In this blog we are going to take a look at the top shopping sites in India this year and understand how they are magnetizing millions of potential customers all over the world, in spite of the presence of enormous shopping complexes and retail outlets.

10. Infibeam.com

One of the very popular e-commerce site is Infibeam. It managed to be in the 10^th position for revolutionizing online shopping experience. Whether you are looking to purchase exam books, mobiles, laptops, appliances, clothes, watches, cameras, home furniture, foot wear, accessories, etc., Infibeam stocks everything and offers discount that saves money and the smart e-commerce solution makes the buying process hassle-free, user-friendly and safe.

9. Bigbasket.com

Bigbasket.com is another leading site in the list. It is the online grocery store and supermarket that aims to enrich your shopping experience for products that we use day-to-day. One can buy the freshest of consumer items like fruits and vegetables, grocery and staples, dairy products, beverages, branded and imported foods, personal and baby care items, meat and fish at discounted prices. This responsive e-commerce site is easy to operate and mobile version also loads pretty quickly!

8. Healthkart.com

They claim to be India’s first online health shop and serve the needs of health and fitness lovers. The site displays an array of health supplements, body building items, nutrition and supplements, Ayurveda and herbs, beauty care, fitness and personal grooming products for both women and men. Easy payment modes, multiple category and add to cart options make purchasing very swift, safe and secure.

7. Shopclues.com

Featuring next on the list is Shopclues.com. This is one of India’s top online shopping destination which sells numerous products on different categories like electronic gadgets, home and kitchen, clothes, footwear, jewelry, travel and luggage, books, baby care, health and nutrition and many more at wonderful discounts. Customers can click on the product and check in preview before placing the order.

6. Yebhi.com

Another widely known name among the leaders at present is yebhi.com. The look and feel of this shopping portal are enough to grab customers’ attention. The site nestles fresh fashion clothings, designer wears, shoes, accessories, jewelry and very recently it has added mobile phones.

5. Jabong.com

Looking to buy the best in fashion and brands? Jabong.com can meet your needs. Similar to other e-commerce site, this also has customized functionality and secure shopping cart. Being mobile friendly, you can water your shopaholic nature, even when you are travelling or not in front of your desktop.

4. Myntra.com

This Bangalore based fashion site brings in awe-inspiring varieties of the recent fashion and lifestyle items, accessories, for kids, women and men. The fabulous discounts glues massive traffic. The secure payment gateways and cash on delivery option get big thumbs up!

1-2-3. Amazon.in – Snapdeal.com – Flipkart.com

The reason for listing the 3 sites together is that it is not fairly possible to rank them 1^st; 2^nd and 3^rd based on the popularity and sales as they are giving tough competition to each other and the position is constantly fluctuating. Amazon.com is a global leader which made a strong position in the Indian market as well by stocking a great variety of products starting from books, DVDs, apparels, accessories, appliances and more. Snapdeal.com is a Delhi based online site where people love to shop because of the discounts, coupons and gift vouchers. Flipkart.com is another Indian e-commerce website based in Bangalore. Although, it ventured as an e-book store, but slowly added categories like electronics, fashion, mobile and gadgets, accessories, etc. Nevertheless to mention that three of these web stores have finest e-commerce features.

Kudos to the technology and e-commerce development teams that offer bespoke Shopping Cart solutions, allowing companies to advertise, promote and sell products or service all over the globe.

Ever since ecommerce has come into existence, there has been speculations that retail will soon be history. This fear is not baseless either. There was a huge dip in the figures when it came to brick and mortar stores. It was estimated that more than 6 million shoppers have given the retail stores a miss. The message that is loud and clear from such reports is that the online stores are here and they will keep wooing the consumers. But to say that retail will completely be overshadowed by ecommerce in the near future might be too far fetched. On the contrary, even retail can benefit from ecommerce.

Physical experience is important

According to a recent news, the ecommerce giant, Amazon is planning to open its first brick and mortar store in Manhattan in order to compete with brands like Barns and Noble. The company also mentioned that they will offer one hour delivery service within Manhattan. A certain segment of shoppers want the traditional retail store shopping experience so that they can touch and feel the products they are buying. While this is specifically true for GenX and baby boomers, the younger generation prefers to opt for online shopping whether it is their clothes or gizmos. Owning your purchase instantly is something that is appreciated by the buyers. For shoppers who appreciate the aspect of feeling and buying items instantly is only possible with physical stores.
However, with Amazon’s new service for its retail store can open up new avenues.

