Why Businesses Should Focus More Resources on Improving the Customer Experience at Checkout

Ecommerce has never been this competitive, yet some firms are still allocating a considerable sum of money on features that do not place them ahead of rival businesses in any way.

Beyond capabilities like a shopping cart and luring customers with special offers–which are common to all checkout pages–eCommerce stores must customize their platforms to create a positive user experience

Don’t get it twisted, though; there’s no fault in implementing these standard eCommerce capabilities. In fact, most businesses use the same tech as others, so they don’t have to develop their stores from scratch.

Through APIs or application program interfaces, web developers can find and blend various digital assets and functionalities in different systems, even those built independently and not intended to integrate. In essence, that’s how different software communicate.

From an eCommerce perspective, APIs are the link that allows the flow of data from one platform to another, e.g., when a buyer is shifting from a store’s checkout page to a payment platform.

Developing Better Functionalities

The fact that online shops use the same checkout technology as their counterparts doesn’t mean all stores must look alike or have the same customer experience.

Forward-thinking merchants can still better their website through standard frameworks like cloud-platform services, orchestration, and containerization. For instance, Containerization powers eCommerce stores to strategically blend third-party services like payments enablers, allowing them to customize their services to suit customer needs.

Generally, these tools allow you to spend more time and resources developing functionalities instead of dwelling on maintenance. So, though it’s okay to use existing APIs when designing a website, business owners can still use tech like Kubernetes to build better functionalities.

Kubernetes, initially pioneered by Google, is a container-orchestration tool. Currently, the technology is managed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

What’s in it For Your business?

Entrepreneurs that make the most of these capabilities to streamline their stores stand to benefit in two primary ways:

First, it helps your businesses channel all your resources on developing different capabilities that matter to the customer’s experience, instead of focusing on basic maintenance like tweaking the same page time and again.

Secondly, it cuts operational costs by eliminating the need to pay for the numerous services needed to maintain those basic functions.

Author bio:

Michael Hollis is a Detroit native who has helped hundreds of business owners with their Business Loan solutions. He’s experimented with various occupations: computer programming, dog-training, accounting… But his favorite is the one he’s now doing — providing business funding for hard-working business owners across the country.