They usually come with restrictive seller policies when it comes to the major marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. To maintain their homogenous image, these are the venues that downplay the merchant’s branding. They generally play a different game when it comes to the sellers with their online stores. Over their customer’s experiences, they have complete control.
Merchants can easily use their website to directly connect with their customers encouraging the purchases, whether rearranging the product placement or highlighting a store sale. The online store owners may not know where they should begin curating their shop with so much freedom. Here are 20 killer tips that can help to create successful online stores to start attracting buyers and retaining loyal customers. Explain how each of the aspects should be crafted to attract buyers and drive up sales with these strategies that cover the same.
The sellers can target the customers’ interest through their online store so that their business stands out amongst the less savvy merchants by following these strategies.
1. Engaging Web Design
If you have the best product possible in your niche and the best customer service on top of that, especially if your store’s web design is lousy, your online business presence is doomed as it does not matter. 93% of buyer considers the visual appearance to be the most crucial factor while purchasing according to a Kissmetrics study.
You can either pay a pretty penny to a web designer or take it upon yourself to learn to code to create a profitable online store. To customize it to your needs, alternatively, you can get a ready-made template. Including the use of full-width images and avoiding the distraction with minimal text, the design elements should be captivating to their visitors.
2. An Awesome “About Us” Page
It means that they are already interested in you and are giving you a chance to prove to him or her that your product is the best one if a visitor goes to your “About Us” page. Spell out what you are and what you do. Most importantly, what you offer to the clients is what you will have to do. It is a welcome here with all the testimonials, achievements, and any social proof.
As it may lead to gain a customer, make sure that you do not waste this opportunity. You can easily find out about the page and throughout your website since your contact information should be clear. The following are the things that you should mention:
- Contact email
- Address
- Social media channels
3. Partner With Other Brands
It is not easy for most buyers to give their hard-earned money to the little-known company. By showing which companies are working with you, establish your reputation. Even the smaller companies can add a degree of trustworthiness to your enterprise as they do not necessarily need to be on the scale of Coca-Cola or Apple.
4. Offer Excellent Online Support
If required, your consumers need to know that they will have support after making a purchase. It can convert your potential buyers into loyal returning customers while guaranteeing troubleshooting after the purchase and consulting before the purchase.
The live-chat feature that can work 24/7 is the most comprehensive and helpful type of support. By 10% or more, this is the tool that can increase your site-wide conversation. You should still provide some service type to help people during working hours if you do not have the resources.
5. Provide Popular Payment Options
Without the payments, no online store can exist. They can always easily make a purchase and offer a wide variety of popular payment options for your customers. There are many other popular options for your business to consider, as PayPal reigns as the go-to payment solution.
6. Advertise on Social Media
A powerful way to connect with lots of potential customers in creative and fun patterns in terms of advertising on social media channels. From a simple Facebook feed post to a taco-shaped lens on Snapchat, social media advertising can be anything.
By focusing your marketing efforts on these platforms, use Google Analytics tools to track the channels. Check out these guides to Facebook advertising, Instagram advertising, and Snapchat advertising to get started if you get confused by social media’s relatively new terrain.
7. A Useful, SEO-Driven Blog
To generate more store traffic, running a blog is an opportunity. They are likely to rank high in search engine results with the posts that contain SEO keywords as they have some useful information for the consumers. Blog posts are the stepping stone to people visiting your product pages and completing the purchases as they rank well and encourage people to visit your site.
On a deep level, a blog is also a medium to connect with the audiences. It can inform your strategies for meeting the buyer’s needs and wants by looking at how your customers can respond to the content. Like offering expert advice on your product usage or an industry-related topic, blog posts build buyer trust when they provide some value to the reader.
8. Build Buyer Trust With Product Reviews
There are significant aspects of the reviews and ratings that are there with your products as they can enhance the effectiveness of the idealness.
When the product reviews are plentiful, they are more convincing. You need not be shy about asking your customers to leave a review after purchasing to encourage more feedback. Customers will not consider leaving a review as everything is already sufficient for those who are satisfied. They will likely be glad to share their positive experience with the rest as you give them a gentle push.
9. Make Your Site SEO-Friendly
To make the purchases happen, the online store has to receive traffic. What is the key to generating traffic? It is search engine optimization. Your site is more likely to rank higher in search engine results by incorporating SEO keywords into your product titles and descriptions. The main ingredient for more significant site visits and more conversions is the increased visibility.
Check out this helpful guide on SEO optimization of eCommerce websites if you are unsure how to find SEO-friendly keywords or incorporate them into your store.
