Amazon and eBay, for example, have stringent seller policies. In order to maintain a consistent image, these establishments minimize merchant branding. Sellers who own and operate their own online stores are in a different league. They have complete control over their customers’ experiences. Whether rearranging product placement or highlighting a store sale, merchants can use their eCommerce store to connect with customers and encourage purchases directly.
With so much flexibility, online store owners may be unsure where to start curating their shop. Here are our essential tips for developing a successful eCommerce Store / eCommerce website to help you get started attracting buyers and retaining loyal customers. These strategies describe how buyers interact with each component of your online store and how each should be designed to attract buyers and increase sales.
1. Engaging Web Design
Even if you have the best product in your niche and the best customer service, your online business presence will suffer if your eCommerce website design is poor. When making a purchase, buyers consider visual appearance to be the most important factor.
You can create a profitable online store in two ways: hire a web designer or learn to code yourself. Alternatively, you can buy a ready-made template and customize it to your needs. Fortunately, the internet contains thousands of excellent eCommerce templates, all of which have clean designs, and simple layouts, and adhere to the most recent web design trends.
Design elements such as using full-width images and avoiding distraction with minimal text should captivate visitors. Here are some helpful hints for improving your web design:
- A professional can design your online store, or you can use an eCommerce store template.
- Web design should pique the interest of site visitors. If you use full-width images and little text, your customers will be more engaged.
2. An Awesome “About Us” Page
If a visitor navigates to your “About Us” page, it indicates that they are already interested in you and want you to prove that your product is the best. What you must do is state clearly who you are, what you do, and, most importantly, what services you provide to clients. All forms of social proof, including testimonials, accomplishments, and other forms of social proof, are welcome.
Your contact information should be clear and easy to find on your about page and throughout your website. Make certain to include your:
- Contact Email
- Address
- Social Media Channels
For site visitors, too much information on your “About Us” page can be overwhelming. Here are some pointers to consider when creating your “About Us” page:
- Include basic information about your company on the page, such as contact information, address, and social media accounts.
- Try not to cram too much information onto the “About Us” page. You can keep visitors interested with a simple design.
3. Provide Outstanding Online Support
Your customers must be confident that you will assist them if they require assistance after making a purchase. Guaranteeing after-sale troubleshooting and consulting before the sale can convert potential buyers into loyal, returning customers.
The most comprehensive and helpful type of support is a live-chat feature that is available 24 hours a day. This tool has the potential to increase the overall conversion rate of your site by 10% or more. If you don’t have the resources to provide round-the-clock support, you should still provide some kind of assistance during working hours.
Here are some helpful hints for providing excellent online support:
- To encourage new buyers to make their first purchase and returning customers to continue purchasing, offer assistance at all stages of the purchasing process.
- Make your customer service features visible from the homepage, such as a phone number or a chatbox, so that buyers are aware of them.
- If your online support is good inside the eCommerce Store, then your returning customers will increase.
4. Make Your Website SEO-Friendly
Your online store must receive traffic in order for purchases to take place. What is the secret to driving traffic? Search engine marketing (SEO). If you incorporate SEO keywords into your product titles and descriptions, your site is more likely to rank higher in search engine results. Increasing site visits and conversions requires increased visibility. A Digital marketing company like Digitech King can assist you with this process.
Here are some helpful hints for optimising your eCommerce Store for search engines:
- Use SEO tools to find keywords with high search volumes and low keyword difficulty that will help your site rank.
- Enter the SEO keywords you’re considering using on your product pages to see what results you’ll face. Consider changing your term to something less competitive if you get major sites as results.
5. Build Buyer Trust with Product Reviews
Product reviews and ratings boost your credibility significantly. Because online shoppers cannot meet sellers in person, they must rely on other buyers’ feedback to evaluate merchants. Customers save time by seeing what other customers think about a product through ratings on product pages.
When there are a lot of product reviews, they are more convincing. Don’t be afraid to ask your customers to leave a review after they’ve made a purchase to encourage more feedback. Customers who are happy with your product are unlikely to leave a review because everything is fine. Give them a gentle push, and they’ll be happy to tell others about their positive experience.
Here are some practical tips for using product reviews:
- Display the average rating and number of reviews at the top of each product page, as well as at the bottom where you display the content of the reviews, to increase the visibility of the feedback.
- Incentivize buyers to leave reviews by offering a small discount if they leave feedback after making a purchase.
- If customers see reviews on your web page in your eCommerce Store, then your customers will not be afraid to buy that product.
6. Make Sure Your Store Is Mobile-Friendly
With the growing popularity of smartphones for online shopping, merchants must ensure that their site design is mobile-friendly so that buyers can make purchases regardless of the device they’re using. Technically savvy sellers can check operating system requirements, such as these iOS guidelines, to ensure that their site is responsive. Merchants can also make their site device-friendly by using pre-configured mobile-responsive online store design templates.
Here are some helpful hints for making your eCommerce Store mobile-friendly.
- For easier scrolling and viewing of content on phone screens, vertical designs are preferred over horizontal designs.
- Load your store’s mobile responsiveness into a phone and scan it for errors.
7. Analyze data and iterate
Online merchants’ growth strategies cannot be improved unless they track their progress. The best way to track your selling activity and customer behaviour is to use a tool like Google Analytics. This programme provides sellers with detailed information about their stores, such as product sales percentages, site page visits, and abandoned shopping carts. You can easily set up Analytics for your online store by following these instructions.
