Believe it or not, but online shopping has changed the way we search for things and buy them. In fact, a recent study conducted by KPMG revealed that 58% user prefer online shopping than traditional way because they could shop anytime as per their convenience. The same source says that 54%of users prefer it because of the ability to compare the prices.
Source: KPMG
The global e-commerce sales are continuously inclining. As compared to $2.8 trillion in 2018 it is expected to rise up to $4.9 trillion (an eMarketer research).
Source: eMarketer
Considering the present growth and the future of possibilities, businesses are now going online through e-commerce websites and mobile apps. They wish to attract their prospective customers through their e-commerce website but sometimes they could not get what is desired.
Not every visitor to an e-commerce site is a buyer and this is a reason why cart abandonment percentage is 21% (a Localytics research). The most possible reason for this is that the e-commerce website failed to come into the expectation of the buyer.
Below, we are listing 7 such common mistakes that every e-commerce website should avoid, in order to retain the continuous business flow.
7 Blunders E-Commerce Websites Should Not Make
#1 Choosing the Wrong Platform: This is one of the most common mistakes which e-commerce merchants make. Depriving in the knowledge they sometimes select a platform that could not provide their business the exposure which it truly deserves.
Choosing the platform completely depends on your business size. For instance, you can go for Shopify if you have a small business. But, if you are looking for a platform that could support your big e-commerce enterprise then nothing could be more favorable to you than Magento. A highly scalable platform could be always beneficial for business.
Choosing a wrong platform means you are compromising with page loading time, which would not at all be accepted by your prospective customers.
Few of the most popular e-commerce platforms are:
Shopify
LemonStand
Magento
BigCommerce
WooCommerce
3DCart
#2 Running Without Strategy: Every business is focussed for a particular group. For instance, if you want to start an e-commerce website for selling books then your prime focus would be students. Like this, you need to set different strategies as per the business needs.
Depriving of the proper strategies, you can face failures in your business, especially during the website development time.
Here are a few of the things which you need to consider while setting a strategy for business:
Identification of market and buyers
Making every process transparent
Targeting mobile audience
Ensuring smooth supply management
Social connectivity
Privacy & term policies
#3 Ignoring Trust Factors: Alike you, there are many others available on the market which are providing the same services and most probably at the same price. The only thing which can differentiate between a reliable and fraud company is the trust factor.
This could be achieved by adding trust factors on your website. Adding important things like SSL Certificate, Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Refund Exchange Policy, etc. would automatically build the trust of the website in the customer.
Along with this, if you would work on easy product navigation and simple but effective design then also it will lure more customers and build trust in your brand.
#4 Ignoring Mobile Friendliness: Do you know that mobile e-commerce is expected to surpass 72% of total digital sale by 2021? Doesn’t this clearly brief why you should not ignore mobile for your e-commerce business?
If you really wish to target your audience then never ever ignore mobile. Ask the web development services team to go for a mobile-friendly site, so that you may get uninterrupted business flow.
#5 Not Adding Sufficient Contact Info: A research by KPMG states that 51% of consumers are more likely to trust a business which makes it easy for them to contact people at the company. So, if you are ignoring the contact details at your website you are likely to lose the interest of those 51% consumers. Not adding proper contact details like customer care number, e-mail address, office address, and phone number could put your e-commerce website under suspicion.
#6 Overusing Popups: Without any doubt, it can be said that popups help businesses to enhance the database with the details of prospective clients. You can gather e-mail address of prospective clients through pop-up windows and can later embrace them with desired offers and details.
But remember, overusing pop-ups in a website can also irritate the customers and they can lose interest on your site. As per the research of Hubspot, 55% visitors leave the site within 15 seconds and an irrelevant pop-up could make them leave the page even earlier.
#7 Not Exhibiting Product Reviews: Shopping on an e-commerce website is truly dependent on trust. According to SalesForce, 85% of buyers conduct online research before they make a final decision to buy a product.
Reading product reviews and ratings is one of the important part of research apart from the product description. Not adding this feature on your website could make you lose the prospective clients.
There should be genuine reviews from verified buyers on every product which in turn would increase the authenticity of the website.
The Bottom Line
Of course, Amazon accounted for 44% of all US e-commerce sales but it does not mean that there is no future of possibilities for small businesses. In fact, small retailers have 30% higher mobile conversion rate as compared to the big ones.
