6 Must Have Features In Your Enterprise Brand's D2C Website

Managing a D2C enterprise ecommerce store isn't a layman's task. 

Thanks to the changing customer’s behavior, market trends, technology, business models and market dynamics, that are changing at a speed like never before. Altering your store to grab customer attention and sell more is a process that needs constant rethinking.

That’s why you need advanced features on your site to timely update sites in a dynamic environment. But first let’s discuss prominent D2C challenges faced by D2C enterprises in the past 5 years:

• Inability to manage inventory and fulfil order effectively, starting from packing, picking, shipping to tracking

• Unoptimized logistics and order fulfillment process, eventually leading to expensive and late shipping + poor customer experience

• Inability to meet D2C customer expectations like low shipping rates, free and fast delivery, offers and coupons, etc

• Inability to keep up with the immense volume of customer queries about orders, products, payment, returns, etc

• Lack of personalization in marketing promotions in the form of app notifications, Emails, SMS, advertisements, etc

There are many more significant shortcomings that could plant obstructions in your D2C ecommerce strategy. Therefore, devising future proof strategies and making your enterprise ecommerce site feature-rich is critical.

Question is how to do it? Simple, start by investing in futuristic technology and features to sustain the ever-changing market trends and fleeting customer behaviours.   

6 Features your enterprise ecommerce website should have to conquer above challenges  

1. Automated inventory and order management

We humans have a tendency to make mistakes, which is why we need automated systems to get the work done with the least errors. So when it comes to inventory management, we first need to address the complicated task like-

• Manual inventory tracking

• Poor inventory forecasting leading to overstocking and out of stock problems

• Lack of visibility across multiple channels

Take Example Of Nike: Before 2000, Nike (D2C athletic brand) was unable to manage and track its “excess inventory” and lost 100 million dollars in sales. They then switch to inventory software to predict best selling items and prepare the company to meet demands. Unfortunately, software bugs and data errors lead to inaccurate forecasts and the loss of millions. 

Takeaways: That's why your inventory solution should be feature-rich and updated with the latest technology with minimal technical errors. Let’s explore more below.

How StoreHippo inbuilt Inventory software speeds up your D2C operations?

Features and benefits

• Easy-to-use interface: StoreHippo offers a centralized inventory dashboard that gives a quick view of your products, orders and stock level

• Data reporting tools and inventory tracking: Get rich insights on product availability (like out-stock product), order status, open and delivered orders, driver’s whereabouts, prices, offers, delivery status, returns, exchanges and much more. This will increase team efficiency, reduce human errors and improve sales forecasting

• Real-time demand forecasting: Helps in automatically allocating orders to the right fulfilment source basis various criteria, such as location, stock availability, demand channel, delivery preference, etc

• Manage inventory on various sub-stores: Your inventory across different child stores can be easily managed with automatic syncing of inventory

2. Personalization

7 in 10 retailers who invested in personalizing customer experience have seen an ROI of at least 4X and a significant drop in cart abandonment rates. Ecommerce personalization can give 20% higher customer satisfaction and a 10-15% jump in conversion rates. (source: McKinsey) This alone proved how profitable personalization is in your D2C strategy. So let’s learn from top brands on how to offer personalization. 

How enterprise ecommerce brands like Amazon aces personalization? 

Amazon is the godfather of personalization with their AI-powered recommendation engine. The engine uses customer’s data like name, search queries, time spent on search, purchase history, browsing habits, frequency of buying, average dollars spent, etc; to decipher customer preferences and offer better-personalized recommendations on-site/app/email.

Results: The ‘frequently bought together’ and ‘customers who bought this item also bought’ widgets are phenomenal in attracting customer attention, with over 44% of customers purchasing products after clicking on these recommendations.  

4 Personalization tactics to motivate your customers

1. Create personalized homepages: Include time-sensitive promotions, recently viewed items, product suggestions similar to previous purchases on your homepage. This can push customers down the sales funnel.