Regularly examine your selling metrics to gain long-term insights into how to engage customers more effectively and encourage more purchases. Contact a Digital Marketing Company if you need help setting up Analytics or are unsure how to generate data-driven insights.
Here are a few practical tips for tracking and iterating on seller activity using Google Analytics:
- When configuring Analytics for your eCommerce store, enable the “enhanced eCommerce tracking” feature to gain a wealth of information about your sellers’ activity.
- To gain data-driven insights into your key buyer groups, create Google Analytics Segments.
8. Create an Outreach List
Growing your business entails more than just reaching out to customers; you also need to reach out to people in your industry who can help you reach more buyers within your target audience. By networking with the right groups, merchants can generate product buzz and broaden their reach to reach as many customers as possible. Sellers should think about contacting:
Traditional Reporters — writers for industry publications who can create content about your products.
Writers who create content for blogs that are specific to your industry and feature products similar to yours are known as industry bloggers.
Social Media Influencers — people with a large number of social media followers who make comments about your industry.
Similar Entrepreneurs are like-minded business owners who work in your industry and know your products.
These four groups can quickly spread the word about your product, so reaching out to network and sharing why you might be a good fit for a project is worthwhile. Here are a few practical ideas for expanding your outreach list:
- Use tools like Buzzsumo to find industry influencers with whom you can connect.
- Sort the people you want to contact into categories based on their number of followers or likelihood of responding.
9. Make use of ready-to-use storefront tools.
Merchants without a coding background should consider setting up their eCommerce store with software such as Shopify or WordPress. These programs have built-in store templates that allow sellers to easily customize their sites without any programming or graphic design knowledge.
Sellers can easily customize the design of their online store with Shopify. Here are some helpful pointers for utilizing ready-to-use storefront tools:
- Check that the design of your chosen template corresponds to the personalities of your key buyers as well as your brand image. Software like Shopify and BigCommerce will typically recommend which types of businesses are best suited for each design.
- When purchasing a Shopify theme or other software template, consider the cost of a graphic designer. A designer will cost more than almost all templates, but knowing the price difference will help you determine the template’s worth.
10. Maintain an Eye on the Competition
Customers look for the best shopping experiences and the lowest prices when they shop online. To keep customers interested in their store, merchants should identify and compare shops that are similar to their own. Are the return policies of these stores 60 days or 30 days? Is shipping free or do you have to pay a fee?
Understanding what makes competitors more advantageous allows sellers to determine which aspects of their business must change in order to retain returning customers and attract new buyers. Here are some practical tips for assessing your competition:
- Look for comparable products on major marketplaces rather than just other online stores. Amazon and eBay are excellent indicators of product and industry pricing competition. Use their prices as a guideline for your own to attract more buyers.
- Consider your competitors’ website design as well as their product offerings. Take note of how it differs from your store in terms of usability and how it attracts customers.
11. Promote Social Sharing
Organic social media and word-of-mouth marketing can aid in the growth of your eCommerce business. Social proof is the psychological phenomenon in which people believe that the behavior of others mirrors their own. Because online buyers cannot physically inspect your products, they rely on what other customers have to say about your company on Facebook to decide whether or not to make a purchase.
To generate buzz about your product, launch a social media sharing campaign. For example, a brand may offer customers an entry into a contest in exchange for leaving a comment on a social media post or tagging a friend. Merchants should also encourage social sharing by making their social media channels easily accessible on their websites.
Experts like Digitech King can help with services like Social Media Management and Social Media Marketing. Here are some concrete ideas for increasing social sharing:
- Don’t limit social sharing to only buyers! Contact other brands you’ve worked with and encourage them to share information about your company or tag your brand in their social media content.
- Don’t break the chain of sharing. If your company is mentioned on social media, try to continue the conversation by retweeting or commenting on the post.
12. The Benefits of Email Marketing
Email marketing is a straightforward method for merchants to communicate with their customers. Merchants can send targeted messages to buyer segments that address the specific needs of each group. By appealing to buyers’ interests, email marketing is a powerful tool for increasing sales and revenue.
To begin, collect buyers’ emails and ensure that they agree to receive messages from you. There are several places where you can ask buyers if they want to receive email notifications, such as during the checkout process or in a pop-up window while browsing.
Not every buyer will agree to join your email list, but those who do will be eager buyers who are passionate about your brand and will most likely respond favorably to your email marketing. Here are some email marketing pointers:
- Track the success of your messages using an email marketing tool like Campaign Monitor, such as how many times they were opened and which links were most frequently clicked.
- You can track which customers unsubscribe from your email list using email marketing software. Using other information from their buyer profile, try to deduce why they may have unsubscribed and how you can use that knowledge to prevent future cancellations.
Curate Your Store to Boost Conversions
Online stores give merchants complete control over their customers’ experiences. Rather than adhering to a marketplace’s policies, a seller can create their own online shop with their own terms to shape their buyers’ product interactions.
Online store owners who have this level of control can encourage more conversions if they understand how to craft each element of their store. Merchants can become more aware of how customers perceive each storage element by implementing the strategies outlined in this guide and using that knowledge to design their store. Curating an online store to match the desires and motivations of key buyers gives sellers an advantage over less conscientious competitors.
