Customization Ideas Proven to Work in 5 Trendy eCommerce Niches

The eCommerce segments we picked up are at the peak of popularity in recent years. So, we gathered the most bright examples and trendy features you can add to your online store also to increase sales and adopt the best practices.

Proving stats:

• Food market:
  • According to Statista, supermarket food sales accounted for nearly 60 percent of the U.S. retail grocery market.
  • Forbes claims that the number of U.S. adults who had tried and liked grocery delivery was at 12%, a 50% jump from 2019.
  • The revenue of the digital market of food and beverage is expected to reach $26 billion by 2022.
  • According to the 2019 Annual Report of the Subscription Trade Association, three-quarters of D2C organizations in the food industry will provide subscription services by 2023.
• Beauty and Health Care:
  • The market holds a revenue of $511,401m in 2021 and will keep on growing by 4.75% annually. 
  • It is the largest segment with a market volume of $226,959m in 2021.
  • According to Statista forecasts organic cosmetics will lead the market and amount to $54 billion by 2027. 

• Car and car parts:
  • Searching and comparing dealerships online are the most demanded features as 95% of car buyers research online before making a buying decision (Google). 
  • 33% of the car research time is spent on a mobile device (J.D. Power). 
  • Users visit 4 websites on average before purchasing (Cox).
  • 60% of users watch a video on YouTube before visiting a dealership (Google).
  • 71% of shoppers want to buy a gasoline or diesel, 23% opt for a hybrid model, and 6% consider buying an EV (EY Global).
• Rental market:
  • According to Statista, the Car Rental market has a revenue annual growth rate of 14%.
  • Vacation Rentals’ growth rate is expected to hit 11%.
  • Rental and Leasing in the U.S. grows as well with a revenue of $786,4 billion expected by 2024.

Customization ideas by industry

Grocery

Grocery digital marketplaces are all about the fulfillment process. When the brick-and-mortar stores refer to dark stores and express delivery services to maintain their inventory always ready for shipment, their online versions try to change their interfaces to include the emerging trends. For grocery stores you can think about adding a functionality that will allow your vendors to set delivery dates and time slots and for customers to choose suitable time at the checkout page. Consider implementing a Calendar specifying hours before delivery gets available and the number of orders per slot to assign the max amount of order the vendor can handle. These changes will significantly improve the life of your vendors and will make the process of delivery more comfortable both for your vendors and customers. 

Read more about emerging trends in shipping groceries>>>

Let your customers see their location on the map and the closest pick up points. Placing this map in the right area can be of a great help for buyers. Consider inserting it on the vendor page or right on the homepage. Add a selector of the delivery method (delivery or pick-up) there.

Selling food online, you may face a challenge: how to consider products that can be sold by  weight. You can’t exactly know the weight before it is sliced and packed. We can implement a feature to indicate an estimated total weight with its price. You can further withdraw the exact amount once the order is delivered. 

Estimated Weight

Get more customization ideas for grocery stores>>> 

At Simtech Development, we recently came across such a case. Our client running a marketplace for selling groceries requested us to create a solution to expand delivery time slots. The owners wanted to allow buyers to choose a specific slot (date and time of delivery to the pickup point). And for vendors, there should be a dashboard to configure the available slots in the admin panel. At the same time, there was no idea how to implement the functionality to offer vendors this handy tool and make the purchasing process easier for buyers. After analysis and discussion, a calendar with settings for each pickup point was chosen as a solution. And immediately a new question arose – how to place all the necessary functions in such a way that the modification was convenient for all participants? We solved the problem as follows:

For each pickup point, an additional “Calendar” tab was added. On this tab, we have compactly placed all the settings that the seller needs:

• First of all, the vendor defines how many hours after the order has been placed, is required to get the order ready for pickup.
• Then he/she choses holidays on the calendar. By default, all dates are highlighted in green. When you click on the number, the color changes to gray, meaning that pickup is not available on this date.
• The next step is to set weekdays. If the day of the week is a working day, then in the drop-down menu, the vendor assigns working hours with an interval of 1 hour and a limit on orders that he/she can complete at this time. It is convenient to avoid an influx of buyers at a particular time and is especially important during the pandemic. 

Read more about the work done for ChopLocal grocery marketplace>>>

Perishables

If you sell perishables, your first and foremost concern is how to create a shipping-friendly product line, keep up with the shipping and customs regulations, and handle all logistical issues related to ecommerce customization. The default CS-Cart shipping settings allow multiple options to finetune your shipping process. But, what can you add in your platform to make it more tailored to the product you sell? 

Consider adding a “Temperature regimes” in the menu for your vendors. This way, they will be able to select the required value for the product they sell. Temperature regimes specified by vendors can be further used as instructions for shipment. For example, “Product needs shipment under 4.44 deg.”

Get more customization ideas for selling perishables>>>

Beauty and Health Industry

If you envisage to succeed at the Health and Beauty eCommerce market, you should be aware of the must-have functionality to sustain competition. In our practice, Beauty and Health Care store owners order adding such customizations as:

• Online courses block;
• YouTube lessons page;
• Online calendar to book an appointment. 

Take an example of perfectnails.hu, an online marketplace from Hungary. A nail art technician courses are available there in the YouTube video format. A handy calendar and a page with the YouTube links and the course description make the page functional and attractive.

Get more customization ideas for Beauty and Health online store>>>

Read more about the work done>>

Automotive

For automotive industry eCommerce sites, great opportunities have appeared with innovations during the recent years: shared mobility, VR showrooms, hybrid vehicles, 3D printing, etc. To make your car and online parts store more convenient for users, think about:

• Video tutorials;
• Improved search and filters;
• Adding certificates and other acknowledgments (Google Trusted store, PayPal certified, or OEM logos);
• Integrating various payment methods (PayPal, Visa, MasterCard, Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency);
• Building an accurate and easy-to-navigate parts catalog.

Get more innovation ideas>>> 

Or 

For a Car & Parts eCommerce site search function becomes a must-have. 

Read how we improved filters in a case with of an automotive industry world giant>>>

Rental

Yes, you can build a reservation, rental or booking system with the CS-Cart’s Multi-Vendor platform. Some items need their improvement to fully meet the rental model. These features include:

• Calendar, a scheduling component to determine availability. Visitors need to  to check availability and book directly for the desired period. At this, there should be implemented the logic to allow/disallow multiple rentals/booking.
• Terms and Conditions to protect you from vendor cancellations.
• Rental taxes with ability to configure.
• Last-minute availability and other notifications.
• Email automation.
• Progressive Web App.

Get more customization ideas for rental business on CS-Cart>>>

Key takeaways

While customizing your CS-Cart or Multi-Vendor, consider adding:

• Event scheduler to allow your visitors to meet with you and get consultancy online at a specific date;
• Delivery time slots to connect buyers and vendors at the time they want and can;
• Chatting feature;
• Virtual showrooms, virtual try-on and fitting rooms or virtual map of a building;
• YouTube Gallery to showcase your guides, courses, and other useful video material using the most engaging format;
• Handy dashboard for your vendors (like regime conditions if you sell perishables);
• Connecting a shipping service that work best with your and your target audience region under conditions that fit your product;
• Connect more payment methods for a greater comfort of your customers (some of our clients introduced a Bitcoin method of payment).

These and other tasks can be done with a reliable technological partner with deep knowledge of the CS-Cart and Multi-Vendor platforms. The ones who can offer a full scope of work required to launch an eCommerce site: from hosting to add-ons. At Simtech Development we commit ourselves to fulfill this scope with the best quality.