Image Credit: Kenny Eliason from Unsplash.
eCommerce is a booming industry, and has been for quite some time. There are plenty of reasons why budding entrepreneurs focus on this for their businesses. It offers more than a few benefits compared to a more traditional company, like:
- Potential to sell to a worldwide customer base.
- Relatively few – and low – startup costs.
- Quick and easy to start up.
- Flexibility to make changes when needed.
- Better long-term scalability.
You’ll only see these as your company grows, which makes growing your ecommerce store a priority. This is where many budding entrepreneurs struggle.
That doesn’t mean you need to struggle. You’ll just have to know what you’re doing ahead of time. That way, you’re in a much better position to set up your ecommerce business for success and long-term growth. More than a few factors can play a role in this.
Knowing about these ahead of time and taking the right steps should be more than enough to help with this. Seven specific steps could help more than you’d think.
Growing Your eCommerce Business: 7 Steps to Take
1. Pick the Right eCommerce Platform
One of the first decisions you’ll have to make when you’re starting an ecommerce business is the platform you’ll create it on. This is one of the most important decisions you’ll have to make. Take the time to make sure it’s the right one for your business.
Multiple factors affect this. One of the more notable is whether the platform’s flexible enough and scalable enough to grow with you long-term. You wouldn’t want to end up using one that feels restrictive as you grow. Go with an option that offers as much scalability as possible for this.
2. Consider Outsourcing Key Areas
One of the main benefits of starting an ecommerce business is the low cost, but you’ll still have to pay to get things done. That doesn’t have to mean hiring employees for this. Instead, it could just be a matter of outsourcing some of the key areas of your ecommerce business.
There are more than a few benefits to this. It’ll keep your costs low while still making sure everything’s done to a high standard.
You can outsource more than a few areas, ranging from marketing to ecommerce fulfilment. Go with the areas that you struggle with most, and you shouldn’t have much of a problem making sure they’re all done to a high standard. It’ll help with your growth more than you’d think.
3. Highlight Customer Reviews
You’ll need to persuade potential customers to buy from you. A lot goes into this, with multiple factors playing a role. One of the more notable is trust. If potential customers don’t trust your ecommerce business, they’re not likely to buy from it. Put the time and effort into developing this trust.
One of the best ways you can do this is to highlight customer reviews. It gives potential customers the evidence they need to start trusting you. Have quite a few reviews on your website and make sure they’re visible. You’ll see a bump in long-term sales because of it.
4. Understand Your Ideal Customers
A great benefit to ecommerce is you can target a large audience. That doesn’t mean you’ll target everyone, though. You’ll have ideal customers, and these will be the people most likely to buy from you. For that to happen, though, you’ll need to understand them.
The better you understand your target market, the better you can sell to them. You’ll need to spend a decent bit of time finding out as much as possible about them.
More than a few factors could play into this. What are their needs and pain points? How much can they afford to spend on the type of products you sell? Spend time figuring this out so you can make the best decisions for your business.
5. Use First-Party Data
Speaking of understanding your potential customers, you’ll need data to do this. While there’s a wealth of third-party data out there, this isn’t always the best for you. It mightn’t be as applicable to you and your customers as you might want. That’s why it’s much more worth using first-party data.
This is the data you’ll collect in time as you run your ecommerce business. It’s much more useful than third-party data for more than a few reasons. It’s information about your specific customers and how they interact with your business. Use this information to fuel any decisions you need to make.
6. Introduce New Products
You’ll already have more than a few products to sell. While many of these could be popular, it doesn’t mean they’re always the most popular products you can sell. It could be worth introducing new products to help make more sales.
There are multiple reasons for this. The new products you introduce could be more appealing for customers than your current products.
The trick to this is figuring out which products you should introduce. The first-party data and market research mentioned above can be more than enough to figure this out. Know what your customers would like the most, and introduce a product they should want to buy.
7. Embrace What Makes Your Brand Different
There are countless ecommerce companies out there, and customers are spoilt for choice. You’ll need to stand out from your competitors, and there could’ve been more of these than you would’ve thought. The trick here is to embrace what makes your ecommerce company different. It matters more than you’d think.
Customers need a reason to consider you instead of your competitors. By focusing on what makes you different, you help to give them that reason. Once you highlight your differences, you could end up drawing in more customers than you would’ve thought, fueling your growth more and more in time.
Marketing Strategies to Grow Your eCommerce Store
Marketing is vital when you’re growing your ecommerce business. It helps to build your brand awareness and bring in new customers. You’ll need to invest relatively heavily in this, and you could already know that. That doesn’t always mean you’ll know which ecommerce marketing strategies you should use.
Some can be much more helpful than others, even when you’ve got a tight budget. The more notable of these are:
- Content Marketing – Content marketing is a great way to showcase your expertise in the type of products you sell. This can be a great way to bring in more website visits and engagement with your overall marketing efforts. The trick is to create content related to your products and services that your potential customers will find interesting and engage with.
- Search Engine Optimization – If your website doesn’t rank well on search engines, you’re not going to get many visits or sales. That’s where search engine optimization (SEO) comes in. It’s the process of optimizing your website to rank as well as possible. With how much this impacts your website visits and sales, you’ve no reason not to put the time and effort into it.
- Social Media – This is one of the more obvious ecommerce marketing tactics to use, but there’s a reason it’s so obvious. It’s effective. It helps you engage with your target market while increasing your overall visibility. This could help impact your sales long-term, adding more fuel to your overall growth. It doesn’t even need to cost too much for it to have an impact.
- Email Marketing – eCommerce marketing doesn’t always have to focus on bringing in new customers. Instead, it also includes retargeting your current customers to increase your overall sales with them. Email marketing is great for this, as it helps to engage your current customers much more, helping to maximize the amount of sales you get per customer.
These help make growing your ecommerce business a lot more straightforward. They’ll help to fuel your growth more than you’d think, and you’ve no reason not to invest in them.
Even on a relatively tight budget, they can still help you succeed. It’s just a matter of implementing them from the start. While some ecommerce marketing strategies could take time to have an impact, they’ll be more than worth it long-term. The more you put into them, the more you should get out of them.
Growing Your eCommerce Business: Summing Up
You’ll have plenty of reasons to start an ecommerce business. It could end up being more profitable for you than you’d think. Once you know what you’re doing, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t see success. For that to happen, though, you’ll need to start growing your ecommerce business more and more.
This is often a lot simpler than many budding entrepreneurs think. Many of them struggle, and they don’t end up seeing the success and growth they want.
You don’t need to settle for that. By taking the right steps, you shouldn’t have much to worry about. You’ll end up seeing more and more success going forward. They’ll help to fuel your ecommerce growth, letting you to reach the heights you want to reach.