Creating an e-commerce store can be a relatively easy way to build your business. The barriers to entry are lower since you don’t have the significant expenses of a brick-and-mortar store and employees. However, e-commerce is a saturated market, and it can be difficult to stand out, increase sales, and increase efficiency to boost profits.
If you own an e-commerce store that’s going well but want to 10x your success, these e-commerce improvement ideas may be exactly what you need.
Build Trust on Your Ecommerce Website
If you’re having trouble getting website traffic or turning visitors into paying customers, you could probably benefit from building additional trust on your e-commerce site.
You can do a few things to improve your site’s credibility, including using online trust signals. For example, a site-wide SSL certificate is used to reassure visitors that their personal data and payment information is encrypted and secure. Add testimonials and reviews to your web pages to build social proof.
Go beyond your website and invite happy customers to write reviews on Google and other review sites, proving your website is legitimate.
Leverage Ecommerce Fulfillment Services
Perhaps you’re already getting good website traffic and decent sales from your e-commerce store. You might be struggling with the logistics behind the business: order management, shipments, and returns.
If this is the case, the best idea for you is to leverage fully managed ecommerce fulfillment services. With an experienced third-party logistics (3PL) fulfillment service provider on your side, you’ll see faster growth than ever before.
They have fully managed warehouses, powerful technology, inventory management, and shipment supply chains you can tap into to process and ship orders and returns. Your 3PL provider will do all this background work for you, improving your e-commerce business’s efficiency, speed, and cost controls.
Make Sure Your Site Is Mobile Friendly
Most people shop online on their phones, so ensuring your website is friendly is critical, or you’ll lose most potential customers.
Use an appropriate font and short text to make your product descriptions easy to read. Call-to-action buttons should be large. Leave plenty of white space. Most importantly, use a responsive design to ensure your content and images automatically reformat based on different screen sizes.
Make Your Products Irresistible
Get more visitors to buy from your website by using high-quality images and writing detailed product descriptions. Use a high-quality camera and good lighting to take pictures. Upload multiple photo angles for each product.
Use search engine optimization in your descriptions to ensure your website shows up when people search online for products similar to what you sell. Address the buyer’s pain points, explain how your product solves them, and answer customers’ questions. This can include details on sizing, quality, construction, features, and capabilities.
Create a Personalized Experience
In e-commerce, data is on your side. You can track virtually everything your customers do on your site and use that to your advantage. Doing so can mean a substantial increase in sales.
Leverage your data on your customers’ location, browsing history and shopping history to create a personalized shopping experience. Send them personalized emails with discounts based on their browsing history. Ensure the currency is converted per location. Send abandoned cart text messages with offers that will make them return to buy.
Invest in Customer Service
Regarding e-commerce, poor customer service is a surefire way to turn away customers. If a potential customer has a question – poor or nonexistent customer service can ensure they never buy from you. If a customer has an issue, poor customer service can ensure they never buy from you again.
Having great customer service can and should be what you’re known for. It can help you stand out from the crowd and make you the first choice when people want to shop online for what you offer.
People should be able to reach a customer service agent through their preferred communication method – texting, calling, emailing, or talking to a chatbot. They should have their questions and concerns answered promptly – instantly, ideally. Their experience should be pleasant.
Make Conversion as Easy as Possible
It’s a good idea to get a second or third opinion here. Have people you know shop on your website and tell you what would potentially stop them from purchasing (or ask real customers the same questions). Then, do everything possible to minimize these barriers and make buying easy.
This could mean increasing your website’s loading speed, improving your navigation, adding more compelling offers, allowing a guest checkout option, or simplifying the checkout process.
This could be reducing your shipping fees or time – or at least making your policies clear on your website. It could be adding an easy return policy to your website. It could be as simple as removing a few fields from the order form or adding additional payment options like PayPal.