So yes, it is all about how you present the business and your strategy. No matter whether you are a big e-commerce giant like Amazon or a small e-commerce site for cake and flower delivery, with the right tactics you can win laurels across the business.
From contacting the right web development services company (for choosing the best platform) to providing correct product info with genuine reviews; there are many responsibilities like this which merchants need to consider in order to succeed as an e-commerce platform.
If you’re unfamiliar with the intricacies of ecommerce, you might make the mistake of assuming that measuring success is as simple as looking at how much profit is being made. That’s far from the case. While making a profit is certainly the end goal, it’s not only the only sign of success, nor does it necessarily mean that a business is healthy.
The smart ecommerce merchant knows this, and patiently monitors the general performance of their business to build a broad understanding of what’s happening (and what they can expect in the imminent future). If you want to max out your sales and help your ecommerce store reach its full potential, you need to do the same — let’s look at 5 ways (other than looking at profit) in which you can measure ecommerce success, and how you can use them effectively:
Following brand mentions
Branding matters. Every time your brand is mentioned online, it has some kind of effect on how you’re perceived overall, and that perception will gradually alter your level of success. Negative mentions will invariably sap interest in your business, even leading your strongest supporters to start to question their loyalty.
If your store is doing the right things, then when your brand name comes up on Twitter or Facebook, it should be as part of a positive comment. The stronger the positivity, the greater the level of detail, and the larger the number of followers, the more it will benefit you.
The easiest way to track brand mentions is to use a dedicated tool, like the aptly-named Mention. Set up the terms you’re looking for, and you’ll easily be able to see when people talk about you — take advantage to reach out to people praising you, and you’ll be able to achieve even more with that positive coverage.
Monitoring cash flow
Profit won’t save you if you run into major issues with cash flow, which is the sum of all the money entering and exiting your business. The moment you don’t have enough money in the bank to cover your ongoing costs, you’ll run into huge problems — you could even fail to make your hosting payments and see your store taken offline.
Ensure that you always have enough money in reserve to cover your costs if some customer payments come in late or there’s an unexpected issue with your stock. You can survive a lack of profit by continuing to sell and turning things around, but a lack of cash flow will sink you.
All you need to do is add up all your regular costs (restocking, software fees, advertising, etc.) and log them in one place along with your average sales revenues — you can use a spreadsheet or a business accounting tool, it’s up to you. After that, just monitor things closely, and take action to cut costs or boost sales when you start to feel the squeeze.
Reading reviews
Aggregate review ratings are powerful on webpages and in search results — in general, a 4.5-star store will be viewed as much more worthy of attention than a 3.5-star store. Individual reviews, meanwhile, are very useful as highlighted testimonials, whether on your homepage or on your specific product pages.
By keeping an eye on your reviews, you’ll get a solid idea of how your overall service is being received: not just how much customers are liking your products, but also how they’re rating your website, shipping, prices, and support processes. Sentiment is important. If it starts to turn against you, you need to make suitable changes.
Your ecommerce CMS will likely have native review functionality, so you can start there, but you may want to expand the options (particularly at enterprise level where so much more is on the line): for instance, you can pick up Product Reviews & Ratings if you’re running Magento, or you can supplement a Shopify Plus store with the free product review app available in the app store (there’s also the option of using the dedicated Trustpilot integration). After that, it’s just a matter of making a habit of reading through reviews and identifying actionable takeaways.
Tallying loyal customers
Loyal customers are incredibly valuable in the ecommerce game: they return again and again, spend more, recommend you to others, and provide you with insightful feedback. That’s why a great way to tell if your business is moving in the right direction is to count how many loyal customers you have.
If you’re doing great business in general but your customers aren’t coming back, that suggests that you have a problem. You’ll run out of new customers sooner or later, and your revenue will dry up. You need to impress customers as much as possible so they want to stick around.
Look at your analytics to see what your customer retention rate is like, and to check your average order value and the average number of orders per customer. The better these metrics look, the more stable your business will be in the long term.
Checking search rankings
Appearing near the top for relevant search terms brings in a lot of actionable traffic without requiring much ongoing financial commitment, so how you rank in Google should matter to you. It will be particularly significant when you’re engaging in forecasting, because if you know that you rank for certain evergreen terms, you’ll know that you can expect more traffic to arrive.