The need to reinvent

Customer satisfaction is the prime focus. All your customers require at the end of the day is good service. While ecommerce stores have impressed their existing and potential customers with their outstanding services, the brick and mortar stores should follow the same line in order to survive. The journey would be easier for them as they already have a success model in front of them. Look at the Apple stores. With time their physical stores have been successfully reinvented so that they can survice competition. Creating an in-store experience is necessary. Whether it is trying out a T-shirt or a computer, the need is to create unique experiences. In this regard, how can you ignore J.C. Penney? With its promotional strategies and a host of new in-store experiences, the 110 years store was successful in rebranding itself.

Adding legitimacy

It is always important to have a face, a representation. Physical stores are the faces for online businesses. When a company has a brick and mortar store, it adds legitimacy to the online brands. This is where the physical retail can hugely benefit from online businesses. The ecommerce solutions, has, in fact revolutionized the way business is being done. Yet the presence of a retail store provides legitimacy to the online business.

Improves Customer Relationship

The presence of both retail store and an ecommerce platform helps in enhancing the customer relationship as well as the management capabilities. While the online stores help them in searching the products easily, they can come down to the stores, test the product and then order the same. Customers who are already happy with your services and products can simply opt for the commerce platform and place the order. With the retail store, you can interact with your customers as well as potential customers. This helps in promoting customer loyalty and increases the chances of repeat purchase.

According to a survey people shopping in brick and mortar shops 40% of the shoppers spend extra while on online stores it the number is 20%. The in-store experience is hard to let go for most of the shoppers. For ecommerce stores, it is a great opportunity to attract the customers to their stores to ensure better success. If your strategies are in the right place, of course, your online stores can definitely from retail ones.

Pros of E-commerce

Of course there are issues with retail. The web is a serious and a giant competitor mainly because it offers a huge array of products that are comparable and often provided at lower prices. Moreover, there is a 24X7 access and they also offer free shipping. As far as electronic goods are concerned, a shift has been observed to the online stores. This is where the mobile devices play an important role. These are instrumental in driving online shopping in bulk. There is an ease of usage where e-commerce websites are concerned. Forrester, way back, had released a project on online retail forecast that predicted huge sales as far as e-commerce sales are concerned. The numbers, however, were not surprising. It was expected that the figures for online shopping would eventually reach the skies.

How is physical retail faring?

Does rise of ecommerce means death knell for physical retails? Presently it does not seem so. The analytics that were being projected for e-commerce stores previously are now being predicted for the physical retail. Stores are increasingly bridging the gap between physical and digital worlds. There are certain companies, like, RetailNext that are developing computer programs that would provide all necessary information about how the consumers are interacting with stores. Such insights are helping the stores in improving their layouts.

Here are some of the ways in which the retails are growing gradually –

– Use of technology

GPS or beacon integration is one technology that is being increasingly used by the physical stores so that they can gain from it. By leveraging location data from a nearby store will provide them an opportunity to fulfill their customers’ needs better. If e-commerce stores are gaining prominence with the use of technology, so are the physical stores.

– Customizing shopping experience

Customization is, probably, one of the key factors in deciding the fate of the retail shops. Owing to the tough competition from the online stores, it is important to navigate into the unfamiliar territory. They are, nowadays, allowing the customers to enjoy facilities, like, home delivery so that the customers can easily avoid busy streets. In fact, they are also offering value add-on services like personal shoppers through mobile concierge systems.

However, there have been certain adverse effects on retail. For instance, retail real estate is almost dead. Real estate brokers and landlords in several parts of the world state that there is low demand of retail real estate. As a result in such cities there is an opportunity for building shopping centers. However, another reality is that there are cities people are not even going to the malls. As a result, the malls are dying. On the other hand, the indoor malls are doing pretty well. So how can one predict such changes?

Physical retail is changing trends

Can you skip going to spas? Retails will survive in the forms of pet daycare to wellness spas. Physical retails are adopting newer methods in order to reach out to the target audience.

Navigation – As mentioned before it is necessary to provide an easy shopping experience to the customers. Moreover, just because there is an online store, it does not mean that it had been designed with the users in mind. E-commerce website design has its downhill as well.

Mobile devices – Physical stores, too, are foraying into online business so that their customers can find them online. Their advantage is that they are offering more options – both physical and online. While they are taking advantage of the mobile devices, they are also ensuring better customer services.

Providing off-line services – In order to stay in the competition it is essential to beef up the certain services including customer services. People are more non-traditional in their approach when it comes to shopping. Showrooms, pop-up stores, etc are good strategies for the physical stores. Whether it is new or old customers, it is essential to create an all new experience for the consumers.

Is e-commerce dying then?

