Ecommerce is big business: really big business. According to data collated by Statista, global eCommerce sales amounted to a whopping 4.28 trillion dollars in 2020 alone. It is no surprise, then, that newcomers are ten a penny in the world of eCommerce.
Selling goods and services online is a tempting prospect for emerging businesspeople and product innovators around the globe. It is an extremely crowded market. In order to get ahead, eCommerce newcomers need to keep abreast of current trends and tactics. Here are a few quick tips to heed for eCommerce professionals that are completely fresh in the game.
Get Seen With SEO
Search Engine Optimization is an essential part of running any successful eCommerce site. SEO is the tailoring of a website in order to get it to rank highly with search engines like Google. A vast quantity of web traffic is routed through Google every single day, so ranking highly on the site is crucial for bringing in potential customers.
Hiring an experienced eCommerce SEO agency is a good start. Experienced agencies will use a multipronged approach to tailoring your site. They will format your site, research and implement keyword usage, and set up a network of backlinks so that your website brings in your target audience.
Don’t Rush The Launch If You Don’t Have The Content
While it may be tempting to launch your website as soon as possible, you’ll actually be doing yourself damage if you start trying to push your business before everything is ready. Make sure you have optimized your site for search engines, developed a good portfolio of products, and written interesting content before you launch.
If you already have a domain name, it is perfectly reasonable – and possibly beneficial – to put up a placeholder ‘coming soon’ type page before you launch for real.
Know Your Market
With millions of eCommerce sites online, you will have to find a demonstrable niche to succeed. You can’t compete with eCommerce giants like Amazon and try and offer a hyper broad range of products. Research your market and find your niche. Position yourself as a specialist and develop a deep knowledge of your products so that you can write effective and informative copy.
Market research is essential to any good business strategy. This is especially true in the unfathomably crowded world of online sales. Do your research before you source products, build a website, or push your brand.
Optimize For Mobile Use
Your eCommerce site needs to be compatible with mobile use. Just over 50 percent of worldwide internet browsing is conducted on mobile devices. If your website is clunky, illegible, or unpleasant to browse on mobile, then visitors you receive will be unlikely to convert into customers.
All good websites are fully scalable for mobile browsers and have a simple, intuitive navigation design that suits small screens and short attention spans. Make sure your checkout system is compatible with mobile payment aids like Apple and Google pay, as customers are flocking to these easy and simple payment methods.
Interesting related article: “What is Digital Marketing?“