E-commerce is slowly starting to replace the high street; the transition is palpable. It is simply much easier and more convenient to buy online; whether that’s furniture or clothes, electronics or utensils. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur, then you are probably hoping to capitalize on this trend and establish your own e-commerce company. Of course, there are a lot of other business-savvy people wanting to do the same. So, how exactly does one start up a successful e-commerce business? What are the tricks of the trade? We plan on answering both of these questions in this article. Read on to find out our top tips for starting up your own e-commerce business.
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Use an Ecommerce Website Builder
Most people who start a business don’t necessarily know about website building. Though hiring a website designer is an option, this can be quite expensive, with designers potentially charging many thousands of dollars. If you are just starting, you probably don’t have enough money for this. That’s why ecommerce website builders are incredibly useful. Not only are they less expensive, but they also mean you don’t have to be a tech wizard to use them. Ecommerce businesses can customize everything from their template and colour scheme to product pages and payment providers. This allows you to properly establish your brand. A good-looking website will grab people’s attention and convert more traffic into sales.
Focus on User Experience
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User experience is of massive importance when it comes to e-commerce. When customers arrive on your website, you want them to be able to navigate it easily and quickly find what they’re looking for. If products or information is too difficult to locate, then they will simply give up and look elsewhere. Loading times also affect user experience. People nowadays expect websites to load within less than a second. If your website takes several seconds to load, customers might grow impatient and – once again – look elsewhere. So, when building your e-commerce business, make sure that the shop has an intuitive interface, and everything is displayed.
Optimize for Mobile
Following on from the previous paragraph, let’s discuss mobile compatibility. Ecommerce businesses will want their websites to be mobile compatible, as more and more people choose to buy products using their phones nowadays. In addition to optimizing the user interface for mobile, it might also be worth developing an app for your business. Apps are brilliant for improving navigation. They also make it much easier to tailor your shop to the customer’s preferences, analyzing data from their browsing history or purchase history. If someone abandons their shopping cart mid-purchase, then you can also send them a push notification to chase up the sale. All in all, optimizing for mobile is a brilliant tactic for e-commerce business owners.
Don’t Forget SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is incredibly important for e-commerce businesses. SEO is a form of consent-based marketing. It makes sure that when customers type in keywords that are relevant to your business, they are led to your website. The better your SEO, the higher your website will rank on the search engine results page. Consequently, you can generate more traffic and convert more sales. So, SEO is something you should be mindful of when establishing your e-commerce business. Make sure to enhance each page for SEO with keywords. One of your keywords should be the name of your business as well. Otherwise, nobody will be able to find your website, even when they search for it specifically.
Use Social Media
You need to raise awareness of your e-commerce business to start seeing some results for all your efforts. One of the best ways to do this is through social media marketing. The main purpose of social media is to grow an online presence. This can be done through consistent posting across all social networking platforms. When creating your posts, make sure to link back to your website to drive more traffic there. It is also important to focus on the media platforms that your target audience tends to populate. For example, professionals often use LinkedIn, whilst the casual consumer tends to prefer Instagram.
Don’t Rush!
Last but not least, don’t rush into anything! Take your time to establish your e-commerce business. This includes investing energy into perfecting the website and enhancing it for search engine optimization. Before launch day, try building some hype by taking to social media and creating a countdown. You should also test your website to ensure everything works properly, so the user’s experience is optimized. The best things take time to create. Remember that.
These are all our top tips for setting up your own e-commerce business. Hopefully, this guide has provided you with a bit more insight into digital marketing and what makes a successful website for e-commerce.