Of course not. Forrester was quite right in its projections. E-commerce is here to stay owing to the benefits it provides. However, it is too early to state that physical retail has reached its tail end. The future of e-commerce is bright provided it can keep delivering an impressive customer service as well as an assortment of products.

Finally, the future of retail lies in the amalgamation of proper design and utilization of shopper data and analysis. These are essential to provide an effective shopping experience. As long as physical retails provide the same, it will surely survive.

Top Ten eCommerce software platforms :-

#1 Infusionsoft = An awesome combination of eCommerce, CRM and email marketing, Infusionsoft is the latest fancy of ecommerce developers and most preferred by small businesses. Multimedia marketing management, embedded keyword and metadata fields and referral program management are the superb features of this software.

#2 Magento = Big companies and the developing ones can rely on Magento for complete and seamless eCommerce solutions. Suitable for use to handle back-end as well as front-end operations, the software helps to create great user experience. The Magento eCommerce software is compatible to multiple device types and equipped with a bevy of features.

• Customer categorization
  
• Personalized shopping experiences
• Customer loyalty plans and prizes
• SEO
• Targeted marketing
• Programmed notifications and reminders
• Gift registry and gift cards
• Option for custom coupon creation
• Product recommendations
• Wish lists
• More than one payment and shipping options

#3 Shopping Cart Elite = Essentially, a desktop application, Shopping Cart Elite is a range of software products that have been designed intelligently to cater to different firms, be it large-scale, mid-level or small-sized. It assimilates a website’s administrative back office with a sophisticated online store-front. It is compatible to HTML5 and it offers themes and templates that can be easily customized. With the use of this software, you can crop and resize images and take advantage of the excellent features of round-the-clock complete backups, data import and data mapping, employee management and catalogue maintenance and many more.

#4 goEmerchant = For a small business, goEmerchant is perhaps, the perfect and most cost-effective eCommerce solutions. Starting from shopping cart software, domain name registration, online merchant account, secure payment gateway, website hosting, eCommerce hosting and advertising tools, it offers a wide range of tools.

#5 Shopify = With Shopify, it becomes easy to create a shopping portal that looks nice and works fine. Take a look at its features mentioned below to believe in its excellence.

• Fast and easy registration and a free trial period of 30 days
• Assimilated with more than 65 payment gateways
• Custom creation of promotions
• 128 bit SSL encryption
• Analytics to keep track of shopping portal’s performance
• Impressive hosting
• Easily customizable web and mobile store templates counting to more than 100
• Constantly including new features at no additional costs
• Automated backup of customer and store data
• Shopify iPhone application to help customers browse and shop on the go

#6 LightCMS = Building a clean and simple e-commerce website is easier with LightCMS. The specialty of this eCommerce software platform lies in its smart integration of eCommerce and website features and its easy-to-use tools. It has got many features and the most highlighting ones include the drag and drop content editing, drag and drop form builder, Facebook Open Graph integration, secure shopping cart and checkout and top-tier cloud hosting.

#7 Intuit Websites = If you find coding full of hassles, you have every reason to be elated with Intuit Websites. You can take advantage of a ready-made design and customize it according to your requirements. It also provides web hosting and requires zero coding.

#8 Galaxy Web Links = Another favorite choice for small businesses regarding efficient eCommerce solutions is Galaxy Web Links. With the help of this platform, you can materialise your client’s vision of a simple and elegant eCommerce site. The striking features of Galaxy Web Links are

• Mobile-friendly website
• Online marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Facebook marketing
• SEO
• PPC advertisement
• Analytic consulting
• Responsive email design and delivery
• A/B testing
• Analysis of customer behavior
  

#9 Zoho Sites = Zoho Sites has been specially designed to aid small businesses create eye-catching and user-friendly eCommerce websites. It comes with a drag and drop website builder and built-in third-party app integrations and offers support for Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google+, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Picasa and Flickr.

#10 NetSuite SuiteCommerce = Do you know which the sole cloud business management system is? It is NetSuite SuiteCommerce. It boasts a responsive design and offers the option to integrate the online store with operational systems. In addition to this, there is more than one web store in a single platform. Users can benefit from several payment options and multi-language feature.

So, these are the top ten eCommerce software platforms for perfect eCommerce solutions. Go through your project, understand your client’s vision and choose the best one from the list to get started with confidence.

Now coming to these net based business web pages, they are designed with a specific objective of providing as much information as possible to the viewers about a particular type of product or service, along with the options for the consumers to purchase the product or avail the service online. They are also equipped with a safe and secured payment gateway system that enables the customers to pay online in a safe and sound manner. Because of all these technicalities that are associated with eCommerce website design concepts, they should be created in a specific way so as to ensure that the sites are able to fulfill all the objectives they are intended to.

