eCommerce has absolutely taken off over the last few years. For around a decade, it has slowly become more popular and has been on a steady incline. But, after the global pandemic, eCommerce has become one of the largest growing industries in the world.
It is one of those industries that are simply not looking to slow down anytime soon, and because of this, a plethora of tools and platforms to support it is popping up. With everything being digital and online, now is the time to hop onto this highly profitable bandwagon.
So, how do you get into online shopping? What can you do to reach new audiences and convert them to paying clients? We thought we would take a look at some of the things you need to have in place to run a successful eCommerce business. Let’s get stuck in and unpack how you can make a success out of it!
Table of Contents
Focus on Your Website
The first thing you will need to pay attention to is your website. A website for an eCommerce business is its entire being. It is your calling card, your sales floor, your engagement portal, and a platform for your client to learn everything they need to know about your business.
See Our Guide: Top 10 SEO Ranking Factors: How to Increase Google Ranking
From your landing pages to your product pages and your entire sales funnel, you will need to make sure that it is completely streamlined for a new customer to visit and convert based solely on the ease of use and information given. From the copy to the images to the CTAs on each page, spend time on all of your elements and make sure that they are absolutely optimized for your business.
The next thing to look at is your hosting and things like your domains. You will want these properly set up when you get started so that you do not keep going back to rectify mistakes. One of the most useful things to look out for is services hosting SEO domains. Not only will these appear across the globe, but you can make use of several IP addresses, which will come in handy down the line!
Plan Out Your User and Customer Experience
Many brands miss this step when they are starting out and sometimes go back to it when their site and brand are already established. This can be a crucial mistake for those who want to rush and get their site up and products out on the market. Rather take some time to go through a full customer experience management exercise. Plot it out from the beginning. Decide what kind of messaging and branding you want your customer to see, and keep that uniform throughout the whole customer journey.
When designing your site, keep UX principles at the top of your list and base the entire design of the site on these. Each landing page will need to be specifically designed around the customer’s journey through the site. So, where are the CTAs going? What do the sales funnel look like? What will make them convert quicker?
Each touchpoint needs optimizing to cater to your customer. Whether they are engaging from a social channel, chatting to you through a chatbot, or speaking directly to a sales rep, your brand messaging is crucial and needs to reflect the values of the company.
Heighten Marketing Channels
Digital marketing in this day and age is streamlined, simplified, and budget-friendly. It is ideal for those kicking off businesses and looking to expand their brand into new, unknown audiences. But, there are a few channels that you will want to get right to make sure that you are reaching these audiences:
- Mailing database and mailing platform
- Social media channels
- Blog
- Paid ads
- Affiliate marketing
The trick with these is to be creating enough content to permanently post across these channels for your customers to actually come across your brand. So, look at creating a content calendar where you can map out content for the next few months to a year.
You will want to post uniform content across all of the channels for each campaign and just adjust it according to each channel. What you post on Facebook, for example, will most likely just be snippets of your blog or your email, but the messaging will be the same.
Focus on SEO
Let’s take this a bit further. Your content that you are permanently posting will be picked up by Google, which will scrape it in order to identify where to categorize your brand and where to rank you according to your competitors.
So, you need to make sure that the right keywords appear throughout your copy. From your site to your blog and across the social channels, the more keywords going out, the more Google will associate them with your business.
Do your keyword research to ascertain what needs to appear, and include them in your copy. You can then download plug-ins like Rank Math to guide you in getting the technical side right. If you want your organic audiences to find you, put a budget behind it!
The Bottom Line
When starting your business, get all of the basics right first. Spend time getting the site and content right. Know what you want your brand to convey, as having the right basis for your business is a guaranteed path to success.
