10 Ways to Make Your eCommerce Site A Success
Many entrepreneurs, new and experienced alike, are discovering the power of starting their own e commerce business.
It’s a smart business move. Consider this:
“Consumers spent $517.36 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2018, up 15.0% from $449.88 billion spent the year prior, according to a new Internet Retailer analysis of industry data and historical U.S. Commerce Department figures.” 1
You may have thought about starting your own ecommerce business or you might already have a physical store and want to increase your sales by offering your products online. If this is you, then you probably have a lot of questions about how to start an ecommerce business.
Here are 10 tips to help you figure out some of the answers to those questions and make the launch of your e commerce site a success.
1. Do your research
If you are starting from scratch, you definitely have some big decisions to make. The best way to do that is armed with a little market research so you understand what your options are to enter a market with your ecommerce site.
A good place to start is with big, evergreen markets. Health, Wealth, Dating, and Entertainment usually fall into these categories.
For example, under the health market you could decide to sell fitness clothing.
It may be easier to sell something that you are personally passionate about, so keep that in mind as you are looking into it.
No matter what you decide to sell, make sure that something similar is selling well online. This will help you avoid putting a lot of work into selling something that nobody wants.
You can do this by looking at top sellers on big ecommerce sites like Amazon and eBay. You can also look at competitor sites in the market you choose. If they are selling it, you can most likely sell it too.
2. Decide what your niche will be.
Once you have decided what market to enter into, an even smarter step is to niche it down a little further. Targeting a particular group of people is the one of the smartest things to do with any business, even though most of us resist it naturally.
By specializing and targeting your products to a specific group, you are better able to attract and serve that group. This also means you can charge higher prices because the items are so customized.
Using the fitness clothing from the previous tip, you may decide that you want to sell yoga workout clothing to working single mothers in the 25-45 age range.
Defining the customer who your products serve makes it much easier to bring the two together.
3. Platform or Custom Ecommerce site?
Many new ecommerce business owners have a choice to make when it comes to their website as well.
Should you get a custom site built?
Or use a platform site built on a management system like Shopify?
Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
A custom site may be exactly what you want in the branding department, but you may have to have some management tools created and customized to your specifications.
Shopify may have some plugins and tools that help you manage sales, but you may not like the way that a template site conveys the unique selling points of your brand. Overall, it is considered by many to be the best ecommerce platform.
Either way, it is important that you find a good ecommerce website development company to help you build that perfect balance of style and functionality.
A good developer can help you come up with an ecommerce website design that fits your needs, whether it is developed on the Shopify platform or custom-built from scratch.
The best ecommerce sites ensure that their website makes their business look professional and encourages their customers to buy with confidence.
This is a major benefit of hiring an agency to develop your ecommerce site.
For example, RBD Digital Marketing is recognized as a Top Shopify Company as well as a Top E-Commerce Development Company on DesignRush.
4. Fill your digital shelves.
Are you physically storing inventory and shipping directly to customers?
Are you taking orders and dropshipping to customers through a third party vendor?
Either way, a key to success is to get up listings of your products.
It is probably smart to learn how to enter the listings yourself until you are comfortable with the process.
Then once you are able, pass this duty off to an employee or virtual assistant and start to manage other areas of the business.
Typically the more listings you have, the more sales you will make.
5. Figure out your traffic solution.
Your ecommerce site looks great and has products listed for sale. But if nobody knows about it then what good is it doing you?
Develop a plan of attack to get the word out about your ecommerce site and attract customers.
Paid traffic is one of the fastest ways you can generate sales for your ecommerce website.
The fastest way to get paid traffic through big platforms like Google or Facebook. This also allows you to target customers based on the niche demographics you defined earlier.
Another option is to attract people organically through social media posts or creating content like blog posts or YouTube videos.
One of the best ways to stay in front of your customers is also through retargeting campaigns. Once someone visits your ecommerce site, you can place ads that follow them around the internet to give them a friendly reminder to return.
In any case, you want to keep feeding the machine with fresh customers so you can make more sales. This also helps you to see which products are converting for you and which ones are not.
E commerce sites, like all businesses need customers. A solid traffic plan will help your business find the customers it is looking for.
6. Collect leads.
The easiest way to make more money is to sell to somebody who has already bought from you before.
If you have to constantly rely on new customers to make sales, then you are going to have a tough time in business.
This is why it is so important to use landing pages or optin forms to collect email addresses from your ecommerce store visitors.
Most people are not keen to just give out their email address, so give them some incentive by offering a digital coupon or special deal as a thank you for visiting the site.
You can and should talk with your ecommerce website developer to integrate this functionality into your site.
Work with them to come up with a handsome and high converting landing page or popup email collection form for website visitors.
7. Follow up.
Have you ever heard the phrase “The fortune is in the follow up” ?
Think about this stat: 30% of consumers say they would rather buy from a website they have bought from before.
Once you are getting visitors and collecting their email addresses, make sure you are reaching out to them regularly!
Send out emails to your list talking about specials you are running, coupons you may have, flash sales, holiday sales, etc.
Reaching out to your customer list regularly with specials and sales is a surefire way to do a LOT more business. According to the numbers, at least 30% more!
8. Scale the winners. Replace the losers.
Some products will sell like crazy. You may be able to raise the price on them and make more money even if you sell less. Focus on driving even more traffic to your best and most profitable products.
Other products may not do so well. You might be able to improve their performance by updating sales copy or product descriptions. If they continue to do poorly then replace them with something else.
One of the best benefits of having an ecommerce website is that you can see by the numbers what is working and what is not.
9. Scale the business.
As your ecommerce business grows, you can hire more people.
You can list more products. Test new and better products.
And you can reach more customers to serve even better.
You may discover that your ecommerce business is something you love and want to continue to grow.
Or you may decide to take on a new project and build another ecommerce business!
10. Build a winning team.
Hiring good people to help you build your ecommerce business is a must to scale and grow your business to the next level. Top rated US eCommerce Companies like RBD Digital Marketing are here to help you build your winning team!
Having an ecommerce business in the first place starts once you put a website up to send people to so that they can do business with you.
Your first smart hire should be an ecommerce website development agency that will work with you to give life to the ideas in your head. This is not an area where you want to try to do everything yourself along with all the other tasks involved in building a business.
Many a business has disappeared because of business owners who were unwilling to let go of the reins and hire a professional to create a solution for them.
