Marketplace Sellers – Customer Experience Optimization

Marketplace Sellers – Customer Experience Optimization

Customer service is one of the keys to any successful business. It’s even more important for eCommerce stores, but unlike a retail store, there is no opportunity to establish a physical interaction with customers.

Instead, online stores not only have to work a little harder to understand customer sentiments and deliver that customer service experience remotely. It starts with an improved digital footprint that makes more information easily available to the customer that is engaging and provides all the information they need to feel comfortable making a purchase decision.

Customer service is not just about getting the order, but building customer experiences that are complete, fast and leave customers happy with their purchase.

Here are some of ways marketplace sellers can improve the customer experience:

Add More Value to Product Listings

Marketplace sellers need to bring products to life through detailed and accurate information as it makes the tasks easier for buyers. It’s important to add high-quality videos and images for products to help customers make informed choices. Since customers can’t touch or feel a product in real time and all they will have images and videos to rely upon, it’s therefore imperative to give proper and accurate descriptions of products.

Online stores have to give more time to product listing management because it keeps things streamlined for customers. When product information is complete and addresses their questions, customers feel confident in making purchase decisions.

Optimize Seller Ratings

Customers trust stores that have a high seller rating. This gives them confidence to buy without any apprehension. When the seller rating is high, this also adds to the legitimacy of the store. Sadly, a lot of eCommerce sellers ignore this vital aspect which ultimately harms them in one way or another. Make sure your store does not make the same mistake as it does not take much to improve seller ratings of a store. You can follow these steps to achieve higher seller ratings:

  • Follow the seller’s published content guidelines
  • Post genuine reviews and encourage happy or repeat customers to leave feedback as a way to promote good reviews
  • Implement customers’ suggestions to improve the value of your store front
  • Learn from the negative reviews and proactively address these concerns in the product description.

Work on Customer Engagement & Solicit Feedback

While most sites focus on the cost efficiency of talking to customers, encouraging customers to interact with a site is an opportunity to turn one-time customers into loyal customers. Make it easy for customers to interact. The goal is to engage with customers and solicit feedback after they have made a purchase as this will add to their overall buying experience. And when customers are engaged, you’re more likely to know what they liked and what not.

Here are some of ways to gain value with customer engagement post purchase:

  • Include a personalized note with the order
  • Send a follow-up email and phone number (label the phone number as “cell” and position your company even closer to the customer) and ask for feedback
  • Suggest that customer feedback is consistently shared with senior management.

Follow the Latest Standards in UX Design

As an eCommerce store, the last thing you can afford is poor UX (user experience) design as it can ruin all the experience of your customers. You not only need to have good UX designs, but also need to match the latest standards to build customer confidence. The design should not only feel good but also it needs to work smoothly. You can also take help of an expert team for marketplace UX optimization.

Make sure your online store UX design follows these principles:

  • Easy to go navigation
  • Well-defined and organized site architecture
  • Interaction-oriented design with focus on visual product description
  • Proper visual clues for customers at intended places
  • Responsive designs with security certificates, payment gateway integration and easy check-out process

Don’t Go Out of Stock

Customers hate it a lot when they visit a store full of expectations only to find their product ‘out of stock.’ When that happens, the store loses some credibility and repeat occurrences can have profound negative implications on conversion rates. For products that cannot be consistently stocked, offer alternative product links and make sure that the stocking status is visually obvious when buyers land on the page.

To avoid regular out of stock scenarios, you need cash as only it can help replenish the inventory. Well, if you are concerned about customer experience optimization in true sense then you have to put in place right cash and inventory management mechanisms. This will help a lot in keeping the trust of customers intact at all times.

Marketplace Competitive Analysis

eZdia is happy to offer brands and manufacturers a free Marketplace Competitive Analysis. Tell us about your marketplace strategy and we’ll prepare an analysis designed to help you outrank your competitors.

Best eCommerce SEO practices to Optimize Your Walmart Marketplace Listing

Best eCommerce SEO practices to Optimize Your Walmart Marketplace Listing

The Walmart marketplace provides sellers with a great opportunity to grow their business and offer their products to millions of consumers. Third-party sellers can join Walmart with product listings and take advantage of Walmart’s strength while offering consumers a quality shopping experience. With over 300 million online visitors browsing the Walmart marketplace each month, there is a wealth of opportunity to increase brand exposure and drive sales.

Even better, there are no monthly fees for joining the platform and the transaction there is secure and fast. The Walmart marketplace is not as competitive as Amazon making it a little easier for any one product to gain visibility, but it’s not as easy as simply listing your products and expecting the orders to roll in. You’ll want to optimize your presentation and take advantage of the best practices for the marketplace search algorithm.

Here are the eCommerce marketplace SEO best practices for Walmart product listings:

Keep Your Product Titles Clear and Concise

Product titles are the single most important marketplace element for marketplace SEO. It’s important to keep the titles clear and concise and pack as many descriptive words as possible. If it’s too short you are likely missing opportunity and, of course, if it’s too long it will be truncated. You should always include the product brand with product attributes to make the listing work better. A good title will ideally be between 50 to 60 characters with no mention of time sensitive special offers or no use of generic marketing terms (Example: Sale, Buy Now, Best etc.).

Use High-Quality Product Images

A good listing on Walmart Marketplace includes high-quality product images. Ideally you will have multiple images all using an image size of 2000 x 2000  that matches the Walmart standard. High-resolution images allow customers to zoom in and inspect a product and grasp the product’s  finer details and make informed choices. There is a strong link between image quality and conversion rate.

