoned cart recovery,
and others will help you increase your bottom line,
and hey, make it easier to drive organic traffic
to your store so you can spend less on advertising.
- Your journey is not over yet,
we have over 200 episodes
to help you with your small business.
Make sure you like, comment and subscribe on this video.
This is The Journey and we'll see you next time.
(upbeat music)