What in your opinion is an online shop? Is it a secretly running website lost on the world wide web with some fascinating product pictures and a seemingly successful checkout function? Or your way of pacifying yourself by saying “I am an ecommerce store owner and I certainly run with today’s times.”
Well, looking at the expert predictions of 2 trillion sales expected in two years, it should be way beyond that! In 2017 and 2018, the total projected U.S. retail ecommerce sales are expected to be around $440.4, and $491.5 billion, respectively. So whether you already have an online store or are looking forward to have one, it’s high-time to get your foot into the right door.
You might already have resources to provide you with ecommerce development solutions and the potential to run an ecommerce store. But in order to scale it up, you need to put in a lot of time and efforts. We are here with some powerful ingredients that will help you reach the intended zeniths. So here we go with the powerful recipe!
Go On a Customer Hunt
Oh yes, you need to find out where your customers hang out, why and what entices them. Don’t spend too much time working on ecommerce marketing strategies that do not work. Sometimes marketers undertake endless promotional activities on social media which manifests into nothing.
Instead, consider getting in touch with some deal sites. Conduct research, contact these website owners and partner with them. Promote your offers and discount schemes through these websites. This can work wonders for startups establish themselves in the market and customers will come looking for you. However, it is not the only way to establish your foothold in the market. Once you have figured out where your ROI comes from, you are good to go that way.
Mobile Mobile Mobile
“GO MOBILE!” Experts have been saying this forever now. If you want to know how HUGE mobile commerce will become is going to get; take a look at the total e-commerce sales last year – which is $638 billion , according to The Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (a multinational investment banking firm). This includes retail sales done from tablets, desktops, smartphones, smart TVs etc.
And what about m-commerce sales? Ladies and gentleman, by the year 2018, the figure is going to reach $626 billion. Which means, web sales carried out only on smartphones and tablets will match up with web sales on every computing machine from before 5 years.
Here’s a sneak peek into the evolution of m-commerce sales on smartphones over the years. The projected m-commerce sales on smartphones, smartphone percent of mobile sales, m-commerce sales on tablets, and tablet percent of mobile sales, according to Goldman Sachs are:
It’s time to make your website Mobile responsive folks!
Treat It Like an Offline Store
How keen, enthusiastic and full of anticipation were you when you had your offline store? In fact, you took care of it like it was your baby. An offline store, ain’t no a hobby dearest! Ideally, you should make as much money from it as you would with your offline store. So start dealing with it like it is no less than a brick-and-mortar store.
Conceptualize, plan and execute strategies and start making decisions that would help your online business grow. Only then you would be able to carve your niche in this humongous ecommerce market. Get good product reviews, add great pictures, plan contests and competitions and offer excellent support!
Integrate the Right Software
Most of the websites today are built on Magento based platforms. Having a Magento ecommerce website is good enough. But do you have extended functionalities that would give a seamless shopping experience to your customers?
If not, then you can get in touch with ecommerce website development companies and discuss your requirements with them. Some of these companies also provide extensions and plugins that help you take your store to a whole another level.
Software and extensions that take care of scalability, security and usability are most sought after. Analyze the glitches you and your customer face, jolt them down and discuss with the experts. They will definitely be able to help you. All the best with that!
Allow Guest Sign Ups
Nobody likes to undergo a prolonged procedure of creating an account, filling a form and signing up. I mean, imagine doing it every time you want to sign up for a new store! Lengthy account creation is what people dread and it is one of the major reasons why people prefer to shop from the same e-stores.
Solution?
One click guest sign up! Help online shoppers to check in as guest, make their purchases quickly and sign out easily.
Take Apple Store; for example. It’s guest checkout features enables buyers to purchase products from Apple without an Apple ID. They can add the items they like to purchase to the cart, enter shipping information and click the “Place Order Now” button.
Does that sound like something you can do?
Make Checkout Easy
Complicated check out procedure leads to frustration and Cart Abandonments. Checkout procedure should be such that even a juvenile can handle. Don’t create opportunities for your customers to check out the products of your competitors.
Undertake the steps given below to make an ideal checkout process:
- Lessen the number of checkout screens
- Offer cheapest default shipping option
- Cut down the number of form fields and use auto-fill
- Offer different ways to make payments apart from the common ways (PayPal and Amazon)
How about getting some more advice from experts?
If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you should not wait for visitors and customers to magically line up on your store. Take action and choose winnable niches. Also, conduct user testing at regular intervals to know how your site is performing.
Did you find these tips useful? Feel free to share your thoughts with us.
Original Source View: https://www.biztechcs.com/blog/right-approach-build-successful-ecommerce-website/
