The Challenge: How to successfully position your business online, when so many other businesses are competing for a slice of the pie?
The glut of e-commerce sites operating in cyberspace is enough to make your head spin. This daunting prospect makes it somewhat unnerving to enter what appears to be a saturated pool of competitors vying for an ever-shrinking slice of the market. The greatest marketing minds among us are not deterred by the prospect of competition; they are emboldened by it. By dint of its very nature, entrepreneurship requires a degree of calculated risk-taking.
Naturally, businesses will perform better when they implement careful and methodical planning on every level. The 'Big Picture' is sacrosanct.
A clear vision must be coupled with a bold mission statement, and a clearly formulated set of tactical and strategic objectives. These serve as quantifiable and quantifiable measures in the life-cycle of a business.
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With so much emphasis shifting towards e-commerce in recent years, it makes sense to pour time, effort, and expense into high-quality e-commerce builders to get your site up and running in a flash. In 2018, the average attention span of an online shopper was measured at 8 seconds in a Microsoft study. Today, that number has probably been whittled down some.
There is no doubt that declining attention spans are placing undue pressure on content marketing strategies, causing a radical rethink in the way e-commerce platforms are designed. One risks ruination by avoiding user-friendly platforms with quick-click functionality, information available at one's fingertips, low latency, and rapid loading of relevant content. It's a lot to ask for, but all of this is necessary for a business to successfully position itself online.
How To Guarantee A Successful Online Business?
Imagine a grocery store without shopping carts, prices, or checkout solutions for shoppers? It seems preposterous right? Yet, too many online businesses fail in precisely these areas. One cannot help harkening back to the Keep It Simple Stupid principal with respect to website marketing, sales, and conversions. This KISS approach is designed to put things into perspective; to view things from the customer's side of the equation.
Too much data results in info overload, and with limited attention spans the only guaranteed outcome is a high bounce rate and near-zero stickiness. The world's premier e-commerce builders - websites that make it possible to buy and sell to a global audience - comprise big-name brands like Shopify and GoDaddy. They know the game well. They understand that a multi-pronged approach to marketing is essential to success. Click here for additional info on these premium-grade e-commerce builders.
Increasing Sales Online
Every online business wants to maximize revenues, minimize costs, and increase growth rates. One of the quickest ways to get there is by increasing sales online. This in itself can be an insuperable challenge. Fortunately, there are many creative ways to increase your sales online by adopting a few tweaks in your e-commerce platform. These include:
- Create a dynamic marketing strategy that allows your business to increase its sales over time. Bear in mind that businesses go through cyclical patterns, with ups and downs. Conduct the necessary research and focus on what your customers want and need. Put in the necessary time, effort, and expense to create an e-commerce platform that strikes the right chord with your customers. They will respond in kind by buying more from you.
- Never discount the importance of building trust within your online community. Credibility is golden. You only get one chance to make a good first impression - don't blow it. Before you go live with your e-commerce platform, ensure that all the creases have been ironed out and that everything is running like a well-oiled machine. Trust is earned. Authentic customer reviews, excellent customer service, transparency, security, promises made promises kept, will work wonders for your business.
- Customer service excellence 24/7. Nobody likes to be kept waiting when they're trying to make a purchase, or attempting to understand more about products they wish to purchase. Self-help customer support is rapidly growing in popularity, with self-populating FAQs, chat bots, and live support agents, when necessary. Visitors to your website will take kindly to a business offering highly responsive customer support. This can dramatically reduce bounce rates, and provide traction during transition phases throughout the sales funnel. A First Person study found that 8 in 10 customers refuse to buy products from online companies if they don't have live chat functionality.
Of course, you should always sell high quality products at the right prices to the right demographic. The rest should go like clockwork!
Shopping Carts
E-commerce shopping carts are not the physical carts that one uses at a grocery store, clothing retailer, or local Walmart. Online shopping carts are software products that make it easier for the customer to seamlessly add products and/or services before checking out. We've all been there, and we understand how frustrating it can be if a shopping cart doesn't allow you to add or delete additional items, return to the main menu of products, to amend payment methods, or to cancel the order altogether. Shopping carts are important for many reasons, not least of which is the information that they can store.
They also serve as important portals for customer management cataloguing purposes, and orders. There are generally two types of shopping cart options available to e-commerce businesses today - licensed shopping carts which are customized to an individual business's needs, and hosted shopping carts which are provided by third-party solutions.
Naturally, the latter option is more affordable and divided you go with the right e-commerce builder, it generally works like magic. Very little technical know-how is required for having a hosted shopping cart on your platform. Of course, before either option is selected it is important to assess the individual needs of a business to guarantee the best fit.
Unique Solutions for e-Commerce
Generally speaking, there are 2 broad-based options for setting up an e-commerce operation. The first is a DIY solution which you craft with a team of technical experts for your specific needs. It's expensive and time-consuming, but it may just be the right solution for you. The other option is an established e-commerce provider. These are cost-effective solutions with highly functional tools, resources, beaches, and functions which may be perfect for your budding business. In all cases, the overarching objectives for it optimized shopping experience falling to 5 broad-based categories:
- Multimedia content that drives action
- Effective branding strategies throughout
- Highly responsive design
- Customized product catalog and product descriptions
- Effective pricing mechanisms
Some businesses operate in localised markets where specific knowledge of market conditions is required to reach deeper into the target market. Language, currency options, customer support, payment options, and product selections become extremely important in local markets. When selling to a global market of potential buyers, much greater diversity is required. Multilingual support, multi-currency options, careful and methodical product selection, multiple user interfaces for specific target markets, tailored banking methods, and in-depth analysis of shipping options is needed, among others.
The e-commerce arena is complex, peppered with opportunities and challenges. The businesses which are able to successfully navigate the rising and falling tides are naturally better positioned for success over the long-term.
