10 Tips to Improve Your E-commerce Business

Online shopping offers unprecedented convenience to shoppers. This gives an e-commerce business great potential for success. The challenge is that there is so much competition. You need to find ways to improve your business if you want to stand out. Customers need a reason to shop at your store rather than at a competitor’s store. Here are some tips to help you improve your ecommerce business.

1. Brand awareness builds trust

Strong brand awareness means that your brand will be top of mind when consumers think about buying. Consumers need to recognize your brand and get to know it in order to trust it. You need to be consistent in how you present your brand across all channels. Your logo, brand colors, and other brand elements must create a strong impression that sticks in the minds of consumers. You also need to be clear about your brand values to attract customers who appreciate these values.

It’s important to tell your brand story in a way that builds connections with consumers. This enables you to grow your relationship with them. You could talk about the humble beginnings of your business or relate how customers have benefitted from relating to your brand.

2. You must automate to compete

Automation is essential in your e-commerce business. You can’t compete with other businesses using automation if you don’t use it too. There are many tasks you can automate in an e-commerce business. You can automate email marketing, handle orders, and cope with inventory.

It doesn’t help you to automate processes and have computers that let you down in terms of speed and performance. You will have to find out how to clean up your computers so they run more efficiently. The easiest way to clean up a Mac is to use special software for this purpose. Using it will help to clear your hard drive, and cache, and get rid of the malware.

3. Prioritize SEO

The importance of SEO to an e-commerce business should never be underestimated. Search engines need to understand what your business has to offer. This is the only way they can know that it’s relevant to a search query. When you rank highly those searching for your products can click on your website to view them.

SEO can be complex and it helps to use an SEO agency for this purpose. You need to pay attention to both on-page and off-page SEO practices. You must create quality content, stay updated with the SEO trends, and use keywords strategically. This doesn’t mean keyword stuffing but using them in places like titles, meta, and tags. Off-page optimization includes getting backlinks from authority sites. To get backlinks you need to engage in practices such as guest posting. Constant monitoring is important to check which SEO tactics work best.

4. Make your website mobile-friendly

Today many individuals use their mobile phones to access e-commerce websites. If your website isn’t responsive, you could lose out on potential customers. Customers should find it easy to navigate your store using a small screen. If the buttons are too small, or checkout is too complex, you could miss out on a sale.

Having a responsive website can help to improve your SEO. Google switched some time ago to using a mobile version of web pages to rank sites. A mobile responsive theme will adjust automatically to a small screen.

5. You need an e-commerce funnel

An e-commerce funnel represents stages in a customer’s journey. It starts when a consumer first comes into contact with your brand. Most consumers take a while before making a purchase from your brand. The funnel guides the person towards this through small nudges. It takes them from the stage when they become aware of your brand to eventually buying a product. You have to reveal to customers that you understand their pain points and you have a solution to help them.

Constant communication with customers throughout the entire customer journey creates a solid user experience. Your email list can be very effective in communicating with customers throughout the different stages of the funnel. As an e-commerce business owner, understanding your customers is essential. Your funnel helps you to identify what they are thinking. This means that you can offer them the right content at every stage of their journey.

6. Meet your customers where they are on social media

Your business may have more followers and engagement on some social media platforms than others. If one platform works well for you, you may be tempted to focus on it to the exclusion of others. Focusing on two or three platforms is better as audiences may shift and platforms change constantly. You need to consistently post quality content on social media platforms and utilize relevant hashtags.

Interacting with prospective and current customers on social media is important. This will involve liking and sharing posts. You should always respond to questions and comments. Some comments may be negative and this provides an opportunity to respond to them in a way that impresses your followers.

Today, many online stores use an eCommerce chatbot. A chatbot can handle simple customer questions, offer product recommendations, etc.

7. Test and test again to improve your conversion rate

Be tireless in testing ways to optimize your ecommerce store. You need to experiment with your marketing approach. You may realize the importance of branding but not understand how important it is to examine metrics and analytics. Analytics give you insights that can help you to make smarter decisions.

You should make it a habit to test many different aspects of your e-commerce store. A/B testing different elements, such as a call-to-action button or abandoned cart email, helps you to find out what works best. Testing different elements helps you to make small incremental changes that can eventually result in many more sales.

8. Benefit from customer reviews

Many consumers only buy products after reading reviews about them. What other customers have to say has more impact on them than what you have to say. Prospective customers would rather buy from a company with many good reviews than one with no reviews. Reviews allow customers to voice their opinions and the very act of leaving one can help to create a connection with your business.

There are various ways to collect customer reviews. You can do so on social media or through your email list. An email that asks customers to leave a review on a page can prompt them to take action. The easier you make it for satisfied customers to leave reviews, the more you are likely to get. You could even offer an incentive for leaving a review but make it clear that you want an honest review. You need to showcase reviews prominently so potential buyers can easily see them.

9. Grow your ad spend organically

To advertise your e-commerce business you probably already use ad campaigns on different social media channels. These ads can ensure a wider reach and enable more consumers to notice your business. Ads can help you to get your products in front of the right audience. However, not all the money you spend on advertising gives you a good return on your investment. You should never take a random approach to advertising or you could waste money.

A good way to make ads work is to mix in some user-generated content. Social media platforms offer various ways to make your ads more effective. For example, you can segment ad groups and create campaigns on Pinterest to target people with specific interests. Organically increasing your ad spend over time is likely to bring the best return. This is because it gives you the opportunity to see what works best before spending more money.

10. Pay attention to competitors

Paying attention to your competitors doesn’t stop once you launch your ecommerce business. You need to continually keep tabs on what they are doing. You need to identify what strategies they use on social media. Find out more about their sales funnels and the prices they charge. There are automated tools you can use today to help you identify competitors.

A competitor benchmarking tool will automatically collect and analyze data from your competitors. This can help you to identify opportunities and spot weaknesses in your strategies. You can also respond quickly when the market changes.

You could boost digital marketing efforts by focusing on different groups of customers to your competitors. Using advertising strategies they neglect to use could also help.

You need to ensure your prices are competitive. The only way to know this is to keep track of competitor prices. You could offer exclusive discounts when they raise their prices. This could make it very attractive for customers to buy from you.

Conclusion

Using the above tips can help you to increase your e-commerce sales. Taking a customer-centric approach will help your e-commerce business to be profitable. If you keep refining your marketing strategies and customer funnel, it will help to ensure that you keep your customers engaged throughout.