The convenience of online shopping in times of lockdown has positively reshaped the eCommerce business. Shopping has become more than ever consumer-centered, meaning the businesses are striving to go an extra mile to cater to the needs of various shoppers’ profiles and spending preferences. With new normal circumstances, many have shifted from physical stores to computer screens. Here are some motivational factors that make so many people turn to online shopping.
1. Lower prices
Shopping online allows more room for comparing offers and prices and choosing the most affordable product. Price is the determining factor for the purchase of more than half of American consumers.
2. Convenience
Convenience is the gold standard. It entails picking the product easily, ordering, and seeing a shipping status in a matter of a few minutes. Also, there are return and refunds options. And in case of suspicious transactions, every serious online business has in place a chargeback policy thanks to their collaboration with the chargeback companies.
3. More product options
Most consumers go online when it comes to shopping because of the variety of products. Exceptions are medicines, alcoholic products, groceries, and beauty products.
4. Discounts
Shopping online enables people to find good deals, get promotions, join reward programs, etc. Consumers have mainly turned to online shopping because of the convenience of using deal-finding extensions for websites offering discounts. The most popular ones are Pricescout, Amazon Assistant, and Honey.
5. Safety
The health risk is the predominant factor that makes consumers turn to their computer screens during the last period. Consumers tend to reduce exposure to the virus even with the latest vaccine rollouts.
6. Products only available online
Some items and products are only available online for purchase and through the direct-to-consumer programs, which is a part of a marketing trick that seems to be doing its job.
7. The product reviews
Social proof plays a huge role in e-commerce since people want to know what other peoples experience about the services and products. Although some reviews might be false, most of them are honest and draw attention to the brands’ flaws regarding refunds, customer services, and of course, the quality of products and services. Informed and knowledgeable buying decisions are as important for the customers as for the businesses.
8. User-friendly shopping websites
Finally, the online shop business owner invests a lot of time and money into user-friendly websites—the quality of the photos representing products, detailed product descriptions. And the overall shopping process is bridging the gap between the brick and mortar stores and online shops.
One thing that we have all certainly learned during the last period is that things can change in a blink of an eye. For some things, it means change for good. Even 73% of Americans consider that shopping in the future will totally shift online.
The chances are more than good for this to happen, according to the current situation. People who never thought they would use the internet for buying groceries, clothes, gadgets, and various equipment changed their habits so fast that they now cant’ imagine their life without shopping online. Hence the new challenges for retailers to work on delivering satisfaction to their customers.
