Learning From The Best: What Online Retailers Should Learn From Amazon's Success
Thursday, June 2, 2016Lauren Macdonald
Lessons For eCommerce Businesses From Amazon's Success
There’s no denying that Amazon knows what they’re doing when it comes to creating an online shopping experience that exceeds customers’ expectations. But what lessons should other online retailers be taking away from Amazon’s success? Here’s what we think:
Lesson 1: Personalize the customer shopping experience
When customers shop at Amazon, they can easily access tons of products specifically recommended for them. Products shown may include “Related to Items You’ve Viewed”, “More Items To Consider”, “Inspired by Your Browsing History”, “Inspired By Your Shopping Trends”, “Your Recently Viewed Items”, as well as “Featured Recommendations”. All of these categories show customers that Amazon cares about presenting them with products they would be interested in and likely to buy.
As an online retailer the lesson to learn from Amazon is to try to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and understand what they want. Although this is sometimes easier said than done, a good start is to ask yourself, “who are my customers and what do they do?” and “what do my customers need from me in order to have a successful shopping experience?” Once you have answered these questions you can begin to build your webstore with a personalized customer experience in mind!
Lesson 2: Make searching for products simple and easy
When customers visit your website you have to make sure that you provide them the best and easiest way to find what they’re looking for. A strong searching system will make a huge difference in creating a good shopping experience for your customers. The quicker they find a product they’re interested in, the better.
Amazon succeeds in this area by providing customers with product categories, and searching keywords that help guide customers’ shopping flow and help identify what they are most interested in. Once customers are viewing their search results, Amazon continues to let them refine their search further by brand, price, customer reviews, etc.
Lesson 3: Offer a paid subscription option to reward your loyal customers
Amazon Prime is both a loyalty program and a strong sales device. It adds value to its members in the form of savings and quick receipt of orders, while adding value to Amazon by continually driving revenue. Analysts have estimated that members spend anywhere from 40% to 68% more money at Amazon than non-members do.
As an online retailer, you can learn from Amazon by offering incentives and saving techniques for your most loyal customers as well. Offering free shipping at certain purchase thresholds is another way to meet the expectations of most online shoppers and even encourage them to increase their cart sizes.