7 Best Kept Secrets To ECommerce Exposed
Last update: 23 September 2021 at 10:12 am
5.00/5We’ve certainly come a long way since a 72-year-old grandmother in England used her television remote to place the first online order.
That simple shopping list of cornflakes, eggs, and margarine in 1984 paved the way for an online shopping industry with eCommerce sales worth 4.28 trillion USD in 2020.
And as these figures are projected to increase to 5.4 trillion USD by 2022, there’s never been a better time to have an eCommerce store.
But getting started can be stressful and there are many reasons why a potentially successful eCommerce business ends up failing. That’s why we’ve decided to share these seven eCommerce tips to ensure the exponential growth of your eCommerce shop.
Keep Your Consumers Happy
For this first of seven eCommerce tips, whether your business sells products online or in-store, happy online shoppers or customers are the most important asset of any successful business.
The link between customer satisfaction and economic success in business is well-established. So, if their satisfaction increases, so too will your sales figures.
As such, it is imperative that your clients are happy with both the products you sell and the service you provide.
Not only does this help you stand out from the competition, but they’re also more likely to show customer loyalty and retention to your online shop. Keeping customers happy is a top priority for eCommerce entrepreneurs.
No matter how profitable your online store might be, there is always plenty of room for improvement. And while you should always provide support by listening to negative feedback and complaints, around 96% of unhappy consumers won’t bother complaining and 91% of them will never come back again and instead shop with other online retailers.
Create planned mechanisms within your website which increase overall customer satisfaction by ensuring they always have a smooth and seamless shopping experience.
Always remaining vigilant about customer satisfaction and happiness translates directly to higher rates of customer retention. So not only will your sales, revenue, and website visitors increase, but they’ll also become loyal customers.
Let Your Customers Do the Talking
It is essential to build a strong brand identity through your eCommerce site, as it allows you to create and maintain an emotional connection with your targeted audience.
When a business can successfully cultivate a strong relationship with its customers, it can then leverage their confidence and enthusiasm to spread positive word-of-mouth recommendations regarding its product or services. This can also lead to repeat purchases.
Few marketing methods are more effective or trusted than word-of-mouth, but your customers won’t always do this without a little nudge – sometimes, you have to give them some extra motivation.
Don’t be afraid to contact your top customers with a personalized request for a testimonial, or at least to ask for their input regarding your offerings.
You can spread the word and build enthusiasm through social media channels through contests, blog posts, and even through user-generated content.
The more you personalize the interactions that you have with your customers, the more likely they are to become your best customers – true raving fans who drive new business straight to you.
Get Your Logistics Right
One of the largest problems faced by eCommerce businesses is easily shopping cart abandonment. Statistics show the desertion rate is often as high as 80%.
This is why getting your logistics right and ensure a smooth checkout process will increase sales and have a huge impact on your customer’s journey.
As many consumers will decide not to purchase if their preferred payment method isn’t an available option, it’s important to accept a variety of payment methods.
Virtual payment cards are an excellent idea as many people are wary about fraud and won’t share their credit card details online.
And while a loyalty program is great to reward customers, they won’t make a purchase or become repeat buyers if they don’t work correctly, so always double-check your deals and promo codes.
Lengthy delivery times are another serious problem as most consumers don’t want to wait for products to arrive after purchasing online.
And 34% of shopping carts are abandoned when consumers have to create an account to purchase an item, but registration should never be imposed on first-time buyers anyway.
You want them to make the purchase then decide to join at a later date. Details like these make all the difference. Because not only will quick and easy logistics attract new customers, but it’ll also help retain your existing ones as well.
Leverage Remarketing Power
Most professionals with eCommerce stores invest a significant percentage of their budget into marketing efforts, with the express goal of procuring more organic traffic to their eCommerce site which translates into more sales.
But, what about the customers you have already converted? If you aren’t actively targeting existing customers through remarketing, you could be missing out on some significant profits.
Repeat customers are more likely to make further purchases from you, and even tend to spend more money when they do, so make sure that your AdWords and Facebook campaigns are specifically targeting those customers who have already visited your online store to ensure an optimal marketing Return On Investment (ROI).
Don’t Botch Your Dropshipping
Dropshipping is the process by which your product is sent directly from the manufacturer to the customer, and has drastically simplified the sales process for many eCommerce professionals with an online store. However, the process isn’t without its pitfalls.
The most common issue tends to be related to slow shipping times, low-quality products, and no tracking numbers for customers to use.
These issues can completely ruin your reputation, so it is essential that you ensure that your dropshipping option for your eCommerce business is a solid one.
Always perform regular quality checks of the products your supplier is manufacturing before you begin to dropship them to your customers. It is vital that you have first-hand confidence in the products and ensure that they live up to the promise of your brand image.
For shipping, engage a quality fulfillment operation that can offer your customers a trackable courier option. This way, your customers will be able to stay informed as to when to expect their order and track it along the way.
Build an Audience Pre-Launch for Your ECommerce Store
Far too many eCommerce experts make the colossal mistake of setting up their entire store and launching it before making any moves to market their product or brand.
The issue with this is that digital marketing often takes time to start delivering any desirable sales results. In the meantime, expenses such as web-hosting fees will have to be covered without any sales revenue or potentially more traffic coming in.
Instead, it is essential that you create urgency and begin marketing early and focus on building up a pre-launch consumer audience. Kickstarter campaigns can be a great way to cultivate funds and build some buzz before launching a product.
Even if you aren’t developing a completely new product, you still need social proof through people talking and spread the word about your product pages and your brand.
Product giveaways, social media contests, and email marketing sign-ups are all great ways to help you to build a pre-launch audience, helping to ensure that your store makes new sales and success stories from the day it launches.
Stay on Top of Your Analytics
It’s very important to understand how visitors are finding and interacting with your eCommerce website to make the best possible marketing decisions going forward.
Therefore, analytics software is exactly what a growing successful eCommerce business needs. Thankfully, digital marketing initiatives have these kinds of analytical metrics attached, which can help eCommerce site owners better understand your customers and your website’s overall performance.
While eCommerce analytics offer powerful data-driven insights that measure all aspects of your online business, there’s a wide variety of tools, eCommerce tips, software, and integrations available which provide different collections of data they provide.
Most of your foundational data will most likely come from Google Analytics as it is useful, robust, and free. Use it to create conversion goals for things like the number of visitors that complete particular actions, such as buying a certain product or clicking on your social media links.
To provide potential customers with a more authentic and personalized shopping experience on your eCommerce website, Optimizely has some great eCommerce-specific features and the most important eCommerce tips.
Or, if you’re unsure what to do with all the analytics information, AARRR metrics create a framework for optimizing your funnel and making superior data-driven decisions that’ll help you stay ahead of the game.
