Last-Minute Shopping Before the New Year! 3 Things to Check on Your E-Commerce Website
Last-minute shopping before Lunar New Year: is your website ready? The year-end brings the peak shopping season, and brands roll out all kinds of discounts, spend-and-get gifts and prize draws to attract consumers and meet their different shopping needs. With today's diverse sales channels, whether SEO marketing, social commerce or influencer word-of-mouth, it is not only your holiday marketing strategy that gets tested, but also your website system. Mu-Fan Teng, co-founder of the software development company 5xRuby, says that whether you run your own e-commerce platform or use a third-party e-commerce service, an e-commerce website must get the "fundamentals" right. Here are 3 things every e-commerce website should pay attention to, so businesses can check whether they have them covered.
(Image source: photographer Kampus Production, via Pexels)
1. Choose a domain name that is easy to remember
It may be a basic issue, but domain names are often "not chosen well." A good domain name helps pave a smoother road for a brand's e-commerce site: shorter is better than longer, and simple and clear is best. If you commission a professional web development company, you will normally get a more consistent domain setup and fewer domain-related problems. Some brands like to make their domain names fancy, but now that people are so security-conscious, a domain name that differs too much from the brand name may actually make consumers suspicious. A domain name is also usually a key part of building brand value and optimizing SEO keywords, so if you have long-term e-commerce plans, it is worth taking the time to come up with one that is representative and unique.
2. Make good use of platform services to "create demand"
If you simply list products on a shopping page without offering suitable ways to engage afterwards, your products' features can easily go unnoticed. Many third-party e-commerce platforms now provide a variety of modules that help brands create "demand scenarios" and run different kinds of interactions and promotions. If you build your own e-commerce site, there are also many high-quality third-party services you can connect and integrate with. So should you build your own e-commerce site or use a third-party platform? Teng says, "There is no right answer, but integration is what matters most." Building an e-commerce platform is by no means hard, but today's third-party services are so well built and optimized that building your own platform is not necessarily an advantage. Integrating the best third-party services to fit a brand's specific e-commerce needs brings far more benefits.
3. "Monitor" errors in your e-commerce system
The reason to "monitor" website errors is that you cannot predict when a bug will appear. When consumers are directed to product pages through various channels, the brand has no way of knowing how they are using the site or what unexpected situations they run into. Once the site throws an error, such as the common "HTTP 500 — Internal Server Error," consumers may simply abandon their purchase. Failing to spot and fix errors in time leads to visitors leaving the site or filing complaints. No one can watch a website around the clock, which makes an "automatic error reporting system" (e.g. Sentry) a top priority. When such a system detects an abnormal error, it notifies the operations team immediately, which is extremely convenient. In addition, using website analytics tools (e.g. Microsoft Clarity) to record consumer click behavior over time can also reveal problems on the site, so a brand's e-commerce site never misses the golden window for fixes.
Businesses that want to overhaul and optimize their e-commerce system should be sure to choose a professional team with extensive third-party integration experience. That is how you truly solve problems and keep pace with the new era of sales in the new year. (Further reading: It's Not Just About Looks! A Great Online Shopping Experience Lies in Back-End Design Details; The "New Era of Sales" Across Channels Has Arrived, and Integrating Business Resources Is the Key to Winning)
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About the Company
Founded in 2014, 5xRuby Co., Ltd. is one of the most representative companies in Taiwan specializing in the Ruby programming language, offering web services built mainly on the Ruby on Rails framework. Its brand clients are located across Taiwan, Singapore, Japan and beyond. The company has helped an overseas startup develop a cross-border e-commerce service that went on to successfully raise a Series A round, and has developed apps and web services for many publicly listed Taiwanese companies. Through technical consulting and corporate technology advisory services, it helps brands lay a solid foundation for web development and provides professional web solutions.
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