By Joe Palko

It seems quite simple enough to set up an online storefront, especially if you’re using a drag-and-drop design engine such as the one offered by 3dcart or other various shopping carts. However, if you’re new to the ecommerce scene, there may be some things you might be overlooking.

What are the things you ought to be thinking about, but aren’t including in your plans?

How to Introduce Yourself

When you’re still in the process of building a name for your business, branding is very important. You have to make sure that your ecommerce storefront clearly encompasses the image you wish to project or what you want your market to identify your business with.

It’s not enough to have wonderful graphics and well-written text. You ought to have a unified look that visually reflects your branding.

What’s more, it’s essential to inform first-time visitors and even returning customers who you are. Make sure your business name and logo are prominently shown and that your business address and contact details are also shown on every page of your website.

How to Build a Community

Oftentimes, a lot of novices in ecommerce make the mistake of creating a shopping website that merely displays a series of products. With the tough competition these days, this will definitely not suffice.

It’s essential for you to plan how you can build a community with your website being the main tool. For instance, if you’re selling beauty products for women, you can go beyond the presentation of items by featuring common skincare problems in your blog. You can also come up with an advice column for those with beauty concerns, which you can ask actual experts to respond to.

Imagine your visitors and consumers as members in your organization. They all have a common need and desire— to look and feel more beautiful. So what else can you offer aside from your products? Indirectly, you’ll make them feel cared for. The more they feel that they are part of this community, the more they’ll trust your business, keep coming back, and even keep referring others.

How to Highlight Your Best Features

When setting up your storefront, you should also make sure that your best features can be seen upfront. For example, if you have a pricing edge over your competitors, then you need to highlight this aspect through your graphics, layout, or text. If you’re offering free shipping, this has to be displayed on your home page.

You can definitely have a tab called “Features”. Nonetheless, it’s vital to mention some of these wonderful and unique features where first-time visitors can immediately notice them. After all, not everyone will be clicking on other tabs or going deeper into your site.

How to Make People Stay Longer

Now here’s another aspect of your online store that you must pay attention to from the very beginning. Most online entrepreneurs only get to this after a while, when they notice that business isn’t picking up. Hence, you must be proactive. Do it now before you’ve even launched your website.

How do you make people stay longer and become curious enough to browse through your store? Perhaps you can provide exclusive offers for new visitors. Maybe you can set up daily deals that will get potential customers excited. It would also be great to offer discount coupons, wish list tools, and promos that are visible on your home page. Or maybe an interesting blog post or video excerpt could also be shown.

It’s really up to you. There are plenty of strategies you can come up with to make people want to stay longer and discover more. But be careful not to overdo it or overwhelm visitors.

Now you’re probably thinking you were wrong to believe it’s simple to set up an ecommerce storefront. Well, it can be made easy if you’ve got a great platform to use and a professional team of experts to back you up. But of course, it’s important for you to do the necessary research first in order to make your business stand out online.

Consider the above-mentioned areas and do your homework accordingly. Keep learning and applying what you’ve learned. You’re bound to look on with awe as your business eventually rises to the top.

Joe Palko acts as 3dcart’s Chief Marketing Officer. A pioneer in eCommerce, Joe founded one of the Internet’s first online pet supply stores in 1994. In 2001, he co-founded the award winning eCommerce solution provider, Solid Cactus. If you have any questions, Joe can be reached at joe.palko@3dcart.com