subject: Tips For Offering A Store Wishlist Or Gift Registry [print this page] Over the past few years, the online gift market has been growing rapidly. The big name online retailers have been taking advantage of this growing trend by providing special gift features for their customers such as wishlists and gift registries. E-commerce features like these are becoming more popular because shoppers enjoy the convenience it offers. Because online shoppers are becoming accustomed to having such features, it is becoming even more critical for smaller ecommerce businesses to do the same in order to compete.
A gift registry is a service for customers to pick out products from your store so that their friends and family can buy them for special occasions. Gift registries used to be associated exclusively with weddings, bridal showers and baby showers. Recently however, people are beginning to use gift registries for all kinds of unique occasions such as birthdays, anniversaries and even graduation. Your products do not have to be related to weddings or babies to be able to provide an online store gift registry. Being able to use a gift registry makes life easier not only for the person giving the gift, but also the person receiving the gift. It takes the hassle out of the gift buying process, the person giving the gift has an easy time picking out the perfect gift knowing that the person receiving the gift will like it.
A store wishlist is a service offered to customers to pick out products from your store that they like, but do not plan on purchasing right away. Wishlists are a great option to have for your e-commerce store, because people who visit your site normally will not buy something right away. They can always mark down what they like and come back to it at a later time. As the business owner, you can make use of the useful information accumulated from your customer's online store wishlist to remind them of products that they like but have not purchased yet, promote similar products that they might be interested in or announce discounts for products already on their wishlist. All these techniques can be easily implemented as long as you offer this option on your e-commerce website. You are able to boost your sales revenue by simply reminding people to review your products again.
There are several benefits associated with having wishlists and/or gift registries. First, it is basically a free form of advertising. To break this down, if a fan of your website sets up a store gift registry or wishlist and sends it to all of his or her acquaintances who do not know about your business, they are introduced to a selection of your products. This is a great feature for acquiring new traffic, these new visitors have the potential to turn into new customers. Not only do gift registries and wishlists help generate more sales, they are also effective for gaining customer loyalty. You have the ability to offer them things that they normally would not have noticed. These are effective tools for keeping your customers interested in your products and getting them to refer their friends. Most importantly you can use the information obtained from wishlists and gift registries to learn more about your customers, what they like and don't like. Figure out which products are the most popular and which ones you can promote more. Use these statistics to improve your online store and provide your customers with even more value.
Having an online store gift registry and online store wishlist is just the beginning. To really turn it into a profitable tool, you have to figure out creative ways to get more visitors to use it. By helping your customers get the most out of these handy options, you help yourself by outperforming your competition. For example, depending on the types of products you have, your store gift registry will only appeal to a certain group of people. Figure out where these people normally go online to find what they're looking for. Become active in forums, create relationships with bloggers and join social media groups that this kind of person belongs to. An effective way to promote your store wishlist feature is to actually teach your visitors all of the cool ways they can use it, such as adding it to their Facebook, posting it in connection with events on sites like Evite or encourage them to include it on sites like Elfster over the holiday season.
The key to having a well integrated online store gift registry or store wishlist for your ecommerce business is to have an ecommerce solution that has all the right tools to get it to work seamlessly with your online store. This way, the customer can use this feature without any additional hassle and you can watch your sales increase without having to do any extra work.
