online store

Your online store is an ever-changing and constantly evolving landscape. What works today might not yield the best results tomorrow and if you want to stay ahead of the competition, you need to be on the cusp of new innovation and technology.

 

By Jason Chow

More important, you need to have a sound eCommerce strategy when it comes to creating a successful business online. If you’re ready to take your eCommerce enterprise to the next level, read up the 6 important strategies you need to know to make your business a success.

Pay attention to your platform

You might have the vision and big ideas to make your business grow and thrive in the eCommerce industry, but all of it won’t matter if you don’t have a good eCommerce platform to start from.

Choosing the wrong platform for your business will take a toll on your critical decision-making process. It’s going to be hard to plan your business when you’re too busy trying to figure out how to set a new price for your product with a hard-to-use eCommerce platform.

With the help of a powerful eCommerce platform such as WooCommerce, you will have all the features you’ll need in order to create an amazing digital online store and plenty of help for the technical parts, such as choosing a website template, putting in products, setting the prices, putting in promotions, and more.

Since WooCommerce works on top of WordPress, the first thing you need to decide before you get started, is to find the best web hosting you can rely on.

Consider the pricing of your products

Settled on a reliable platform? Then it’s time to take a look at the products you’re selling. Specifically, the way you price the products.

It’s an unavoidable fact that your customers will always compare the price of your products with other competitors, so setting the right price for it is absolutely important. A good pricing strategy will not only keep you ahead of your competitors but will also make sure that your customers are happy as well.

There are multiple ways to decide the pricing of an item. Some of the strategies that you can employ are to follow the market pricing for the products being sold or use keystone pricing, which is to double the wholesale price.

However, before you set your price, it’s important to research up on your competitors. Use tools such as DataCrops and Import.io to get a general idea of what the product pricing is on other eCommerce websites.

Store accessibility is key

We’ve mentioned earlier that choosing the right eCommerce platform is important. The reason being is that it will be helpful for another key strategy that you need to implement for your business, which is to make the online store accessible to all types of customers.

An online store is your main tool for communication and transaction with your customers. Because of that, it needs to be able to relay information fast, correctly, and most importantly, evoke a sense of trustworthiness for your business to the customers.

Imagine having a customer with visual disabilities such as color blindness or impaired vision trying to shop on a website that’s lacking in accessibility, odds are they won’t make any purchases soon. Offering better accessibility, such as the ability to set larger font size text or high-contrast visual themes, will go a long way to creating a loyal customer base.

On a more general approach, keeping your website optimized will help make it much more accessible to customers. Remember, the fastest way to lose customers is to have an online store that’s both unresponsive and slow to load.

Make security a top priority

Safety and security issues are always a concern for both consumer and entrepreneurs in the digital world. With sensitive information such as credit card details and addresses being handled online on a daily basis, there’s always a chance that it could fall into the wrong hands and cause grieve to your customers.

Give your customers a peace of mind by employing security features, such as an SSL. With an SSL, any data in a transaction will be encrypted, which will reduce the chance of it being compromised. Take another step further and add two-factor authentication to make your online store even more secure.

The more secure a customer feels with your online store, the more likely they are to spend their money on it. So make sure you always have the best security in place.

Take advantage of the first impression

The first impression can make or break a website. If a user doesn’t like the way your online store looks, it’s unlikely that they will spend time on it. Which is why it’s important that you take advantage of the first impression by making your online store as eye-catching as possible.

Now, that doesn’t mean you should make everything animated or use sparkly fonts. Apply good web design principles that are pleasing to the eye, while still being functional and accessible. If web design is not your forte, look to professionals designers that can help you create and curate the perfect online store for your business.

Explore the mobile market

The user base for mobile devices has grown exponentially in the last few years and it’s becoming common for customers to shop using their mobile devices and smartphones. A study polled more than 1,000 U.S. merchants and found that 16% of them already have mobile shopping channel, while 32% are thinking of adding one soonest.

Because of that, it’s important that your online store is optimized for mobile devices. Otherwise, you’ll be losing out on tons of potential sales and business.

Take into consideration the things you’ll need (easy-to-use navigations, touch responsive menus, mobile-specific checkout and payment counters, etc.) in order to make your online store as optimized as possible for mobile users.

eCommerce platforms will usually provide an option to make your online store mobile-friendly but you can also opt for mobile apps that will help redesign your website for mobile users.

Conclusion

There is no better time than now to jump into the world of eCommerce. More and more users are flocking towards digital stores to make their purchases. If you want to be successful, then you should use the strategies that we’ve listed above for your business.

Now get to work and we’re sure that customers will be flocking to your business in no time!

Jason Chow is a digital marketer and WordPress fans from Webrevenue.io, a company that provides content and marketing for startups and online businesses. Twitter handle: @JasonCPF

Online store stock photo by Rawpixel.com/Shutterstock