When you go up against the best, it’s impossible to go head to head with them, unless you use your branding to differentiate yourself. Amazon is an e-commerce giant, and if competitors tried to go head to head they would lose every time. However, if a competitor was to say, create a differentiated brand experience than Amazon, they’d have a chance. Enter Birchbox, ThinkGeek, and Nine Naturals.

Each of these e-commerce websites have created unique brand experiences for the consumer. Birchbox is a health and beauty company that provides monthly shipments of beauty products designed specifically for the user. This way consumers won’t be spending hours looking through countless products to hopefully find the right ones for them. This is similar to Nine Naturals, who have dedicated themselves to producing the safest beauty products for pregnant women, with products that are all geared towards providing products that will make pregnant women feel safe when using them. ThinkGeek is a website for anyone who has an inner ‘geek’ and is “obsessed with creating and sharing unique and authentic product experiences that stimulate our fans’ imaginations and fuel their geek core”(which sounds just fantastic).

Creating this differentiated brand experience is key when dealing with another important factor in succeeding in the e-commerce industry; customer loyalty. In a recent study, RJ Metrics says that by the end of year three, a majority of top performing companies revenues came from repeat purchasers. This shows just how important retaining customers is when dealing with e-commerce.

Now you know what’s important in moving forward with your new e-commerce website, and we’ve got a hunch you’re probably pretty excited about learning all these new things. Well let’s make sure this excitement is given an outlet so you can see it in action. In an article on Forbes, the best e-commerce platforms were highlighted to show you how exactly to use this new passion you have, and make the results an awesome e-commerce website. Here are some of the high rated ones:

Shopify

At the top of this list is Shopify, which is one of the best (if not the best) platforms to help you get to the e-commerce status you want. With their help you can create an online store, or make products on your already existing website available online. There are so many options for customization, so you’ll be able to really stand out as you build your brand.

WooCommerce

While Shopify does a lot of the work for you with their templates and other aspects, WooCommerce is different because it puts the power in your hands to create and make things go as you want them to go. This is called self-hosted (essentially do it yourself) and is recommended for smaller businesses. It uses WordPress plugins, which give you loads of customizable features, as well as gives you the chance to blog, which could lead to higher brand loyalty from customers (which we’ve found out is important!).

So let’s just review everything real quick; what have we learned today? E-commerce is an ever increasing industry that requires differentiated brand experiences in order for different companies to succeed. We also learned that creating brand loyalty will rise customer retention levels and keep your revenues intact and growing. Lastly we saw two platforms that will allow you to create one of a kind e-commerce brand identity for your company. So get out there and get involved in e-commerce! At the rate it’s growing, it’s something you should be involved with if you’re not already.