Are you contemplating starting your own eCommerce business? Well, if the answer is yes, and probably which is why you are here, then we would say a great thought. Today e-Commerce is almost eating up the retail world and we see these long-existing retail brands closing or going bankrupt and this was unimaginable about a decade ago.
Like if we take the example of Toys” R” Us, then who would have imagined that after being in business for over 60 years, they would be liquidating and closing their stores in the U.S.
On the contrary, the digital world is the place where everyone wants to be, and today most retail business owners have come up with their own digital brands and are creating an online presence, in order to compete in the digital marketplace. Like, look at these stats below curated by Selz, which is an online selling tool:
• Average Gen X consumer spends 15% more online as compared to the Gen Y consumer.
• 1.92 billion people are going to buy something online in 2019
• Around 71% of shoppers believe that they get better deals online as compared to retail/brick-and-mortar stores.
• 80% of internet users have made a purchase online at least once, whereas 50% made a purchase more than once.
• 72% of e-Commerce will be taking place on mobile devices by the year 2021.
What can make your e-Commerce business a big hit?
Now when you think of venturing into the eCommerce business, what factors do you think are crucial to be successful.
In order to succeed in the market, you need to have a great website design, top-notch customer support, Unique Selling Proposition, and High-quality product images. Providing excellent and flawless customer support is the key to attain success and along with that an appealing and reliable website as you want people to make purchases from you, right? However, ultimately, it is the combination of the above-mentioned things that makes an e-commerce business a hit.
Often while entering into the e-commerce business, the entrepreneurs end up losing sight of the most crucial things and they spend such a long time creating an e-Commerce store, only to shut it after a few months.
It is the “sales” that would boost your e-Commerce business, thus make sure that it is the very objective of your e-Commerce business plan. You can attract traffic to your store via e-Commerce marketing. That will bring sales, and sales will get you more traffic. Similarly, you require to make sales first before you are able to offer great customer support to people purchasing from your website. All in all, if your business fails to make sales, then it is bound to doom.
Few tips to keep in mind to make your e-Commerce store attain big success:
Explore your idea
Having a great app idea is the right start, but play steady and be careful to not launch an e-commerce business that is way too broad. In fact, the matter-of-fact is that there must be many other people who have the same idea or on the lines and they might have begun conceptualizing already. So, yes having an app idea is great, but do make it a point to strengthen your position by finding a way to further specialize it and capture a true niche market. Even the total of customers in that particular market might be less, but the focus should be to carve out a loyal following.
Research, Research, Research
Doing proper research is crucial for the success of any e-commerce business. Once you have picked your products or services that you would be offering on your e-Commerce store, it is time to look at your competitors and see what they are doing. Find about their barriers and cost of entry. See whether they invest a lot in ads or they are still not enthusiastic about going more digital. This way you can find about the time, money, and efforts that you need to put in to make your e-commerce business be successful. Often after research, you may not want to sell certain products. It might lead you to identify better products to sell and offer an understanding of how to actually start an e-Commerce business.
The more targeted the traffic, the better
We keep hearing professionals telling ways to attract a large amount of organic traffic via a search engine, but the truth is that the more targeted is your traffic, the higher will be your conversion rates. No matter if you choose to sell digital downloads, subscriptions, or physical products, the most optimal way to drive focused site traffic is nudging users from social media to secure landing pages that further invite them into the conversion pipe. If you are able to integrate payments into landing pages itself, then that works much better.
Establish Partnerships
It is not that easy for an e-Commerce website to attain success on its own. Despite your experience and skill set, you can certainly benefit by forming strategic partnerships, and by aligning your new brand with established firms. It is wise to constantly seek opportunities and find new ways to promote your business.
Go Social
As per research from Shopify, in the year 2014, the e-Commerce orders spawning from the social networking sites increased by 202%. It is owing to the fact that people value the opinions coming from their peers and they automatically have more interest in products and services that are referred/shared/recommended by a friend. Hence, try investing in social media by incorporating the elements into product listings and setting up a huge social media presence on sites like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and others.
Product Listings
Site optimization should be a priority. As it comes to the individual product listings, your focus must be to create unique & keyword-rich meta descriptions, optimization of product images and usage of description & unique sales copy.
Content Marketing
For every online business, it is necessary to focus on content marketing. Even though the ongoing costs to develop and publish quality content are usually high, but it does pay off always. Like, you can begin with a blog, and then share your posts and products pictures on social media, and then start connecting with the other industry websites and publications.
Let go of PPC right now
Even though pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements can be great, but while starting out, you might not enjoy the idea of placing your brand’s foundation on PPC-heavy strategy. Instead, it is better to use these advertisements with discretion and focus your efforts, time and resources on creating brand awareness and driving the organic leads.
Offer a great user experience: In order to funnel the traffic towards the desired action, such as making a purchase, you require to optimize the user experience (UX). There are chances of your site visitors leaving if they are confused. Hence make the navigation effortless. Your website should present clarity about what your business is all about. Reinforce what your brand does on your website and use clear and concise call-to-action buttons and tabs.
The shopping cart must be easy to view & access, and the checkout process should also be straight and simple. After all, no one is keen to spend a lot of their time figuring out how to purchase a product. Also embed interactive content into the site, such as games, animated games, videos, and pictures.
So, these were the factors that can be crucial to the success of your e-Commerce business. Let us know what you think about them!
