The e-commerce world is a fast-developing and multi-faceted realm of marketing, design and cutting-edge consumer data analytics. Combined, some of the best stores are forming new exciting trends in online shopping that serve to define the market and how other stores will adapt. This article takes a quick overview of just four online stores that have truly exemplified the cutting-edge and innovative when it comes to online shop curation. The lessons to draw from them are varied and will all inform the curation of your own online store.
ASOS
One of the most famous online clothing and fashion stores ever, ASOS presents shoppers with many thousands of products, in a healthy array of sizes, to meet the demands of a wide consumer base. From staples like the plain white tee to all the latest styles and trends, what ASOS do so well is to offer the comforting impression of individuality. Their tessellated design format, easily showing hundreds of clothing images per page, means that customers can scroll through fashion trends with ease, and social media links make shopping on ASOS a matter of social prestige.
Zappos
A large and well-known footwear provider, Zappos is a kingpin when it comes to combining simple sales items with a larger narrative. Their short-form blog posts – about styles, seasons, looks and images – are all informative and, of course, lead straight through to the point of purchase. These blog-type articles also serve an important second function: they draw in shoppers from Google results pages, effectively acting as a form of marketing the drum up further sales. This simple and effective model has propelled Zappos to command a mighty share of the online footwear store industry.
eBay
This is the ‘almost-everything’ store par excellence and, of course, is so well known that it hardly has to bother advertising anymore. The site shot to fame because of its auction function, which was a novel way of giving customers a feeling they’d captured a bargain online. Now, eBay is dominated by non-auctioned products, which means that it’s an online store much like everywhere else. To run your own e-commerce store, much like eBay, you can hire the help of specialists who are experts in Shopify or BigCommerce, and who can help with digital marketing as well as the building of your e-commerce store. Visit blackbeltcommerce.com for more information on how their services can help propel your e-commerce store into the limelight.
The Body Shop
Moving swiftly to the health & beauty arena, none of the high street stores have made the journey online quite as successfully as The Body Shop. Everyone who shops regularly for make-up knows that you either have your favorite brand or you’re open to shopping around, and it’s to this store’s credit that they’ve added a giant love-heart to help customers ‘favorite’ products to view in a more narrowed-down list. This mirrors and streamlines the mental journey that physical shoppers go through when narrowing down to buy a product, and it’s this that makes The Body Shop so successful and intuitively user-friendly.
Be store-savvy when setting up your own e-commerce business by learning the tricks of the trade from the best in the business, like the four stores mentioned above. Learning how to control and manage your brand reputation through your online presence and social media will be important to your success.