Fact: “Changing the homepage based on behaviour is the most popular action for 36% of sites” - (Bloomreach)

2. Cater to location and Language: Start by displaying items in the local currency and language to appeal to different nationalities. Further, you can update your inventory according to the changes in weather, regional fashion, etc if it is applicable.

How can StoreHippo help? StoreHippo supports automatic translation of 100+ languages (with RTL languages) and conversion of prices into multiple currencies. You also get IP based auto-switch to the native currency with an intelligent inbuilt location and currency detector.

3. Develop highly personalized ad campaigns based on user data: This will make customers come back to your site and take action.

How can StoreHippo help? You can integrate Google Analytics and other data analysis tools with StoreHippo within a click. The integration will record how users are behaving on your site 

4. Personalize Your Emails: Shoot emails of relevant product recommendations and offers that match with their interests, depicted in the past.

How can StoreHippo Help? By using email marketing tools like Mailchimp, Sendin, you can send automated emails related to products, orders, etc. You can even learn about customer behaviour and can automatically segment customer data for sending relevant emails.

3. Logistics management and order fulfillment

Shortlisting a shipping partner is a difficult task, that's why we have prepared a list of must-have features in your logistics partner: 

• Support for hyperlocal delivery, next day delivery, Express delivery

• Global shipping 

• Real-time consignment visibility and control

• Large network of national and international fulfillment centers

• Flexible payment on delivery

• Returns & exchange management

• Support delivery of small to heavyweight orders

• Customized weather-resistant packaging

How KFC lost millions by choosing a poor delivery solution? 

In February 2018, Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC) was forced to close many of its 900 UK branches due to supply chain disruption. This all happened because of choosing an unreliable delivery partner that failed to deliver food in a timely manner. Around 750 KFC outlets in the UK faced delays in daily delivery, which ultimately led to the closure of their chain stores and they lost up to £1million. 

Takeaways: Always list down your delivery challenges and find a fulfilment partner that has a track record of resolving those problems in the past. 

How does the StoreHippo Logistics Solution Help?

StoreHippo offers you a list of delivery partners that deliver to 27000+ pin codes in India. Easily integrate them on your enterprise ecommerce store at ZERO set-up cost and get discounted shipping rates with selected shipping partners.

We also support automated logistics processes, so that you can automatically import orders, update order status, assign orders, customize rates. With an inbuilt order management system, you can get a single view of all your orders coming from your site, app, social media store, etc.

4. Chatbots and live chat

There are many ways to communicate with your customer, but the ones that are really impactful are Live Chat and Chatbots. Why? Because they are time saving, quick and improve customer satisfaction in no time. 

What Do Customers Prefer: Chatbot or Live chat?

• 41% of customers prefer live chat support

• 32% prefer phone support, 

• 23% prefer email support. (Kayako)

• 83.1% is the global average customer satisfaction rating for live chat globally. (Statista)

• 29% of customers are annoyed with impersonalized and copy-pasted responses during live chat. (Kayako)

• 59% of customers are more likely to buy when brands answer their queries in a minute (source) 

• $8 billion per year can be saved by businesses using chatbots (Juniper Research)

What should you offer on your enterprise ecommerce site? Chatbot or Livechat?

Although live chat is a profound winner, its best approach is to use both chatbot and live chat together. Because both have their own advantages. 

StoreHippo enterprise ecommerce software supports the interaction of different chatbots and live chat available in the market. Within a few clicks, you can integrate chatbot plugins on your site.  Here are a few features of chat plugins:

• AI-powered chatbots for quick management of customer queries

• Automated greetings and multiple-choice questions to eliminate writing

• Easy transfer of complex queries from chatbot to support staff

Source: Drift

5. Marketing automation

Let’s jump straight to the incredible ROI your enterprise ecommerce company can gain from automation. Some brands have even experienced a jump in revenues by 30% through automation of cross-selling and abandoned carts emails. This explains the big role of automation in increasing your marketing ROI. Let’s explore a few of the many automation features offered by StoreHippo: 

5 Automation features in StoreHippo that are conversion-magnet

1. Unified notifications: Churn most out of the impulsive buying nature of customers with notifications. Send personalized notifications based on customer buying behaviour to re-engage them and increase conversion rates. You can even use various channels for sending notifications like SMS, email, website or mobile app. 