Your website should be linked to Google Search Console, and you can find the information you need there, so log in and take a close look at where your pages are appearing for particular terms. Are you looking at upward trends? Seeing irrelevant keywords?
When your rankings are going up, that’s a great sign that your content is performing well relative to that of your competitors. If you’re ranking for irrelevant keywords, though, that means that your pages aren’t correctly written (or formatted). Think carefully about what you want your pages to rank for, and cater the content accordingly.
As we’ve seen, e-commerce success is a complicated thing to gauge, with numerous elements coming together to steadily influence how much profit you end up with. By doing each of the 5 things we’ve been through, you’ll form a much stronger understanding of how well your store is performing.
Succeeding as an online retailer is tough. The market is dominated by huge marketplaces such as Amazon and eBay, as well as firmly-established sellers with a lot of momentum in specific niches. If you’re going to thrive as a merchant, you need to use every tool at your disposal — and one of the key tools is SEO and facebook advertising agencies.
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the practice of tweaking your website and your content to improve your chances of ranking highly for relevant searches. Since most online shopping journeys start out with searches, this is immensely valuable.
So what does ecommerce SEO specifically involve, and how can you use it to bring in more qualified leads and sell more products? Let’s take a closer look:
On-page and off-page SEO
There are two main branches to SEO: work you do to the pages on your website, and work you do elsewhere to bring in more traffic. On-page SEO involves a variety of things including (but not limited to) the following:
Meeting speed and mobile responsiveness standards.
Including high-quality and digestible content.
Providing useful links and features.
Offering consistent product information.
Off-page SEO, however, includes things such as the following:
Earning links to your pages.
Building brand awareness.
Being communicative on social media.
Networking with influencers.
Because the value of a visit to an ecommerce site is so high, there’s a huge benefit to covering all possible SEO angles. By bringing in the most relevant visitors and impressing them with your content, you can achieve optimal results. And since most SEO work has lasting effects, you’ve every reason to invest in it early on.
Covering the basics
The first key to meeting SEO standards is choosing a solid ecommerce CMS, because much of the on-page SEO will depend heavily on the platform. It’s strongly advisable that you set aside funding for a paid hosting solution: you’ll get vastly superior results out of the box using a popular one like Shopify than if you try to cut costs with something like Zen Cart or OpenCart.
All of the key on-page elements will be flagged up by a site analysis tool like Sitechecker, so run your store through it and see how it rates. Any issues that are identified are worth addressing — if you don’t know how to do things like update meta descriptions, and you’re not comfortable learning, then get some assistance from someone who can help.
Off-page SEO is essentially just about doing good marketing. Create good content for your brand, establish company expertise, and remember to ask for (but not demand) links to your site. The more links you build up from trustworthy sites, the better you’ll rank.
Targeting the right search terms
A big mistake that many online sellers make is trying to rank for the wrong terms. Extremely popular terms like “tablet computers” or “games consoles” have already been targeted heavily by massive retailers with huge budgets, and you can’t possibly hope to compete with them. A business with a modest budget has to use it smartly, and the key to that is finding ways to rank for terms that are much less popular but still valuable.
For example, if you sell shoes, don’t just try to rank for “shoes” by writing generally about shoes. Try ranking for something very specific, like “comfortable long-lasting shoes for distance running” — look at what pages already rank for long search terms, and find top pages that you’re sure you can outperform.
Committing to improvement
Plenty of things go into ecommerce SEO, as we’ve seen, but the biggest piece of advice you can follow is to keep making improvements. The SEO world moves quickly: ranking factors change, and competitors come and go. Your store may be optimized for search traffic today, but things could be totally different several months from now. Keep your eyes on industry updates, and make SEO an ongoing priority.
E-Commerce accounts for about 11.9% of all the retail sales worldwide of which fashion e-commerce is valued at a cap of $481.2 billion in 2018 which is expected to skyrocket to $712.9 billion in 2022, but businesses involved in e-commerce still require a platform to showcase their products to sellers.
Unavailability of such platforms has made it difficult for sellers to reach out to their customers due to the operating cost, generation of targeted traffic, retaining customers, customer satisfaction & feedback. Attracting customers to the website and ensuring customers return to use the services again as well as charging of extra cost by websites to the seller in the event of increased traffic which cuts into their profits.
