Your e-commerce site is just like a corner store

Your e-commerce site is just like a corner store.

No, really.

E-commerce has changed the rules of retail, in a way that has never been seen before. But, in doing so, it has also become much more like the retail experiences people used to expect just a few decades ago.

Now, e-commerce sites have to know their audience and provide personalised advice and support if they want to maintain customer loyalty and keep people engaged with their brand.

Picture a corner store for a minute. Before shopping malls and supermarkets, people relied on a single local supplier or a small cluster of shops for all of their retail needs. The shop owners had a personal connection with locals - they knew what each family ordered, how regularly they ordered it and what products they could offer to meet the needs of the community.

Corner store owners would also be able to spot broader trends - whether their customers were losing interest, whether their spending was declining and thousands of other factors that come with that specialised knowledge.

What's more, the owner of a corner store knew their profit margins, they understood which products were their most valuable and they knew which customers would be the right ones to sell them too.

Of course, the service goes well beyond just selling the right goods to the right people. Local retailers had a personal bond with their customers, they relied on loyalty and excellent customer service, and provided a level of service that was tailored to everyone who came through the door.

Many of us will have had this customer experience. Now, retail has changed and the old corner store is no longer a viable business model.

However, with the rise of e-commerce, the opportunity to revisit this level of service has returned to the forefront of people's thinking. Now, websites are trying to recreate this customer experience, even though they operate on a global scale.

That's because the core qualities that made a corner store successful - the in-depth knowledge that an owner would have about their community - is now achievable for websites. By using the data which every user to a site will generate, e-commerce pages are able to segment their audience and personalise their service on a scale that has never been seen before.

Naturally, there are still some companies that are achieving this better than others. E-tailers are already finding unique and creative ways to turn data into actionable insights that can drive further growth.

For e-commerce sites, the challenge is now to actively become more like that corner store and provide a level of service that exceeds the expectations users have of the online purchasing process. Achieving this is no mean feat, but with e-commerce expanding at break-neck speed the opportunities for future growth are endless.

The world has already become a global village - is your business ready to become the world's corner store?