Keep in mind a few things with images of your product, including:

  • The product itself should fill the image and be as zoomed in as possible
  • Images should always have the front view of the product
  • Image background should always be kept white
  • Images, videos and customer reviews of the products drive more sales

Include Specific Product Features

The key features (sometimes referred to as bullets) attract customers to the products they are in search of. It’s important to include key features in your product listing to boost eCommerce SEO and catch the attention of your target audience.

Keep in mind a few things when you plan to include key product features:

  • Highlight product advantages
  • Use relevant keywords that add value to product information
  • Give a short product description detailing key benefits and using keywords strategically
  • Include a long description with more product features and benefits to catch the attention of your audience

Select the Relevant Product Category

Like any top marketplace, Walmart gives sellers a chance to use product attributes and categorize their products accordingly. When products are categorized correctly, it helps customers search and find them easily. Plus, it also makes the product’s features more prominent in searches. There are some 24 product categories on Walmart Marketplace to select and list product attributes and doing it right with accurate product details can definitely help improve your product’s ranking on the platform.

Get the Competitive Edge with Pricing, Stock Availability and Customer Service

It takes some effort to make your products feature in searches of customers on Walmart marketplace. Just listing is not enough as there will be competition for the slot and without using the right tactics it’s not possible to gain an edge over competitors. To make your product stand out on the platform, you need to focus on three key aspects, including:

  • Make sure your pricing is competitive on each product, neither too low nor too high
  • Keep your stock always available else it can drive customers away to competitors
  • Offer quick shipping and great customer service so that more customers give positive feedback and reviews to be listed there

List Positive Customer Reviews

If customers are happy with your product price and customer service they can feel happy to leave positive product feed or reviews. And if customers have a positive experience with you as a seller, and they give you glowing reviews, you can always elevate key reviews into the product description. This can work wonders from Walmart SEO point of view. In fact, product rankings can improve a lot when positive customer reviews are included with them. Make it a point to ask customers for reviews and feedback so that your sales can pick up more than it generally does on Walmart Marketplace.

Marketplace Competitive Analysis

eZdia is happy to offer brands and manufacturers a free Marketplace Competitive Analysis. Tell us about your marketplace strategy and we’ll prepare an analysis designed to help you outrank your competitors.

Which is the Best eCommerce Marketplace to Sell Online?

Which is the Best eCommerce Marketplace to Sell Online?

Global eCommerce sales are surging and that trend is unlikely to slow down in the coming years. Retailers have a huge potential to capitalize on this growth whether on a dedicated site or a marketplace that offers instant access to potential customers. Every marketplace is a little different and every marketplace requires time to maintain and support, so selecting the highest priority marketplaces is important.

With platforms like Amazon, eBay and Walmart becoming household names, it’s often faster and easier to create a store on these sites. If you can launch on all sites, that’s an approach that can maximize your visibility but that may overwhelm your resources.

Here are some of the best eCommerce marketplaces to sell online:

1. Amazon

Amazon is always the first choice online store whether for a small retailer or a multi-billion dollar firm. The platform is a worldwide leader in the eCommerce space as a presence on it guarantees access to a vast marketplace and a bigger audience than anyone else. On Amazon, there is no monthly subscription fee with an individual plan (but there is a fee with a professional plan) as it charges with per item sold; and there is absolutely no restriction on the quantity of items a retailer can list there.

2. eBay

eBay ranks among the oldest-existing eCommerce marketplaces and it continues to enjoy a strong market presence globally. Apart from giving retailers the freedom to list any item of choice, it also allows them the choice of storefront customization with banner images, product photos which is not possible with most other stores. On this platform, sellers not only set a specific price for any product but can also set their products up for bid. And don’t forget, eBay receives a huge traffic day-in and day-out so being on it can set your store for more growth for sure.

3. Walmart

Walmart is one of the most trusted eCommerce marketplace in the super-competitive eCommerce space and the largest retailer in the world. Walmart eCommerce Marketplace is ideal for all sizes of sellers, where it’s small, medium or large. Walmart has a huge customer base and once you are approved as a  seller, you have high potential to be in front of a large customer base to sell online. And if you really want to beat the competition, you should think of optimizing your product listings to stay ahead of the competition.

4. Etsy

Etsy is a gaining prominence as a marketplace for buying handmade (handcrafted) items online. It’s an easy platform to sell and just requires sellers to upload their product and start selling. When you list your eCommerce store on Etsy, you’re set to gain access to quality customers and the best part; a store can also team up with others for sales and better access to customers. Plus, there are a whole range of tools to create coupon codes and add more depth to sales.

5. Facebook Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace may not be quite like your conventional eCommerce platform but its huge user base can help your business reach millions of customers every day. You can list any item on this platform and can take the product to anywhere, but it’s advisable to keep the listing to the nearby community for better sales. This marketplace is not only free and easy to use but also gives both the parties – sellers and buyers – a platform for open communication.

Conclusion

Clearly, there is no dearth of quality eCommerce marketplace and retailers can easily find the best and give their sales and revenue the much-needed boost.

Marketplace Competitive Analysis

eZdia is happy to offer brands and manufacturers a free Marketplace Competitive Analysis. Tell us about your marketplace strategy and we’ll prepare an analysis designed to help you outrank your competitors.