2. SEO tools: Gain brand awareness, site visitors and higher ranking by doing on-page optimization and link building via SEO tools. For on-page optimization, update meta title and description, product description, headings, images, etc with keywords. For link building, reach out to affiliate sites to place your link on their site and gain additional traffic. 

3. Dynamic landing pages and forms: Build attractive, conversion-friendly landing pages and forms with easy-to-use drag-and-drop functionality via StoreHippo dashboard. Everything is easy-peasy as you don’t need any coding skills and advanced design knowledge. 

4. Automated email marketing tools: Enterprise ecommerce brands can save time and effort by triggering a series of automated emails for abandoned carts, orders confirmation, order delivery, thanking customers, product recommendations and beyond. Sending emails based on users’ behaviour have driven a 10% response rate and improvement in customer retention rate.

5. Third-party tool integration: Once you build an ecommerce store with StoreHippo, it allows you to integrate with other powerful tools like Social Media, Paid Advertising tools (Google Ads, Facebook pixel), CRM, ERPs, Messaging Tools (ChatBot, SMS), user behaviour tracking tools (Google Analytics, Hotjar), site optimization tools (Google Search console), etc.

How StoreHippo helps in automation? 

StoreHippo multi vendor marketplace software offers a unique set of inbuilt tools like SEO tools, discount engine (for creating coupons), in-app push notifications and readymade page templates (to quickly create beautiful landing pages). It also supports third-party tool integration to increase marketing efficiency and ROI.

6. Omnichannel ecommerce

Marketers who used three or more channels witnessed an 18.96% engagement rate, as compared to 5.4% on a single channel. By going omnichannel, purchase frequency and average order value increased by 250% and 13%, respectively (Source: Omnisend). Hence, you need features that provide a seamless omnichannel customer experience across channels. 

How does StoreHippo benefit from an omnichannel approach? 

• MACH architecture: Also called Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS, and Headless. StoreHippo's MACH model allows businesses to change their experience as needed, at their own pace. It separates the frontend UI layer from the backend engine. This separation allows quick addition of multiple customer touchpoints using business logic and API. So that you can seamlessly transition to an omnichannel business model and unlock greater profits.

It also allows rapid evolution of the omnichannel front-end customer experiences (across touchpoints or geographies), while keeping the business logic for elements like product catalogues, cart, marketing, order, inventory, payments, etc. intact. 

MACH is an ideal fit for enterprise ecommerce businesses who want to:

• Create a personalized customer experience

• Quickly introduce new channels, features, or products; in a flexible manner

• Improve processes and team coordination. Here headless architecture allows marketers to create, edit and upload content independently, without touching any code

• Developers can also freely work on the technical side i.e. content optimization and delivery, across various devices and channels

StoreHippo is a cloud-native SaaS solution with headless, API-first, flexible microservice capabilities. It offers you freedom from monolithic structure i.e. maintaining on-premise hardware and software. As it manages all the hardware and software (including security), so you can quickly scale, upgrade, and deploy solutions. 

Wrapping Up

If you want to prepare your D2C site for the future, these features shouldn’t be missed at any cost. Why? Because of changing technology, market trends, and customer behaviour, old features may become obsolete. Hence, these 6 features are specially designed by keeping future trends in mind.

If you want to invest in these features, StoreHippo is an ideal option. StoreHippo is a feature-rich, ecommerce platform that simplifies all the ecommerce operations with built-in futuristic technology and tools. 

Sign up for a 14-day free trial to see how it helps your business to grow and win in the technologically progressive ecommerce industry.