It is not uncommon that most new ecommerce websites now struggle to reap profits from this competitive Internet world market. Back then, internet business is so new that whoever can make an ecommerce website would benefit by a big margin as compared to those who can’t.
The gravest mistake that most ecommerce starters make is that they think putting up an ecommerce website, upload all their products and hope for the best will be sufficient. However, the fact proves the contrary.
In 2015, ecommerce industry is no longer new and innovative but it has become a field that every business should be in. If you break down the industry into a few stages we would say ecommerce is now on the peak of the growing state.
So, to compete and put yourself in a better position against your competitors, there are a few methods that are proven to work and benefit you as long as you put an effort in it.
1. Build a mailing list
You can have 1,000 products in your ecommerce website but without a single customer or subscriber, you are not earning anything. So try to build your customer base by first creating a mailing list. Creating a mailing list enables you to collect leads and contacts that you can use it later for sales purpose.
This method works best for ecommerce websites that have good amount of visitors but no one cares to register an account or buy anything. Create a pop up or squeeze a floating bar on your site that encourage your visitors to opt-in to your mailing list.
People will not share their information with you unless they are offered an incentive (especially email address that is prone to spam), so don’t be stingy and offer some incentives like a discount voucher for whoever is willing to opt-in.
2. Make search easy
Most ecommerce websites have a huge catalog of products, but most customers do not have the time to browse through your whole catalog to find the items that they want. Time conscious buyers will always use the search function to immediately find things that they are looking for in the shortest time.
What should you do then? Firstly, make sure your search bar is obvious and visible on the top and above the fold section. Secondly, ensure that your search function is working properly and all your products are properly tagged with the right description and tags for a more accurate search result. Lastly, always check that your search is working fast and return the result in the shortest time, as these customers do not have the patience to wait for your search engine to load.
If your search function is not fast enough, you can consider to host your ecommerce website in a better web host, and avoid hosting plans that are too cheap or too good to be true as they are mostly overselling.
On this second part for “making search easy”, you must also make searching your website at Google to be easy. Which means you have to do proper SEO to boost your search engine ranking. If you are nowhere to be found, it’s not rocket science to understand why you are not having sales from your ecommerce website.
3. Ease up the purchasing process
eCommerce has to be easy and provide a pleasant shopping experience to your online customers. If you want to sell something you have to make it easy for people to buy it from you. When it comes to ecommerce, reduce the buying process to as lesser steps as you could.
Most sellers will limit it to 3 simple steps, 1) Choose Your Products, 2) Fill in your information, 3) Pay and wait for delivery. Anything that is more complicated and requires more effort than these will present a less satisfying experience for online shoppers and diminish the chance of return purchase.
Payment should also be hassle free for whoever that has access to credit card and internet banking facility. Apply for a payment gateway in order to process these types of payment automatically instead of making your customers to go through the manual process of payment. The more chances and time you give them to rethink about the purchase decision, the more chances you will lose the sales.
4. Upsell and encourage impulse purchase
If a customer buy only 1 item from you, it shouldn’t end there. It is 70% easier to sell back to an existing customer than to acquire a new customer. Thus, you should really work on getting repeated sales from your customers than investing more in acquiring new ones.
Upsell strategy can be done in several methods and ways in your ecommerce website. One of the most popular way is to display “Related Products” or “You May Also Interested in These” section just beneath the product that the customer is currently viewing. By having this section you gave them more items to look at. If this is done correctly by inserting products that are closely related to each other, your sales will increase by at least 50%.
On the other hand, to encourage impulse purchase you have to insert some banners that have attractive offers at the places where your customers will see. For example on the sidebar, the order confirmation page or the page just before checkout.
You can refer to Dominos Pizza website and see how strongly they are engaging in baiting impulse purchase and upselling, there’s definitely a thing to learn or two, just make sure you don’t overdo it and frustrate your customers.
5. Focus on your customers
Your customers are the one who contribute monetary value to your online business, not you. Design a shopping experience that your customers want, not you alone.
Gather feedback and reviews from your customers to understand what they think about your ecommerce website and have them comment on the negative things for you to fix it.
Ask your customers what they expect from you, or what products they are more interested in. Ask them are they comfortable with your prices, or do they have bad experience with the shipping company that you use? Understand what problems they face with your online business and try your best to fix them if they are within your reach.
At the end of the day, a bad and unhappy customer will tarnish your online business image and spread bad word of mouth, so always keep your customers happy!
Need more advices and tips? We always provide the first hand information and useful guides to customers who sign-up for our Ultimate eCommerce plan, so get yourself a ecommerce website set-up by us now and enjoy the expertise and knowledge from us!
Sanz Teoh
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