Whether you’re just starting out or you’ve been in the eCommerce field for some time, you might have noticed that it is an extremely competitive and an always-changing business. If you want to make it in eCommerce, you have to always be vigilant and keep an eye out for your competitors.
There is a lot an online store needs to be doing to keep up with its customers. In this guide, we’ll be looking at 5 important ways you can do so.
1. Decide on a platform
First, before you start selling, you need to have an eCommerce platform up and ready. Choose your tools of the trade wisely, because they might make or break your store.
For example, if you specialize in drop shipping, you probably know that your products are the main backbone of your store. As such, you need to make sure you’re selling the ones relevant to your customers. Check out the salehoo review, for example, if you want to know what you should look for in an eCommerce product research tool.Ideally, you need a tool that is easy to use and can save you a lot of time and money.
2. Make a good first impression
Now that you know what you’re going to sell, from where, and how, the next thing you might want to focus on is your website. Your website design is the first thing your customers see when they go over your products and use that as a judge to your overall brand. While it may not seem fair to evaluate the quality of a product based on the site design, that is just how customers online act. A
good website design is one that reinforces your brand and doesn’t cause information overload. Be sure to take user-experience into consideration as well – look at things from their perspective.
3. Be mobile friendly
In addition to that, make sure that your website optimized for mobile. Make sure it looks good on mobile as well! 34.5% of total sales in eCommerce in 2017 came from mobile, and that number is only rising (source). By 2021, the number is expected to reach 54%, that’s a big market that would be silly to miss out on.
4. Get active on social media
Social media is an essential component to running a successful eCommerce business, without it, it would be hard to get your business moving. There are two main reasons for this.
First, you get a better understanding of your customers by engaging with and directly interacting with them. Secondly, you can drive direct sales traffic to your online store. Be sure to scale up your social media like you do your business as you go.
5. Be customer centric
Ecommerce is as much about the experience customers have to interact with your brand’s site as it is about your products and prices. That is to say, building a customer centric store is a sure way to build customer loyalty and gain repeat customers.
The best things that usually attract new users and keeps them from going away is offering appropriate pricing, free shipping, and making the purchase process as short as possible – depending on your customers. Be sure to use social media to your advantage when it comes to being customer centric as well.