Sell, sell, sell! If you have a good product, there are millions of people who do their shopping online, just waiting to find it. When they make it to your page, will they stay or will they go? Make them stay with these tips to starting out in e-commerce online.
Awesome Design
First things first: is your landing page attractive? Is it fast? Is it easy to navigate? If you can answer yes to all three, you’re off on the right foot. However, it’s easier said than done. So what do you do? Pay beaucoup money to have someone do it for you? Or do you spend months learning how to do it yourself?
Neither, if you don’t want to. There are plenty of website builders out there who offer templates specifically designed for e-commerce. Many of them offer the best website building tools known to date, and templates are often highly customizable for exactly the look you’re going for.
This option will save you time and money, so all you have to worry about is choosing the best look. Uncluttered pages are for the best, and visual aids like videos and photos are helpful, as long as they aren’t so large that they slow down the page. If there’s any lag at all, your customer could click away.
Finally, be sure to read plenty of reviews for various web hosts. You don’t want to end up with one that’s notorious for downtime.
Payment Methods
Handling your money – and more importantly, your customer’s money – is definitely something you should have in mind prior to any sort of launch. How do you want payments to be processed? Is it secure? What methods can you accept?
In addition, you need to come up with some policies. For one, what’s your stance on refunds? Are your shipping methods, rates, and estimated processing times made clear to the customer?
Support
Online shoppers often have questions about products. They may also need issues rectified after purchase. Who’s handling this? This one is really simple – if you want repeat business and a decent reputation, the customer service side of things needs to be nailed down prior to your first sale.
If your store is small and customer service is, well, you, then it should go without saying that you need to be very responsive. Don’t let 24 hours (tops) elapse before getting back to your customer.
Marketing
How are you going to attract people to your store? Maybe your site needs an SEO-friendly blog, with regular updates. Want to run a promotion? It helps if you’re active on social media and can advertise this. You also need to research your target audience. Find out what stores they currently visit, and what keywords they use.
Once you discern who your customers are, there are many techniques to bring them to your shiny new store. If you make policies clear, payment convenient, and provide stellar customer service, you can be reasonably sure that the rest will take care of itself.
