Top 10 Tips for eCommerce Success
Top 10 Tips for Your Ecommerce Business provides eCommerce tips, news, and information to help e-commerce businesses grow, develop and succeed online. It also provides information about software, technology, and marketing.
Top 10 Tips for eCommerce Success
Our latest post is all about tips for eCommerce businesses, including advice on how to choose the best theme and plugins, how to drive traffic to your site, and more.
- Experiment as your business depends on it.
- Don’t pocket the profits just yet.
- Commit to a schedule for consistency
- Build out your channels from day one
- Start building relationships with relevant influencers
- Make sure customers have access to relevant information
- Put thought into your copy
- Make your website visually appealing
- Find an eCommerce brand to look up to
- Get feedback on your store
1. Experiment as your business depends on it.
To succeed, you’re going to need to experiment a lot. You’ll need to create ads for different products. Test different copies, formats, and images. Experimenting with ads is what will eventually bring in customers and drive sales. Once you’ve created profitable ads you can start experimenting on your website. Many people focus on improving their website first. However, you don’t know how customers are responding to certain features if you don’t have any yet. Avoid making assumptions about your customers. Be open to being wrong about what works – you won’t know the truth until you look at the data.
2. Don’t pocket the profits just yet.
It can be tempting to keep any profit you make. However, if you want your business to grow, you’ll need to reinvest money into your business. Money makes money. Instead, of purchasing to buy new equipment, spend your profit on advertising. You’ll probably want to create several $5 ads at first to see which product people respond to best. However, once you’ve found your winning product, you’ll need to spend a lot more than $5 to make the kind of money people dream of.
If your goal is to make a $3000 profit each month, you’ll need to spend about $3000 on ads, which will bring in roughly $9000 in revenue. Boosted Facebook posts convert best for my business but you’ll need to find the type of ad that works best for you. By reinvesting the profit for several months, you give your business a chance to grow and become sustainable. Eventually, you’ll be able to live off the money you’re making.
3. Commit to a schedule for consistency
When starting a new eCommerce store, you’ll want to follow a consistent schedule so that your customers can know when to check back. For example, if you add new products each week, you should do it on the same day of the week so people check back on your website on that day every week. If you commit to a blog, adding posts on the same days will encourage people to keep checking back. As soon as you become inconsistent, you start to lose your customer loyalty.
4. Build out your channels from day one
As soon as you’ve bought your store domain name, start building out an audience. You might start with posts on social media to grow a fanbase so that when you launch you have an audience ready to buy. Once your store is launched, you’ll want to start collecting email addresses and building referral traffic. By doing this from day one, you’ll grow your customer base faster. By focusing on building out your social media, email list, and referral traffic, you’ll likely need to spend less on ads over the long term. You’ll be able to promote your content to your audience through your channels.
5. Start building relationships with relevant influencers
It takes a few months to find the best influencers to promote your products and even then it’s not guaranteed. From personal experience, I found a great influencer to promote my products, and less than six months later they had been doing so many sponsored posts that they were no longer effective. Finding a great influencer is a lot harder than it looks. Sometimes an influencer has a high price but it doesn’t convert to sales. You might want to check out Famebit for access to the best influencers.
6. Make sure customers have access to relevant information
When starting an eCommerce store you’ll want to make sure your customers have access to everything they need to make an informed purchase. You’ll want to include shipping and return information so that customers are aware of the policies before their purchase. You’ll always want to make sure you have a visible contact page so that customers can easily contact you should an issue or question arise. A great resource that covers everything you’ll need to complete on your website is our How to start an eCommerce Store in Less than 30 Minutes post.
7. Put thought into your copy
Many store owners make the mistake of not adding copies when importing products into their store. The bullet points listed are there to give you product details yet don’t help convert sales on their own. Writing a description of the product and selecting the most valuable bullet points will better help you achieve more sales. People often read the copy if they’re on the fence about a product. By writing a short paragraph detailing how the product benefits your customer and mentioning features while also explaining how to use the product you’ll be better able to persuade your browser to purchase. For example, if you sell dresses in your store you might mention how great they’ll look at their next event, you might mention how the fabric showcases their figure, and recommend shoe colors or jewelry looks that would best complement the dress.
8. Make your website visually appealing
Your entire website should be very visually appealing. Product pages should have multiple product images showcasing different angles and uses. Your homepage should have an attention-grabbing banner image that allows the customer to picture themselves with the product. Even your blog posts should be very visual. You should have several images, gifs, and maybe even a video in each post to separate bodies of text.
9. Find an eCommerce brand to look up to
When starting it’s important to seek a mentor. However, sometimes having access to a successful eCommerce mentor can be hard. People don’t necessarily want to share their niches, and ad templates and answer questions that can be easily Googled. You can join communities to seek advice on occasion. However, the most effective way to succeed is to find an eCommerce brand you aspire to be like and model your brand after them. For example, if you want to be a customer-centric business you might model your store after Disney. If you want to master the art of branding you might model your business after Dollar Shave Club. If you want to create a mega marketplace you might model your store after Amazon. You don’t need to copy their niches or style to succeed, you just need to find the patterns you love about a particular online store and apply them.
10. Get feedback on your store
When you launch your new store, it’s important to get feedback on it. The biggest mistake I see entrepreneurs making with this is that they seek feedback from other entrepreneurs in public communities. The problem with this is that you’re sharing your niche and products with your competitors. While an entrepreneur can give you great insight, you don’t want to rely on feedback from people who might be competing with you. Never reveal your niche to another entrepreneur. You can always reach out to Shopify support to get a store review.
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Do you need help with eCommerce?
- If you have been in eCommerce for any length of time, then you already know how overwhelming it can be. There are so many platforms out there to choose from, and choosing the right platform for your company can be a daunting task.
- For all the products, services, and features that eCommerce platforms have to offer, the most important part of eCommerce should not be overlooked. The most important aspect of eCommerce is that it must be easy for customers to shop and easy for merchants to sell. That is why eCommerce platforms like Shopify were created.
- eCommerce success depends on three things: good marketing, good technology, and a good business model. If you have all three, you can succeed. If you don’t have one, your eCommerce journey can be challenging.
