Online businesses will shape the future. E-commerce is evolving at a brisk pace, and NASDAQ estimates that 95% of purchases will be made through this channel by the year 2040.

In all likelihood, what the world is witnessing right now is online in its infancy. Much of the growth remains ahead of us.

Evidently, selling online is a valuable skill. It is quickly becoming a challenge as new online marketplaces continue to saturate the web. As online sellers, you need to find innovative ways to grab the viewer’s attention and provide them value that your competitors won’t.

In this guide, we share a few innovative website improvements and additions that will go a long way in encouraging your target audience into choosing you as their preferred vendor.

Seven improvements and additions to your online marketplace website

While almost any person with an internet connection can set up a website to sell a product, it takes effort and critical thinking to incorporate innovations that will drive sales.

We’ve discussed some innovative ideas you can use to ramp up your online website’s sales so you don’t have to spend a lot of time researching or taking shots in the dark.

1. Accept crypto payments

Participation in crypto markets has increased steadily over the past couple of years.

Roughly 46 million Americans own a share of Bitcoin. The increased participation also means people are now considering, and in some cases, actively looking for crypto payments.

The preference for crypto payments makes sense, though. Crypto payments are fast, low-cost, and secure.

Think about how simple it is. You buy BTC on MoonPay, pay it on the e-commerce platform, and you’re done. No foreign exchange spreads, no transaction fees, and no chargebacks.

Crypto payments can significantly improve the website’s user experience and encourage those people to make a purchase, who would have otherwise simply found another platform that does accept crypto payments.

Here’s the kicker: some e-commerce platforms already accept crypto payments. This means they have an edge over you in one aspect of their business. Want to compete with them? Get onboard the crypto bandwagon - it’s a win-win for you and your customers.

1. Optimise UX

Countless online marketplaces do everything right but fail to deliver a seamless user experience (UX).

Good UX is like a salesman on autopilot. People whose experience was great will tell other people about it and act as your advocates. Word of mouth is a powerful tool.

UX design, therefore, is an excellent improvement that a large chunk of the ecommerce stores can use to improve sales. Partner with an expert who knows the principles of UX design so they can optimise the UX on your website.

Your website’s UX depends on four factors: utility, usability, accessibility, and desirability.

If the product offers utility, the customer’s journey from homepage to checkout is quick and seamless, the website’s accessible for all (including people with disabilities), and the look and feel of a customer’s entire experience is desirable - you’ve won at UX.

2. Add voice shopping

People are quickly becoming fond of voice search.

Who doesn’t like having Alexa play a music track without having to go look for the remote? It’s not just Alexa that’s gaining popularity though. Voice search is also becoming popular on e-commerce stores.

Voice assistants are underpinning the growth in the use of voice shopping. A study from 2019 found that one in five customers purchased a product using voice shopping through a digital assistant.

As an online business, you’d be leaving money on the table by not allowing your potential customers the opportunity to voice shop.

Make no mistake, though. It does involve some leg work, and not just adding a voice search to the website. Just like e-commerce websites are optimised for SEO, the content on the website needs to be optimised for voice search.

For instance, the content will need to provide the shopper more context, add more in-detail product descriptions, and write copy in a conversational tone.

3. Introduce augmented reality

The biggest disadvantage of an online marketplace is that a customer can’t visualise the product properly. This is the reason why a lot of consumers continue to prefer bricks and mortar stores for certain products.

It’s not only the customers that are at a disadvantage, it comes with a cost for your business too.

You don’t just risk having low conversion rates, but you also experience more returns, which translates to an explicit cost. Most importantly, this leads to poor customer satisfaction and affects brand value.

The solution? augmented reality (AR).

With AR, you have the capability to bring your customer’s imagination to life. It can provide your customers with an engaging visual experience for getting a better understanding of the product. They can even customise their choices from the comfort of their couch.

The enhanced interaction between a customer and the product allows them to get a better sense of the product’s characteristics when shopping online.

Imagine being able to put on a piece of jewelry or being able to place a couch in your living room before you make an online purchase.

Being able to replicate in-store experiences is powerful. You can allow your customers to explore their options, improve conversion, minimise returns, and boost overall satisfaction significantly using AR.

If very few people in your niche have adopted AR yet, consider using it on your business website and stay ahead of the curve.

4. Use layered landing pages

Most businesses offer a portfolio of products and services, and not just one product or service. The business’s website, therefore, needs a landing page for each of these products and services.

For instance, think of a website that sells cosmetics. There are probably several categories of cosmetics available on the website. Putting all categories on the website’s homepage is simple, but results in a poor customer experience. Plus, it’s also not a great strategy, speaking SEO wise.

For this reason, businesses need a landing page for each product or service. The landing page must have strong messaging and CTAs across the page. Make sure to add relevant keywords in the landing page’s title to help search engines find your page easily and minimize your PPC spending.

Structure the landing pages so they follow a coherent, layered structure. For instance, say you’re selling cosmetics. In addition to creating a landing page for individual products, you should also have a landing page for each category.

When someone searches for a lotion, you want Google to pick your landing page for the lotions category and show it to the searcher. This provides SEO value as well as allows the user to skim through a list of lotions available on your website.

5. Add video to important landing pages

If your product portfolio is massive, adding videos for all products might not be the easiest thing to do. However, videos can significantly improve conversions.

Human brains can process visual information a lot faster than text, which is why your visitors like viewing videos rather than reading seemingly lengthy product descriptions.

When you make it easier for visitors to understand your product or service with videos, you’ll improve your conversion rates.

6. Get emails

Email marketing is one of the best ways to market your product and offers excellent ROI. However, you still need an email address to be able to send marketing emails.

Sure, there are several ways to get a list of emails, but emails you capture from your website visitors are much more likely to convert. The question then is why a visitor would willingly leave their email on a website.

The key to getting someone’s email is to offer something valuable in exchange. For instance, a visitor is much more likely to leave their email if you offer them a free digital download instead of just saying “Please leave your email to subscribe to our emails.”

Of course, it doesn’t just have to be a download. You can also provide users access to gated content for a limited time, a free pass for an upcoming webinar, or an extended trial for your product.

Note that a lot of these strategies don’t involve incurring an explicit cost. It’s a win-win situation where the customer gets some value out of sharing their email address and gives you an opportunity to market to them in the future.

Think about it. Wouldn’t you share your email address to get access to a webinar on a topic that really interests you?

Innovation is key

Online business is becoming a highly competitive proposition.

To survive, businesses need to stay agile and keep innovating before their competitor does. Blink, and bam! You’ll have missed out on a ton of new things that flood the market every day.

Use the tips in this guide as a starting point and see if it works for your particular industry.

You might need to make some tweaks to these strategies, but they’ll help you get those dollars coming in by improving your overall sales without any changes to your sales strategy.