You’re in the game now. A part of an ever-expanding group of online entrepreneurs aiming for a slice of a projected $6.5 trillion ecommerce pie by 2022. Your e-commerce website is up and running, maybe even made some sales, but you want more. You want to grow this project into a sustainable business. One you’re proud to run.
Are you that ambitious store owner?
You’re in the right spot. This is an ultimate guide to running a successful e-commerce store. When you’re done reading this guide, you’ll have a clear goal, a priority list of what to do and how to take these steps — all the way to becoming a functioning CEO of a profitable online company.
So, are you ready?
Good… let’s go!
There are basically 3 things you have to work on when running your ecommerce store. They’re the:
- Shopping Experience
- Customer Relationships
- Store Visibility
We’ll take a detailed look at each of these 3 pillars of your ecommerce store.
Shopping Experience
This is where the magic happens. Whatever perception your website visitors have of your brand will determine how they relate to your store. You’re always a few steps away from making them repeat customers and advocates of your brand or touch-and-go web visitors who leave angry reviews. And trust me, you don’t want to have to deal with the latter.
How can you guarantee that web visitors become happy customers?
Web Experience
Although you’re online, you still run a store. You may not have shelves, wet floor signs, and a landlord, but you need good site architecture, an attractive web design and a solid web hosting platform.
It’s important to grab your visitors with the right shapes and colors, help them navigate your store with good architecture and cancel sales resistance with a fast website. You can’t afford to have your website load for more than 2 seconds. 32% of your visitors won’t wait to see those nice products and 9 out of every 10 visitors give up on seeing your store after 5 seconds of waiting.
Product Experience
Whatever it is you sell, products or services, remember that description and proof are very powerful sales tools. You’re already at a disadvantage here. Brick-and-mortar stores have the physical touch to their products and services. In many cases, sales reps follow these prospects as they check out store wares.
So, think of ways to make your website store experience as close to that of brick-and-mortar stores. Augmented reality could help with beauty and fashion products. Professionally shot product pictures and videos can do so too. Add descriptive copy written with your ideal buyer in mind, and your sales will grow.
Iterate Till Success
Fail early, fail often but always fail forward. – John C. Maxwell
Entrepreneurship isn’t a game of guarantees. It’s pedal to the floor while bumping your way through the darkness ahead. You’ll hardly get favorable results the first time you write a product’s copy. And even if you did, A/B test with another copy. Chances are you’re one iteration away from a killer conversion rate. And when you find that killer conversion rate, test some more. It’s a never-ending process.
You see, there are many ways to enhance the shopping experience at your ecommerce store. Start with the 3 above and you’ll dramatically make buying easy for your web visitors. As you improve, add buying incentives like promos, free shipping or marketing stunts. Also consider adding different payment options to your website to simplify the sales process.
Customer Relationships
Who visits your website?
Who clicks your buy button?
Do you really know them?
If you don’t, your competition will, and soon enough, whisk buyers away from you. You see, many ecommerce stores never seem to get that big break for many reasons. Two of them include not having referrals and repeat customers.
As a result, revenue flatlines — followed by the dreams of the store owner. You can’t run a successful ecommerce store like that. It’s time to wake up. Nothing happens if you do nothing. Get your reviews and testimonials, set up customer service, build your email list and nurture it, and for sales’ sake, blog regularly.
Reviews and Testimonials
Nearly 100% of online shoppers read reviews before buying products. And positive reviews influence 90% of these review readers to buy certain products. This is a goldmine my friend. Get to work emailing your customers and get testimonials about the products or services they bought from you.
Don’t just go for the best ones. Every review is important. It’s feedback on what to do and not do in the future. Now share this information with website visitors and watch them buy. You have nothing to worry about if you sell good products.
Customer Service
Customer service goes beyond just fixing problems your customers encounter with your products or services. It’s an avenue to build and foster your relationships with customers. If you take it seriously, you’ll find better ways to serve your target market.
Set your brand apart from the competition by going the extra mile for your customers. We all know your customer service staff should be trained in human interaction, be knowledgeable in the products and services you offer and have a good work ethic. Take it a step further with your store; be curious about the state of your customer and why they feel the way they feel.
Oftentimes, people don’t make clear what they want and only an empathic listener would be patient enough to probe long enough to see what’s getting under their customer’s skin. You’re a public servant first and a businessperson second. Genuinely caring about your customers is the only way to achieve sustained business success. Products change, needs evolve but nurtured human relationships last longer.
These heartfelt conversations shouldn’t end in customer service chat rooms, Twitter DMs and phone calls. Keep engaging buyers through active emails and regular blogging campaigns.
Store Visibility
If your store is not seen by your target market, then nothing happens. Sales start with getting the attention of potential buyers and that’s why you need to take digital marketing seriously. First start with the online platforms your targets frequent and watch what they do at each platform. Then use those behaviors to create contextual marketing campaigns to generate leads and sales.
Mobile
Half the world’s population of 8 billion is online and there are just as many smartphone owners as well. It’ll be wise to make your ecommerce store mobile friendly. In some cases, you might even need an app.
Platform Marketing
Whether it be search engines, forums or social media, you have to be present to stay top-of-mind in the marketplace. Learn to use organic and paid ad/marketing campaigns to put your business in front of the right eyeballs. We’ve Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, Bing Ads, Google Ads and YouTube Ads. This is how to ensure a steady flow of website traffic to your site.
Wrapping Up
To run a sustainable and successful ecommerce store, you have to give your store the right visibility, improve shopping experience and nurture customer relationships.
Above, we looked at these 3 pillars of ecommerce and have shown you ways to achieve success in all 3 of them. Now don’t start by doing all of them at once. You’ll get overwhelmed and achieve little. Take digital marketing and ecommerce online courses. And start with baby steps.
Don’t know where to start?
Start with visibility — say organic SEO. Use the power of SEO optimized blog posts, podcasts and YouTube videos to create educational content to draw potential customers to your website. Use lead magnets to grow an email list. Then guide them till they buy from you. Master this process before moving on to the next.
