Running an eCommerce business can be a bit challenging and frustrating. At one point, you are thinking of what type of products to sell, who to sell to, and how to drive traffic to your website. On the other hand, you face common problems like a payment gateway, an unoptimized website, cart abandonment, and several others.
Nevertheless, eCommerce is the trendiest startup business you can give a shot. This article will walk you through the necessary information to equip yourself as an e-commerce merchant and aspiring e-commerce store owner.
Best Machine Learning For Your Ecommerce Website
Machine learning for e-commerce helps to understand data to create algorithms about the business activities of your website. Furthermore, it helps to understand some expected results and boost your website if it is well-optimized.
Without adequate knowledge of machine learning, you risk losing to your competitors and cyber threats. Below are the 5 best machine learning you should employ for your e-commerce.
1. Improved Product Search
Improved product search enables shoppers or customers to access what they are looking for without scanning the whole website. Ecommerce merchants are often advised to use Expertrec. It predicts your quest before you input all the text.
2. Search Result Optimization
Using the right keywords for your website optimization helps increase the visibility of your website on search engines. Your website must be able to provide answers to shoppers’ or customers’ quests without any form of re-direction. If your website cannot do this, you are at a great loss.
3. Price Optimization
Price is a major determinant of how much you drive sales in every business. You might want to ask why customers do price sampling. No matter how little it is, every shopper wants a discount. So, if you want to drive more sales than your competitors and grow your business, you must optimize your price effectively.
4. Eliminate Fraud and Cyber Threats
By default, all online businesses are at prone to cyber attacks. As an eCommerce merchant, you need to have the best machine learning to secure and protect transactions and every other activity on your website. Protective software like HTTP to HTTPS, CAPTCHA, and two other authentications can be used.
5. Segmentation and Personalized Customer Experience
In the course of shopping, your website Algorithm must be able to generate the right result and answer the quest of your customers. In this process, certain information, such as address, doubt, language, needs, and preferences, amongst others, are obtained from customers. However, this improves good services the next time a customer visits the website.
Advantages of Operating an Ecommerce Business
1. 24/7 Income
Unlike a regular physical store with opening and closing times, e-commerce stores run a daily service without stopping. So, customers have access to goods anytime and any day.
2. Open to Both Local and International Customers
One advantage of e-commerce business is that it is accessible to local and international customers. So all you need to do is to ensure a payment gateway that suits both customers.
3. Easy Display of Best Sellers
Displaying best sellers makes it easy for shoppers to identify goods in high demand and get reviews from other customers. In addition, it saves you the time of sliding through shelves in the case of a physical store.
4. Get Customer Feedback
Customers can easily drop their feedback on any product they get on your website. All you have to do is install a product feedback software and you are good to go.
5. It is easy to Retarget and Remarket to Customers
Running digital advertisements makes it easy to reach a large number of people. You can decide to display promos and discounts on your website home page to attract customers and increase sales. This has been tested, and it is trusted.
6. Less Invasive Experience
Some customers want to buy and leave without having to exchange words or greetings with anyone. This isn’t easy in physical stores, especially when a marketer is trying to pitch a new product to shoppers.
E-commerce stores do not require marketing staff or someone to take them through the website. Instead, it is just you with your devices placing orders.
Disadvantages of Ecommerce Business
1. Site is Prone to Crash
The craziest disadvantage of an e-commerce store is that the website can crash without prior notice, especially when it is not hosted on a good platform or if you pay a minimum hosting fee and get traffic from a high-converting advertisement. However, Shopify offers free hosting at their monthly fee, which permits you to have one of the best servers on the market.
2. No Room for Trial
Perhaps you cart wear, you are unable to try if it fits or not. Although augmented reality has made it possible for stores to add AR elements to allow customers to try their products on. Augmented reality e-commerce helps to fill the interactive space between customers and e-commerce merchants.
3. It is Competitive
The struggle for customers is another disadvantage of e-commerce stores. Surprisingly, everyone has their customers. As an eCommerce business owner, you can use social media advertisement like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and several others. You can also use paid adverisement by promoting your store on Insight.ng or publish a brand press on Business World Africa.
4. Customer Can Be Impatient
The sole reason why most shoppers prefer e-commerce stores to physical stores is because of comfort. So, if by chance they face any form of distress either from the payment gateway or your website is not well-optimized for mobile users, you might start having cart abandonment which may lead to a decrease and loss of customers.
5. High Risk of Cyber Threat
One major setback for any e-commerce store is it’s inability to secure its payment gateway and shoppers’ debit card details. The moment scammers have access to such a website, the owners run into a great loss. Firstly, you would be accountable for every shopper’s stolen details and you will lose the credibility of your website.
6. Elongated Shipping Time
One advantage a physical store has over every e-commerce store is to go with your goods after purchase. However, most customers consider shipping time a disadvantage. This is because some stores take longer than the supposed date of delivery. Amazon Prime offers same-day delivery for every ordered item. The sweet part is it allows customers to monitor their goods from the store to the point of delivery.
Conclusion
This article has successfully exposed you to the best machine learning for your e-commerce website. It has also taken you through the stairs of the advantages and disadvantages of running an e-commerce store.
About the Author
*Ojeyemi Adeleye is a theatre arts graduate of the University of Ilorin and presently running his master’s degree at Obafemi Awolowo University. He is the Chief Content manager of Insight.ng and Editor-in-Chief at Business World Africa.