Having a curious mindset is essential for those looking to build an eCommerce business and truly succeed. You have to constantly investigate the latest innovations and continuously build tests to see how customers are using technology to shop.

If you keep a strong focus on Testing at the heart of your ecommerce strategy and keep up with the latest technological trends, then you will open up opportunities for rapid business growth. 

What Does It Mean To Be Curious?

So what is a curious mindset?  It's when an entrepreneur is inquisitive, interested and is always asking questions and pondering ‘why?’

A curious entrepreneur will always be seeking out new solutions to customer pain points, and always asking further questions. They will ALWAYS be testing scenarios to see what works and what doesn't.

They naturally want to absorb more and more information and seek out the latest information, trends and technological advances.

Why is a curious mindset essential for eCommerce?

ECommerce is the type of business model where you need to have a stream of Testing activities at the very centre of your operations and as the basis for most key decisions. 

Red?  Blue?  Pink with purple dots in the top right corner.  Only testing will tell you that answer for certain.  

You also need to keep up with the latest trends, as it's a very fast paced form of retailing and customers are becoming increasingly savvy. Testing helps you stay ahead of shifts in customer behaviour on your website and in the shopping cart. 

eCommerce is always evolving, using the latest innovations and incorporating faster and more efficient ways to shop. Customers want to find anything and everything online and the biggest selling point is that everything is available for them NOW.

This means that your eCommerce site need to keep up and the only way to do that is to test relentlessly to see what works for your unique business.

Use curiosity to inform your Testing Plan

Start to form your first hypothesis that you want to test  - e.g. "I think if we install this plugin / app, more customers will checkout".  Then go test that hypothesis to see what the data tells you. 

Whether that is installing chat bots to help with customer enquiries, incentivising add to basket or allowing customers to pay in a variety of ways or via installments. We test it all and see what the data results tell us. 

If something works, then we keep it and add it to our "winners" test pile.  If our test failed dismally, then we move on, lesson learned... but at least we know what our customers really want and have the hard data to prove it! 

Over time, the cumulative power of notching up all those "winners" will soon start to pay dividends on your sales and overall business growth trajectory. 

Use curiosity to stay ahead of the competition

A good way to get curious and begin your research into ways to evolve and grow your eCommerce site, is by visiting other websites which are similar, perhaps in industry or niche and seeing what their site offers in terms of functionality.

If you see something you like, build that idea into your future Testing plan.  Whilst it may work for your competitors site, it doesn't necessarily translate that it will work for your traffic flows and your unique audience.  So we simply try it and see! 

Have a look at how your competitors present their products or solve customer enquiries and how they demonstrate to customers that they keep up with the latest shopping trends too. It will help give you ideas and inspirations on what you can do to your site.

Use curiosity to investigate new technology

It is important to be using your curious mindset to discover the latest plug-ins, tools and platforms that can deliver a better customer experience.

Ecommerce success is all down to that user experience on your website. So anything we can do to remove objections, barriers or obstacles and make the customers journey super smooth, is worth investing in. 

Sign up to newsletters with software companies you use so that you can keep updated with any new technology that comes out too.

Whatever site software you use whether it's Shopify or Woocommerce, keep an eye out for any new releases or new trends. Follow the Facebook eCommerce pages or join groups that will help you to be part of the discussion on the latest technology trends.

By updating your technology regularly and improving your user experience, you are allowing your business to evolve and grow to meet real-life customer demands, not just the imaginary wish-list ones in your head !  

Use curiosity to understand your customer

Taking a testing approach to your ecommerce business growth from a technical point of view is not the only way to be curious.

By being curious, you will naturally start asking your customers questions using a variety of communications, such as social comments, Facebook polls and surveys.

This is a great way to discover the products in your range they love and understand what causes them pain, getting behind the reasons why your customers buy.

Using these pain points, and better understanding your buyer psychology, you will want to try to fix these problems for your customer. If you have curiosity as a trait, it means that you will be interested, you will want to know more about them and then use that information to power-up your business growth.

If you show curiosity to your customers and audience, you will be rewarded with a rich level of insight about them, their likes, their dislikes and you will find ways to solve their problems and create an edge over your competition too.

Consumer demand is a very real thing, and once you start testing and tapping into what your customers REALLY want, it will catapult the growth of your online business. So get curious to find out exactly what excites your customers and invest in this demand!

Make It Happen In Your Business

As you can see, curiosity is a very important trait to have as a product business owner, particularly as you tackle the technical and marketing challenges of your ecommerce channel. 

Taking a testing approach to everything you do is vital. It helps you to investigate new trends, technology and meet customer demands and pain points. By doing this, you will see your eCommerce business grow from strength to strength.

Next Steps:

•  Form your first hypothesis for something you'd like to test, that you feel *may* improve the success rate of your ecommerce site. 
• Create a plan for how you will test this hypothesis out - for example, do you need to install some new functionality ?  or perhaps you need to record live users experiencing your site to see where they get stuck?  Plan how, when and where you will do the test.  
• Perform the test and review the results. 
• Get curious about how many other things you could test on your website... there are no limits... test everything and you may be surprised by how quickly your pile of test "winners" adds up to meaningful improvements.