Ecommerce success primarily means having a thriving platform for selling products and services online. This, however, comes with a lot of efforts which includes running the right type of business and having a great website or online store with appropriate user friendly features and staying focused on your products.
Starting an ecommerce business does not just mean having an ecommerce website. You need to grow your business online, sell products or services and build up trust among customers.
Understand Your Type of Business
You need to understand the type of business that you want to run- one that suits your persona the best. You could choose from the following 7 standard types:
- Only Online: The products are visible only online
- Mail Order Business: An ecommerce website and a printed catalog and maybe a couple of stores
- Boutique Bricks and Clicks type:This is the business model where you have just one or maybe two physical stores (referred as ‘bricks’) and an online presence (‘clicks’)
- Big Bricks and Clicks type:This business model has numerous physical stores along with the ecommerce website
- Mainstream Piggyback: This type involves using online businesses such as Amazon and eBay to sell our products rather that have a website of your own.
- Niche piggyback: In this model, vendors of similar products get together so that they sell more easily. The sellers may even have an own site too.
- Full multi-channel: This type is definitely the most complex to run. It involves multiple physical stores, catalog and online sites
Recognize Your Own USP Unique Selling Proposition
Once you have identified the type of business you want to enter into, make sure you know what your USP is. It is important to give your customer a clear picture. Since customer service is of prime importance, ensure that your phone lines are manned throughout so your customers can reach you any time.
Stay Focused on Your Products
Successful ecommerce businesses focus on a particular range of products. Decide beforehand on what kind of products you want to sell. It is easier to achieve your goals if you sell in a particular niche because it is easy for customers to understand and remember what you sell. At the same time it would be easy for you to scale up your skills in procuring the exact product type. Even your marketing effort becomes easier because you know where to focus. It can easily play to your advantage because you could be seen as an expert in the range.
In the final analysis, how many products you choose is your idea but it would pay to have a basic product, a medium one and the best of it too. It would give the customers a choice and they would be happy for it. It would also help you in keeping proper inventory.
Find a Good Web Host
Since you need to have a website, you might as well find a good hosting service that can offer you great speed and security features. As your site speed will affect your search engine traffic as well, it would be wise to even pay a little more for a better service.
Infographic Source: visually.net
Make Your Website User-Friendly
Make sure you have a good website but something that goes well with your business both in terms of appeal as well as functionality. There is no point in starting off with a heavy website containing umpteen features that are not really required for you, especially in the beginning.
Drive Traffic to Your Website
Just because you have a website you can’t expect customers to pour in immediately. At least initially, you need to market your site and drive people online by using various marketing techniques. Use social media for one, to promote your website.
A Focused Marketing Strategy Would Help
In the beginning, create a marketing plan of your own even if it is for a short duration of 3 to 6 months, so that you begin to get customers going online to your store. This will help in gaining customer feedback and focusing more on what they want.
Gather Customer Data
Gathering customer data- name, phone numbers, email and physical addresses from day one, could prove to be a master stroke later on. You don’t know when you need to get in touch with your customers to make special announcements! You should even encourage email sign up on your website.
Plan and Build Partnerships
However good and functional your site may be, it is quite tough to make it really successful on its own steam. It would pay to build alliances or partnerships with well-established firms so they could influence your business too. Also look for opportunities to help other businesses- it would definitely drive mutual benefit.
Target Traffic Through Landing Pages
Search engines surely drive traffic to your website but more targeted traffic can bring you great results by way of conversions. Regardless of what you sell, one sure way to drive traffic to your site is to egg them on through social media onto your well-crafted landing pages and further. Make the landing page secure and you could even connect it to integrate the payments!
Install Analytics on Your Site
Last but not the least, track your conversions with Google Analytics. You can do this by installing Google’s free analytical tools. This would help you assimilate a lot of information on how your sales is doing and how you can improve on it.
These tips and tricks should help you to build not just a great ecommerce website but a flourishing ecommerce business. So go ahead and reap the benefits of doing ecommerce business online!