Even if online commerce is flourishing, marketing is still essential for expanding your clientele and gaining new visitors to your website. Keep in mind that while there may be more opportunities available to you now, there is also more competition.
Growth in online shopping is expected to keep growing for the foreseeable future. Why would it do otherwise when it is so convenient and offers so much choice? It’s highly unlikely people are going to go back to how they were shopping before the internet came about. This means that if you are dead set on expanding your eCommerce company, you should be looking for ways to do it. You need to stand out, and you need to make a profit.
Even though there are numerous strategies you can employ to guarantee the long-term success of your eCommerce enterprise, not all of them will be appropriate for your company. However, there are general techniques that can be applied with little effort. Read on to find out what some of them are.
Build An Email List
Building an email list is a big job that can’t be avoided if you want to improve your eCommerce store. It may seem hard at first, but there are many ways to build an email list for your online store that don’t involve starting from scratch, and the positive results you can gain from doing this far outweigh the work you have to put into it (as long as you do it the right way).
It’s all about finding loyal customers. When you build a group of loyal customers, you do several important things for your business, including the fact that the people you are retargeting with your emails already have an interest in what you sell, and you already have permission to send those promotional emails, and you don’t therefore have to buy any ads.
The reason email works so well is because your customers choose to hear from you more rather than being targeted by paid ads. Plus, you have full control over your email list, but you don’t own social media platforms. After all, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and all the rest can stop working, and people might not be online to see your ad. With an email, they’ll always get the information you want to send across, and that should improve your eCommerce website.
Upsell And Cross-Sell
Almost every eCommerce platform has a way for online sellers to show off products that go well together. If the owner or manager of a small or medium-sized eCommerce business misses this chance by not adding upsell and cross-sell products or not giving a lot of thought to the products they list, sales could be lost.
Upselling is the act of trying to get a customer to buy a similar product that costs more or has a higher profit margin than the one they are looking at. Cross-selling is the process of getting shoppers to buy related products after they have bought something or said they want to buy something.
In practice, upsell and cross-sell offers in e-commerce are made on product detail pages or during the checkout process. Using sales relationship data, try to upsell and cross-sell products that are likely to get shoppers to add items to their shopping cart, increasing the value of their order. In other words, look at what people often buy at the same time, and this will give you a good idea about the products you could show people when it comes to cross-selling or upselling.
Often, online sellers can improve upsells and cross-sells without changing their software. You just need to do a little research.
Place Reviews On Your Site
Customers will look at what other people say about a product before making up their minds. So, you must have reviews on your social media sites and your eCommerce site. This makes sure that customers’ good feelings about your brand are reinforced at every point of contact and on every platform. Of course, to get those good reviews, you need to have excellent customer service in place to ensure people are happy. This will include answering emails and phone calls in a timely manner, offering more than the customer expects (perhaps great packaging or a free gift), and dealing with any credit card dispute in the right way, for example.
You can add customer ratings and feedback to your online store by using a variety of apps that are easy to use and don’t cost much. You can also send them an email asking them to leave a review.
No matter what you do, make sure the reviews are easy to see. To have the most impact, the reviews should be front and center on the storefront so no one can miss the fact that you have had many happy customers in the past.
Publish Blogs And Newsletters
One of the best and most proven ways to help your eCommerce business grow is to use content. Sadly, many business owners don’t see the strength of this tactic because it takes time and work, and the results don’t come right away. It’s a long-term strategy that only works if you’re good and consistent, so make sure you bear this in mind.
When done right, writing and posting interesting content on your blog can give your organic SEO a huge boost. A blog can’t just have one or two posts every few months; it has to be more regular than that. Also, if all you do is post content about sales, that won’t work either. The more helpful and interesting content you post, the more people will find out about your eCommerce business online, and the more customers you will get.
In the same way, sending weekly, biweekly, or monthly newsletters to your prospects and customers will remind them of you. These newsletters should be written with educational and helpful topics in mind. It will also make them more likely to buy from you because they will trust you and see you as an expert in your niche.
Blog posts and newsletters should be educational, interesting, and full of useful information. Think e-guides, checklists, how-to guides, and tips that relate to your business or product and are written for your target audience. Blog at least once a week and send out a newsletter once a month. If you don’t have the time or skills to write your own content, you can hire a professional to do it for you.
Optimize Your Store For Mobile
People love to shop on their phones or tablets, and this is becoming more and more popular. Now, the most important thing for eCommerce retailers is to have a website that looks good, is optimized for conversions, and works well on mobile devices.
So, this is a good idea for you not only because it’s what your customers want, but also because it’s what your competitors will do. Competition is getting tougher, and stores that don’t make mobile shopping easy end up missing out on a lot of money and opportunities.
Add Live Chat
Customers can get answers to their inquiries or voice their issues in real-time when you have a live chat, which can increase your company’s conversion rate or make purchasing more pleasant for your customers.
Plus, once you implement live chat, you will be able to identify repeat issues with your website or concerns voiced by your target demographic. Conversion rates can be improved in general by addressing these issues.
Incorporating live chat into the majority of eCommerce platforms is a straightforward process that calls for minimal technological know-how. Not only is live chat a low-cost option, but it may be activated whenever it is most useful.