There will be a requirement in terms of functionalities & rendering of a virtual store. Following are the criteria while choosing a platform for fashion e-commerce site: –
Use of High-Quality images with the ability to zoom in & out, search algorithms, filter criteria is a part of visual merchandising which cannot be compromised.
Social Integration is a must for a fashion shopper to flaunt their fashion sense on social channels like Facebook, Twitter &, etc.
An appropriate theme will be required to make it appealing to the customers.
The Platform should be SEO Friendly for online visibility placing the website on the top of search ranking.
A store catalog would be required to showcase a large number of products to the customers.
Inventory management would be required to take account of all the items sold, items at hand or the items that need to be ordered & stocked at the e-commerce platform.
Customization is important to establish a fashion e-commerce site as brand-centric & the ability to access these sites using tablets, mobile phone &, etc.
A novice accessing the platform should be provided with graphical illustration to operate the store’s functionalities.
The Platform should provide security to the customer's sensitive data such as Credit & debit card number, address, pin &, etc. to avoid any theft by hackers
What better platform than WordPress, also known for its blogging platform that can bridge that gap between the fashion e-commerce website & a seller due to the following features that WordPress offers: –
It does not cost a penny while operating WordPress as an e-commerce platform regardless of the traffic that is anticipated nor does it charge any extra cost even when the traffic increases.
A Search engine like Google is known to rank websites lower on the search results if these websites cannot be accessed using mobiles that’s where WordPress provides access on tablets & smartphones to these sites.
WordPress is SEO friendly making popular search engines like google, bing &, etc. to rank these websites higher than those who don't use WordPress due to the CMS framework
Customized themes for websites are provided by WordPress themes that are obtained from third parties in which the addition & extension of certain features make the website function.
WordPress is adaptable to the ever-changing cyberspace work area due to its flexibility to accommodate various extensions & plugins making it preferable for businesses.
Use of WordPress by Big-Brand companies like Nasa, Mashable, Mozilla, Wall Street Journal &, etc. makes it famous for business website solution.
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Conclusion
WordPress is a powerful content management system used by industry leaders like Vogue, Bata, In-style news adding to its reputation in the global cyberspace market. If you aren't using WordPress already, these reasons should be more than enough to make you switch to WordPress should you decide to run a fashion E-commerce business in the coming future.
About The Author
Merry waran is a Marketing Manager at AIS Technolabs which is Web design and Development Company, helping global businesses to grow by Custom WordPress Development Services. I would love to share thoughts on Social Media Marketing Services and Game Design Development etc.
Influencer marketing has been an evolving branch of the marketing industry for some time now. Possibly, it is the best way to encourage branding amongst your targeted audience. So, what?s the best thing about it? Well, the audience is already there. You can leverage and present your product, ideas, and content in front of a new audience base to generate a good amount of leads/sales to your sales funnel.
When it comes to gaining more sales, Influencer Marketing can make it possible for you. Let?s say, you want to buy a new phone. To find out what it has in store for you, you check out the videos and testimonials online. When we see a picture of our desired products with our favorite influencer, we have an impulse to buy them. That?s the power of Influencer marketing. ?Influencers are Influential?. We all have a bunch of our favorite Influencers and admire their lifestyle plus choices.
According to the Influencer Marketing Hub, businesses are making $7.65 for every $1 spent on Influencer marketing. A study by Snap Inc states that 31% chose influencers and celebrities who influence their decision of purchasing.
This article covers all the details and tips you will need to launch a successful influencer marketing campaign.
The Right Influencer, Not the Best One:
To find the right influencer related to your niche, you need to select an influencer that has an audience based on your niche. For example, if you are a fashion brand, search for the influencers whose interests reflect your products and style. If you have products related to technology, you need to find from a pool of tech influencers. Try searching them with relevant keywords and you will find a bunch of them.
Once you make a choice list, filter their profile with below questions:
A brief on their audience base
Do they know/love/use your brand?
Does their personality match your brand?
Can they create sponsored posts?
Would it be easy to work with them?
Compare the Numbers:
Now that you have a complete list of influencers, make a brief audit of their profile. Do they have sufficient number of subscribers? How many likes and views they usually get on their videos? Do they receive a related comment on their niche videos? How strong is their social media profile? And you will be able to conclude the right professional for your products/business.