Let us discuss some of the guidelines that will help in creating innovative internet based eCommerce website designs.

Keeping the navigation as simple & functional as possible.

Yes, this is the first and foremost criteria that you need to follow if you are in eCommerce site designing. People do not like too much complexity nor do many of them understand it. Hence, in the first place you need to keep things as straight and as simple as possible. Especially, when we are talking about the navigational aspect of a site in question, it needs to be simple as well as functional so as to keep the traffic engaged for a considerable period of time.

Again, talking about simplicity, there must be a right balance. It is imperative that you make sure you do not oversimplify things in your effort of ‘simplification’. Too much simplification will seriously limit the number of options available to the visitors. You need to create menus and install a few navigation options that will make the available choices clear to the visitors.

Keep into consideration various types of users.

This is another very important point that you need to maintain as and when you create a typical eCommerce website design. At present, people are spending a lion’s share of their days online, thanks to the innovation of highly advanced iOS phones, Android phones, and the likes. When we use the term ‘people’ it includes people from all walks of life, having a wide range of taste and likings. Hence, the sites need to be designed in such a way that they lure people from every sect of the society. Also, the navigability needs to be simple so that even the ones who are not tech-savvy or who are trying their hands out for the first time face no problem in browsing. Here we can mention that there are mainly 5 types of people who browse these sites – individuals who eye for known-items for purchasing, people who do category search, shoppers who do bargain hunting, site visitors who browse for inspiration, and finally the ones who do one time shopping.

The content should be rich and engaging

This is another factor that needs to be taken care of, to guarantee that the website that is created is unique from all the angles. The content needs to be engaging, informative, as well as simple enough so that everyone can understand. It needs to be rich in highly pertinent and strategically used keywords, which makes certain that the site crawls up the page of search engines and remains there for a considerable period of time to attract enough traffic.

One of the eCommerce website design tips – A sound payment gateway system

There should be a sound payment gateway system that will ensure that the customers are able to make online payment in a safe and secured manner. The idea behind this is not just to ensure that people are able to carry out the online transactions in a seamless way, but to guarantee  that they are confident and are certain enough that their transactions are absolutely safe and their sensitive information are in absolutely secured hands. This not only increases the business flow, but also helps in creating a positive goodwill that does a world of good to the business in the short as well as long run.

Thus, following all these principles will surely make your eCommerce website design not only unique, but innovative as well, and that will go miles in luring traffic and turning them into prospective customers, thus earning handsome revenue at the end of the day.

Let Me Pen Down Few Benefits of M-Commerce >>

A range of benefits are offered by m-commerce to small, medium and large sized businesses. With mobile device users growing at a constant pace, m-commerce has turned out to be a rapidly growing retail segment over the past few years. Some of the benefits of m-commerce are:

• Personal Touch

Products and/or services sold over mobile devices tend to offer the users with a personal encounter. This is especially the case with ecommerce solutions that are individually tailored according to the needs of the users. Mobile devices have become an integral part of people’s lives and by offering the right type of service, it is possible for retailers to capture the consumer’s attention more easily.

• Wider Reach

One of the major benefits of m-commerce is that it allows consumers to search and buy products and/or services from any part of the world where there is an internet connection. This is a major advantage over traditional eCommerce solutions. The constant improvement of infrastructure is increasing the reliability and speed of mobile internet connections making it a highly prospective industry for different online businesses.

• Custom Made Applications

Businesses can develop custom applications to spread the message about their brand as well as streamline purchase process.

The Future of E-commerce : Mobile Commerce >>

In a world where people are always ‘on’, mobile devices are playing a huge role to keep users connected at all times. Starting from sharing of photos to conducting of business to many other activities, mobile devices are assisting users with numerous tasks that are carried out on a daily basis. Over the next few years, it is expected that m-commerce will inspire growth in different areas.

If Statistics Are to Be Believed :

Research has stated that sales on mobile devices are expected to double by the year 2016. Thus, it is crucial for businesses to optimize their websites for smartphones or create apps for their online store. Nearly twenty nine percent of mobile users in the United States use their smartphones for making purchases. It has also been predicted that by the year 2015, m-commerce will generate $67.1 billion in revenue. The number of smartphone shoppers in the US is also anticipated to reach 181.5 million by the year 2018 thus representing staggering 84.4% digital shoppers. Studies are also indicating that near about 43 people in the US convert to smartphones every minute giving a clear indication of the rapidly changing way of consumers interacting with the web.

