How to build a digital storefront for your business

A digital presence for any brand helps generate brand awareness, acquire customers, and build trust. With 86.2% of Genz and millennials shopping online, a digital storefront can help reach these potential customers and generate sales.

The advancement of technology has allowed brands to carefully assess customer data to display the exact information that the customer is looking for.

However, in order to acquire customer data, it is crucial to create an engaging experience that helps shoppers throughout their journey. Before creating a storefront, it is essential to get the key elements right.

What is a Digital Storefront?

A digital storefront can be defined as a store where customers can browse and purchase products digitally. To create a unique shopping experience, brands can personalize the store experience based on user preferences, purchase behavior, and more.

A storefront can not only help control the shopper’s experience but also connect online customers to your brick-and-mortar stores. It usually involves a website that showcases the range of products available with up-to-date information. If you want to run an eCommerce business, for instance, you could choose either hosted or open-source ecommerce platforms for your store. It can also involve setting up storefronts on social media apps like Instagram and Facebook.

Read also Facebook Chatbots: Best Use Cases & Examples

Essential Components of a Storefront

Here’s a complete checklist of the essential components required to build an amazing digital store font:

1. Mobile-Friendly Experience

Studies reported that 79% of users have made a purchase online using their mobile device in the last 6 months. Hence, making your digital storefront mobile-friendly is crucial while selling products online. Mobile-friendly e-commerce stores have excellent potential for driving traffic and increasing conversions.

In addition to this, Google prioritizes mobile versions of websites while indexing. Having a mobile-friendly website gives Google an excellent impression and gives your store the boost it needs.

It is essential for retailers to pay attention to whether the site is easy to navigate and if it is user-friendly. Here are some questions that can help you determine whether it is user friendly:

✅Is the user being able to find the products they are looking for?

✅Is there a search button for better navigation?

✅Does your user find it difficult to complete transactions?

✅Does your site have relevant filters to make it easier for users to shop?

✅Do your users find it easy to create their profiles to complete their purchases?

✅Are they being able to check the order summary before checking out?

✅Are they being able to track their order?

Simplicity is a major factor for any ecommerce business. The storefront should be easy to understand and navigate for shoppers to add products to the cart and complete their purchases.

2. Compelling Photos and Videos

A storefront needs to showcase products in the best possible way. Hence, it is essential to have high-quality photos and videos for shoppers to understand. Whether your digital storefront is on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest, it is essential for any brand to add high-quality images that help with conversion.

That being said, the perceived value of your products is directly impacted by the quality of the product photography. Some of the key factors to take into account are:

✅Does your user feel satisfied with the number of images of the product?

✅Have you added every angle of the product for the user to make a purchasing decision?

✅Can your customers zoom in to view the product?

✅Can your users use AR to imitate an offline experience?

3. Ask for Reviews

As humans, we always prefer making decisions based on people's experiences and opinions. The same is the case when it comes to buying products. Customers research online before buying products.

Hence, reviews are an essential part of a digital store. In fact, 93% of consumers consider online reviews when making purchases online. Every brand must engage with online reviews whether good or bad to show potential customers that you care about people’s experience with your brand. In order to get reviews, you can add review functionalities to your store and encourage customers to leave reviews. You can ask for reviews from customers via post-purchase messages.

Let’s take an example

Once a customer receives their product, your brand can send post-purchase messages on WhatsApp asking for a review. Here’s what it can look like:

Read more How to Create Facebook Ads that Click-to-WhatsApp?

4. Have Clear Call to Action (CTA)  Buttons

A call-to-action can be defined as a button that is used in either a webpage, advertisement, or others that encourages consumers to take an action. It is essential for brands to have prominent CTA buttons such as ‘add to cart”, “check out”, “view collection”, “sale offers” and others to guide shoppers in their journey.

When a shopper adds items to their cart and clicks on the cart, the storefront should showcase all the relevant details and the list of products added to the cart.

5. Offer Variety of Payment Gateway Options

Consumers are using more than one payment method while shopping online. Adding a variety of payment options is crucial for any ecommerce business.

Customers expect to have multiple payment options while they are shopping. Having as many popular options as possible such as PayPal, Paytm, Phone Pe, Debit Cards, and Credit cards, improves customer experience and encourages conversions.

6. Have a Clear Shipping and Return Policy

A digital storefront must have a clear and concise shipping and return policy to ensure that your customers are on the same page as your brand. This will help to avoid miscommunication and ensure a consistent brand experience.

Having a shipping and return policy can also make shoppers feel comfortable about completing their purchases. Some of the key factors to consider can include:

✅Do you want to provide free standard shipping?

✅Do you want to provide free shipping if customers spend a certain amount on your store?

✅Can your brand afford the shipping fee for customers?

✅Does your brand want to charge a shipping fee based on location?

✅Do you want to offer free returns and exchanges?

✅What is your policy if the items get delayed?

In most cases, it is seen that a storefront that offers no-cost returns and zero or low delivery fee incentivize customers to make a purchase.

7.  Easily Answered FAQs

Having an FAQ page is an essential component for any digital store. This can make your shopper’s experience much more convenient. In order to build an FAQ page it’s essential to take all data into account.

It should address the most common questions your customer asks related to your digital store. Some of the best ways to identify the common questions are:

✅To review your customer service data

✅Brainstorm questions with your team

You can answer FAQs in multiple ways. One of them includes deploying conversational AI chatbots on your digital storefront. Your customers can directly ask any question related to your product and get prompt answers without requiring human intervention.  

Read more How can Conversational AI help?

8. Easy Contact Options

An approachable business fosters trust with its customers. In case your customers cannot find the answers to their questions, it is essential to have easy contact options available so that your customers can reach out. Some of the easy contact options are email, phone number, contact page, and social media handles.

9. Promotional Alerts

In case, your storefront is running promotions, it is essential to set prominent alerts on your store. Buyers should be able to find exclusive deals and sales easily.

For this, the home page is the best place to display offers. Here are some examples:

10. Build your digital storefront on social media

More often than not, people trust opinions on social media. Having a social media presence is essential for any brand to build awareness and trust. Social media apps like Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest, offer options to build storefronts and tag products when you post.

In addition to having a store on your ecommerce site, it may be beneficial to build stores on socials to reach potential customers and boost conversions.

WhatsApp is also an excellent app to build your storefront. Here's a digital storefront example on WhatsApp.

You can display products, send promotional alerts, drive product discovery, and more through WhatsApp. Conversational commerce tools like Vizury can help you build your storefront, segment customer data, and drive sales seamlessly via the app.

Read more A Complete Guide to Social Shopping

Build your storefront with Vizury

A brand’s digital storefront is one of the biggest assets to generate leads and drive sales. One of the defining features of an ecommerce brand is how well it is connected across all customer touchpoints. Get the Vizury storeboard app to empower your brick-and-mortar stores to engage, assist and convert digital shoppers.

Learn more about connecting your digital shoppers to your physical stores

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