Creating Winning Marketing Campaigns:
Products/Services Introduction:
This an essential part of providing the right introduction to your brand and products to them. No matter how big or small the impression of your company is, sharing your views on your products and sales goals with them makes all the difference. Moreover, they get more transparency and idea about how they want to promote your products.
Personalized Video Campaigns:
I was watching a video of Erica Griffin, a fellow Tech blogger, where she filmed a typical day in a life of a blogger. She traveled to New York City to attend the Samsung Unpacked Press Event for the release of Galaxy Note 7 to promote the brand. Erica is a tech nerd who creates many youtube videos related to technology gadgets, so you can call it a smart move. Plus, she received a good amount of views and likes.
This is one type of influencer video. You can generate dozens of other videos and campaigns depending on the type of products and services you have. Try to plan giveaways, they work wonders. Additionally, if they like your product on a trial base, you will surely generate a handsome ROI.
Ask them to Review Your Products:
You all know that customers rely on a product review before buying any product. And of course, before investing their money, they make sure that they are purchasing the right product. I see many fashion videos where beauty influencers create a video with 5-6 products of the brand and review them. Even you can find dozens of gadgets, phone, clothing, and many more product review videos.
So, creating a Product Review Video and getting a Product Review from influencers a successful tactic that befalls in this type of marketing and a good way of creating a product credibility in the market. It is that simple.
Leverage Social Proof:
Luxy Hair, is an eCommerce product store offering quality hair extension products. They are the perfect example of social proof done right. If you refer to their product page, they have displayed their YouTube product videos on the product page. It makes their Social Media proof stronger. According to studies by Collective Bias, 70% of consumers are more likely to make a purchase if they find a photo posted by another consumer. You can offer discount codes with the name of that influencer as well.
Final Thoughts?
Apart from these ideas, I am sure you can pull out other smart things to do with influencers based on your product and services. The first crucial step is choosing the right influencer. Start talking Influencer marketing strategies with them, build strong business relationships and give these campaigns to mark a noticeable revenue growth. Happy marketing!
Author Bio:
The author is Maulik Shah, the founder & CEO of Biztech: Magento Ecommerce Development Company. He also runs Biztech blog, where he shares insights from the world of CMS and other web-based technologies.
Many businesses in today?s day and age have an online store. It is the cheaper alternative to renting out spaces, and online shopping has also become common among people. No matter what a company specializes in, learning how to expand an online retail store is an important venture to increase profit. Here are four steps you must take in order to achieve this.
Innovating more goods and services is the first stage, given that you cannot expand if you do not have something else to offer people. Organizations must also thoroughly invest in their marketing tactics and use any programs and technologies available to their advantage. Lastly, by expanding you are also becoming a global company, and you must better understand exactly what this means.
Innovate more goods and services
Innovation and creativity are key to a successful business. Take a look at what you are currently manufacturing and think about how you can expand into other categories or even come up with new merchandise. You can?t grow your retail store without having additional items that you can offer your customers. What value are you providing them with? Why would your audience want to purchase from you? As a company, focus on creating and offering more goods, if you want to grow not only your retail store capabilities but also your customers.
Marketing tactics
For people to know about you in the first place, you must invest in marketing. The chances are that you have already done this with the retail store you had thus far, but if you expand it, you must kick gears up a notch. Ensure you have the appropriate people working on this aspect of the company, and grow your social media and digital marketing efforts, and even public relations partnerships and initiatives.
Take advantage of software programs
You must also consider how you will put your plans into action and expand your store. You will not be able to do it without the help of certain software programs, as your endeavors are rooted in technology by working on the world-wide-web. Ensure that what you are using will be credible as well. For instance, you can read more about an e-commerce software company that will help you manage your merchandise flow, synchronize and automate by looking at the following website – sellercloud.com.
Become a global company
It is time to expand past your local pool of customers and reach people on a global scale. You are already operating online, and it?s now a matter of targeting the right groups and understanding how different markets work. What has worked for you in America may not perform as well in Europe, and you must determine how you will change your products and services accordingly. Moreover, don?t forget that you will need to ship internationally, and thus export your goods everywhere.
Expanding your online retail store will benefit your business in many ways and can be achieved with the right employees and strategies. Every company wants to increase their profit margins, and grow your capabilities, both in new products and markets, will achieve this.