The Growing Influence of M-Commerce on Businesses >>

Over the past decade, mobile phones have definitely brought about a huge change in the way people work and live. Mobile devices have provided users with a sense of freedom as well as power to delegate different functions on the go which would have been impossible even a few years back. As individuals, people always want to do things whenever they want and mobile devices have given them the opportunity to fulfill those desires to a great extent.

Some of the big companies and retailers are investing more on mobile commerce so as to offer the users with a secure, convenient and enhanced user experience. The fact that mobile devices offer flexibility, mobility and connectivity at the same time is considered to be a crucial factor that is further helping with m-commerce popularity and growth.

Top Success Ball of Ecommerce Website Design Is?

The m-commerce growth is definitely hard to ignore and businesses are quickly grasping this opportunity to influence more number of users with their products and/or services. Improved accessibility, inception of various online stores and secure transactions are prompting users to opt for m-commerce solutions instead of conventional e-commerce solutions. Consumers throughout different parts of the world are rapidly adopting shopping through mobile when it comes to buying digital and physical goods. There is also anticipation among consumers that their preferred retailers will focus more on mobile presence and offer them with an enriched experience on mobile devices. Companies from different industries are developing definitive m-commerce strategies in order to make the most out of this opportunity. However, it is also the need of the hour for businesses to ensure that websites and applications for mobile devices come with fast load time, responsiveness and easy navigability to offer the best of experiences to the users.

Are you still rely on desktop or laptop to purchase your favorite products? And you entrepreneur – switch your eCommerce site into mCommerce. I seek your views, so do share your experience with us right below. 

#1 Clean design: 

The first and foremost requirement for any website is a clean design; but this factor is especially important for e-commerce ones. This is mostly vital since such a design helps one to have a clear focus on the products of the website. This enables a visitor to know immediately about the items being sold when he or she visits the website. So it is essential that the home page displays large product images. If a company uses a large, single image with a simple tagline, it looks uncluttered and nicely organized. Apart from creating a great first impression easy navigation is another advantage in this.

#2 Effective navigation menu:

One thing that must be kept in mind while designing is the visibility of navigation menu so that clients may move from one page to another easily and quickly. The simplicity of navigation menu can be kept intact through use of drop-down categories which will help in better organization of clients who have many products. The menu should also include a Help or FAQ tab so popularly asked questions can be easily searched for by the customers.

#3 Home page promotional:

Home page is the perfect place for you to advertise current promotional events of a company- whether store wide savings, discount on specific items or free shipping. The event should be further illustrated with product images along with brief, snappy descriptions. The subsequent images of slideshow may contain other hot items.

#4 Visible testimonials:

Having a separate page for testimonials has become a little outdated. Instead testimonials are being incorporated by designers on product pages or the home page itself. However, if there is a testimonials page included separately then the previews of the testimonial should be shown on home page. One thing that must be remembered is that they are not product reviews but company reviews and the two are quite different. Testimonials focus around the customer satisfaction of interacting with the company. There are sites that allow customers the option to leave reviews through their social media profiles; in that case the profile image of the reviewer can be included as well since that will make the review more believable.

#5 Keeping the search bar within easy reach:

There are many who do not realize about the importance of search bar on ecommerce websites. Often customers come to some site to look at something in particular and if it cannot be identified clearly on landing page then they naturally opt to search for it. So the search bar should be made the key focus of the ecommerce website design. Users may even be tempted to search more, keeping them on the site longer.

#6 High quality large product images:

In Ecommerce websites there are no scope for the visitor to touch or see the actual thing until its delivery, so the customer has to buy with their eyes. To attract more business there should be enough photos. The product page layout should be planned out accordingly. The pictures should be of high quality since pixelated or blurry photos will result in disappointing the customer. The images should be thus large enough with good resolution so that the product can be discerned easily. They should be optimized so that web page loading is fast. Thus the images should be kept at 70kb. Each product should have a minimum of 2 angles in case of each product. The product page can have the pictures as thumbnails to be viewed at larger sizes when so desired. You can also show off the products through videos. You can include TV ads of the product, videos on how the product can be used or the making of the product.

While it is all well and good to follow tips and tricks to make your ecommerce website design attractive, do not forget to add your unique touch to your website. The site should have some personality and at the same time should be easy to navigate. Make sure that you make the experience as effortless as possible through your service, costs and shipping so that the customers keep on coming back to your site.

Summary:

Through ecommerce websites, the journey to checkout becomes easy and quick. To ensure that the customer likes the shopping experience and keeps buying from your shopping portal and not from your rival, here are some ecommerce web design tips to help you out.