10. Ensure Your Store is Mobile-Responsive
It accounted for 30% of the online purchases last year when it comes to mobile shopping. Business Insider predicts that by 2021 mobile shopping will account for 45% of all eCommerce shopping as this is the figure that is ever increasing.
Merchants have to make sure that their site design is mobile-friendly to ensure that the buyers can make the purchases no matter what device they are using with the growing use of phones for online shopping. To ensure that their site is a responsive one, merchants can also use the online store design templates that are already set to be mobile-responsive.
11. Track Analytics and Iterate
Without monitoring their progress, the online store owners cannot improve their growth strategies. Using the tool like Google Analytics is the best way to track your selling activity and customer’s behavior. To clear the metric about their store, this program offers a percentage of product sales, the number of site page visits, and the number of abandoned shopping carts.
So that you can form long-term insights on how to engage customers more effectively and encourage more purchases, continually track you’re selling metrics with Analytics. Merchants who are unsure about how to form data-based insights should check out our guide using this tool with your online store as they need help setting up the analytics.
12. Offer Free Shipping
It is now an expectation of online shoppers when it comes to free shipping with the help of Amazon Prime. It can easily dissuade buyers today from completing their purchase at the checkout with the added cost of standard shipping. Many merchants cannot see a greater return with the increased purchases after offering the policy, while the upfront cost of providing free shipping may hurt at first.
13. Build Your Outreach List
You also have to reach out to individuals in your industry that can help you reach more buyers within your target audience by growing your business. Merchants are also able to generate product buzz and extend their reach to connect with as many customers as possible by networking with the right groups.
Sellers should reach out to the following groups:
Traditional reporters — Writers who can create content about your products and who specializes in your industry.
Industry bloggers — To focus on your industry and showcase products like yours, create the content on blogs.
Social media influencers — People who have a large number of followers and who comment about your industry on social media.
Similar entrepreneurs — Like-minded entrepreneurs are familiar with your products as they engage in your industry.
14. Use Ready-to-Go Storefront Tools
Merchants should consider using software like Shopify and BigCommerce to set up their online store as they do not have a coding background. The sellers can easily customize their sites without having any knowledge of programming or graphic design, and these programs have built-in store templates.
15. Keep an Eye on the Competition
The customers will be able to look for the lowest prices and the best overall shopping experiences as they browse through the online stores. The merchants should be able to identify the shops that are similar to their own business that they can compare against to keep buyers attracted to their store.
What kind of return policies are they offering? Are they offering free shipping or any variety of paid options? To determine what they need to change about their business to keep returning customers’ loyalty and attract new buyers should be figured out to make the competitors more advantageous.
16. Use High-Res Photos
Humans are visual creatures. In 1/10 of a second, we process the image by understanding the visual information 60,000 times faster than the words. To highlight the details of the products quickly, attracting buyers without having to lose their attention, high-resolution images should be used.
17. Offer Incentives
To include on the product pages or in the communication to the buyers, the online store owners do not have to worry about the marketplace rules that limit what they can. By offering incentives to their buyers, merchants with the stores should be taking advantage of this control. Sellers should actively reach out to the buyers with different types of incentives to make the purchases, whether it is a pop-up discount at the homepage of your store or a promotional email about the ongoing sale.
18. Encourage Social Sharing
It can drive your eCommerce business growth when it comes to organic word-of-mouth marketing on social media. It can serve as social proof when it comes to the psychological phenomenon of people assuming other’s behavioral reflection with correct behavior with the public discussions of your brand and products on social media channels.
19. Take Advantage of Email Marketing
To build relationships with their customers, email marketing is an easy way for the merchants. To the segments of buyers that address each group’s specific wants, the merchants can send out the targeted messages. Email marketing is a powerful tool to encourage sales and to increase revenue by appealing to the interest of the buyers.
20. Offer Generous Refund and Money-Back Guarantee Policies
It is very risky when it comes to purchasing the product online with a limited return policy. They have to hope that the product is as-described as the customers cannot see the item in person. Most of the buyers will not buy an online product if the returns are not accepted, with the possibility of the product not being up to their standards.
Sellers can build buyer trust and incentivize purchases by offering generous return and money-back guarantee policies. Allowing customers to return an item if they change their mind or if it doesn’t match the product description shows other consumers that you trust your buyers and want to provide them with value.
Niyati Lad
Niyati Lad is Sr. Web & Graphic Designer at USS LLC. She likes to share tips on Front-end Development and UI UX Design Service