The majority of online revenue is generated through the sale of goods and services, combining traditional business models with new technology in ways that have never been thought of before. With this merging, the concept of ecommerce stores is understood by everyone, but it's much more difficult to get one running successfully.
To avoid the risk of your business failing, here are five factors that can determine whether your venture is heading in the right direction or not.
The Cost of Getting Visitors
Before you can develop a rate of conversion, you have to figure out how to get visitors to find your site in the first place. Some commerce sites are already developed by big brands, so they already have the loyalty of their customers. Starting out small, however, isn't going to afford you such luck.
The first thing you can do is get the best magento hosting to ensure that your site is up and running properly. Secondly, you'll have to spend money to have relevant keywords attached to your store so that it can be found in search engines. That's where the next step comes in: conversion rate.
Improving Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to your site that become customers. This is what's used to measure the success of any website. But don't get excited about the numbers being high: the general average is roughly 2 to 3 percent of visitors actually purchase anything from a website, meaning that the majority of online shoppers are just browsers.
The conversion rate can be low for several reasons, such as customers having difficult finding what they're looking for, the shipping costs are too high, or there are technical errors on the checkout page, for example. Fixing these problems can definitely improve your conversion rates in the future.
Shipping Costs
The really big stores are capable of offering free shipping because they've made enough business and developed a strong enough loyalty in their customers that they can afford to do this. Smaller online stores, however, can't afford to provide such benefits. But making shipping too expensive will also turn away customers.
This can be improved upon by offering free shipping for purchases over a certain dollar amount, encouraging customers to add more products to their carts.
Average Ticket Prices
Customers may come to your store just looking for one item. Their business is still worth it, but you can increase their value by offering related items to the one they're purchasing. Instead of just buying one pair of pants, they may end up adding other pairs or complimentary items to their carts to create an outfit.
Developing Loyalty
What every business owner strives for is repeat business. Repeat business means that customers enjoy what you have to offer and are interested in shopping with you again and again. The customer loyalty is considered the Holy Grail of any business, because it means they're doing something right.
The success of your ecommerce business does rely on you making the right decisions and paying attention to the numbers before you. Without these factors in play, your store may not last very long.
