The standards for ideal user experience (UX) have grown significantly. With an evolving market place, customers expect innovative online storefronts that provide the latest technology. According to blog.sagipl.com, companies can increase sales by 62% after improving their ecommerce design.

This is where optimizing your ecommerce stack for the modern consumer can be a sound investment. With the right combination of features, tools, and elements, UX can heighten conversions for a global audience of various demographics — maximizing your brand's reach. Here’s what makes a modern ecommerce stack in 2019 and the steps you can take to design the best online experience for your customers.

Design your Ecommerce Stack with Customers in Mind

An ecommerce stack represents a collection of tools, features and content plans for your online storefront. When designing your ecommerce stack, think of it less as a state-of-the-art collection of tools layered atop each other, but rather, puzzle pieces that are designed to produce the best brand experience for your customer. Your goals should be to attract new customers while keeping existing ones engaged through intuitive user experiences, smooth browsing and fresh deals on a constant basis. The choice of tools and features which will comprise your ecommerce stack depend entirely on your business model, product portfolio, long-term development plans, and resources. Regardless of your industry, building your stack with your customer’s lifetime value in mind has proven to be the best strategy brands can adopt. According to Fit Small Business, 48% of all ecommerce transactions are made by recurring customers. In 2019, attracting new customers while re-engaging existing customers should be pinnacles for your ecommerce stack. Tell your brand story while bringing customers closer to your brand through your technology stack, and your brand stands to succeed.

Elements of a Modern Ecommerce Stack

Brand Storytelling Integration

‍One of the most essential elements of a modern ecommerce stack revolves around brand storytelling. Your ecommerce store needs to connect with your audience better than Amazon, so differentiate your brand’s story from the crowd to reach your target customer. Brand elements, such as your distinct visual style, mission statement, customer stories, and customer loyalty treatment will help you achieve this. Platforms that will help you display the most authentic version of your brand as it shows through your customers’ vantage point. Your brand storytelling structure needs to be authentic to appeal to consumers and can go a lot farther than discounts on products.

‍User-Friendly Landing Page with Conversion as the Goal

‍Landing pages make or break a sale. It’s pivotal that your landing page features the best content available for conversion as well as user-friendly navigation and quick-loading, mobile-friendly elements. Finding tools that take into account page load time and offer automated optimizations based on top-performing content will save you a lot of development and analysis time. And an agile web experience is often a good one as it naturally evolves with your customer’s expectations.

Inspiration Galleries and Lookbooks

‍Customers who return to your site frequently find value in inspiration. But creating inspiring content at scale can be tough for ecommerce brands of any size. Luckily, with UGC inspiration galleries, you can make your top content shoppable, creating the best content for your customers that also boosts conversion.

Up-To-Date SEO Trends

‍When it comes to your ecommerce storefront’s search engine visibility, SEO is of utmost importance. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) represents a set of algorithms used by search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing in determining which links are relevant to an individual.Elements such as keywords, phrases, formatting patterns, number of active plugins and etc. will help you reach a wider audience should you integrate them correctly. With that said, tools such as Google AdWords and SEM Rush can be used to choose the right set of words and phrases to use in product descriptions, blog posts and other parts of your site’s UX for maximum reach.

‍User-Generated Content Features

‍User-generated content (UGC) can be highly beneficial for your ecommerce stack and online business as a whole. Social proof plays a large role in attracting new traffic and converting leads into customers.Content such as reviews, testimonials, comments, and multimedia created by your customers can serve as a great introduction to your products and business for the uninitiated audience. Use a reliable UGC platform for your content collection, curation, and publishing needs and you will undoubtedly create a positive image for your ecommerce brand going forward.

Pro-Consumer Customer Support

‍Lastly, your ecommerce store should provide customers with an up-to-date, 24/7 customer support no matter which industry or niche you cover. While you don’t have to invest into third-party customer agents if your resources can’t support it, alternatives are just as viable.Chatbots and email-centric customer support offer numerous ecommerce stack integration opportunities for creative business owners. You can also include post-purchase follow-up emails, feedback surveys, and other user-data into the customer support equation in order to provide a pro-consumer UX to your global audience.

Why This Matters

It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the number of ecommerce tools touting themselves as game-changers. Most only offer a step-change when customers are seeking a paradigm shift in how brands interact with customers. Building a modern ecommerce stack is all about defining your website’s UX to provide quality of life features for your customers. That process looks very different than it did even two years ago.

Evaluate your site’s current status and start the stack buildup with brand storytelling before you move on to UGC, SEO and customer support elements. With the right ecommerce stack elements and some time, customers will flock to your site and make the most of the UX you have built for their convenience.

‍Bridgette Hernandez is a Master in Anthropology who is interested in writing and is planning to publish her own book in the near future. Now she is a content editor at TrustMyPaper. She works with professional writing companies such as GrabMyEssay and BestEssayEducation as a writer.