I love online shopping when it comes to buying skincare products or makeups (except for light-coloured lipsticks, I have to be careful). 90% of my skincare products are bought online. Why? That’s because the discounts offered in online shopping are crazier and more effective than buying straight from the mall. More importantly, mall tenants tend to be pleonastic when they offer discounts, saying “If you buy one, you will get 10% discount, if you buy two, you will get 20% discount, and if you buy three, you will get 35% discount.” Every time I see that kind of promo, I immediately brush it off, because I’m like, “Dude, are you offering me discounts or are you trying to rob me of my money? Who the hell needs that many things?? I only need one.” Online shopping is very direct when they are giving out discounts even up to 80%. When they say it’s a 50% discount; it really is – no lies, no strings attached. However, not all online shopping websites apply the same method. There are some factors that make the websites not worth visiting, whether it is about their web design, or simply their way of giving deals, or even payment methods. Well, if you have an online business, let me give you a piece of advice, not as a digital marketer, but as a customer from a customer’s perspective. Keep reading to learn more!
First impression
I will never get tired of saying that first impression always matters. Even though I’m not lying when I say I love beautifully designed websites with flash and all, their navigation is still the most important first impression to me. I need to know where I should click and I need to make sure I can find the stuff I want to buy easily. Complicated design, although it looks beautiful on the appearance, sometimes has inevitable errors that might occur anytime without notice. I once came across this beautiful looking website. At first, it was fun to see objects moving on that website, until I clicked and nothing happened. Yes, I clicked the stuff I want to buy, intending to add it to my shopping cart, but it didn’t add the stuff to the cart, nor could it be clicked at all. I thought it was the internet connection, but when I tried to reload it, the page refreshed easily but I still couldn’t click a single thing on that website. Lesson from this is that first impression that I’m talking about is not about the looks, but it’s more about function. Ask these questions when you are browsing your own website:
- “If I look for my stuff on the search box on my website, will it provide relevant and complete results?”
- “If I want to see the product page, will I find helpful categories that make it easier for me to find specific product?”
- “Are the images loading fast?”
- “Can I click the buttons and the calls to action buttons?”
Create a fun design but watch out for the content size and the navigation part.
The can’t-help-but-visit-everyday website
Before explaining this part, let me tell you my real-life example. I am a loyal customer of Sociolla, a big online shopping website for skincare and makeup products in my country. There is not a day spent without visiting Sociolla’s website. Why? That’s because they have consistent daily discounts that will either stay up till a month or just daily. Yes, it’s DAILY. Every day they always come up with something. On one day, they have discounts for some brands up to 70% off, and it is always different on the next day. This, of course makes me not able to stop myself from checking out their website every day. I’m not telling you to offer daily discounts, but maybe you can learn from this. Well, there are other ways you can make your website enchanting that makes everyone not be able to resist:
- Giving interactive daily quiz that will benefit your customers in some way. For example, daily quiz about your products and if they answer it correctly, those correct points will turn into their membership points.
- Customers will often visit your website not only for that quiz, but also for browsing all pages on your website to know your products and business better so they can answer the quiz correctly. The more visitors to your website, the more traffic you get and this can increase your website’s chance of being ranked well on search engines.
- Make sure the quiz’s design doesn’t cause slow loading pages on your website. Consult this to your web designers and they will provide you with solutions.
- Pay attention to your content. Believe it or not, striking visual and design are already attractive enough, but if it is combined with a set of perfect words for the text, your website can be unbeatable. Consult this to your content writer to make meaningful content for the catchy web design.
It’s all about marketing and creativity. No matter how good your website looks like, if it lacks content marketing strategy, it would be meaningless. Good content and good design should be a balance with each other because not only will it increase the possibility to improve your website rank and awareness, it will also determine your customers’ choice later, so make sure you prepare for the strategy and consult it to the content and the web design specialists you are hiring for your business.