5 Tips to Ensuring Your Smooth Transition to the Ecommerce World
Simply put, e-commerce is the buying and selling of goods online. This means that if you have ever done that little happy dance when a parcel you’ve ordered online arrives at your door, then you have participated in an e-commerce sale. The e-commerce world is fast growing and this has only been accelerated by the current global pandemic. Now that people are forced to become familiar with shopping online, they have become more accustomed to the convenience. As a business owner, you might be considering making the shift to e-commerce. After all, there are many benefits from transitioning to e-commerce, that you don’t get in-store. You have the opportunity to sell 24/7, rather than having set hours customers can buy from your business. This means that while you might be working the same hours, your customers are not limited to the standard 9am-5pm opening hours. You also don’t have a location limit, meaning potential customers who may not have physical access to your store can still browse and purchase. You also have the ability to directly target your customers through advertising online, bringing them straight into your e-commerce store. But we get it, the transition from a brick and mortar store to an online store can be daunting. So, we have provided 5 tips to ensure your smooth transition to the e-commerce world!
Tip 1: Choose the right platform
Choosing an e-commerce platform can be daunting! Let’s be real, you have probably been hit with free trial offers left, right, and center. So how do you decide what is right for you and your business? We did a review of the most popular e-commerce platforms so you don’t have to! Here’s a sum up.
Our personal favourite is… Drumroll please… Shopify. Shopify is the e-commerce superstar, designed for online stores. Great for businesses of any size who are growth orientated. Some of the world’s largest e-commerce stores use shopify! Shopify is a simple yet robust platform that is easy to use and takes care of the admin traditionally associated with running an online store. The transition to e-commerce could see you starting a shiny new online based biz or creating an online space for your current physical store. We’ve got some good news… Shopify is also compatible with physical stores through Shopify POS (point-of-sale), integrating in-store and online inventory like a boss! Another advantage of Shopify over its competitors is the partnership network that includes the likes of Instagram and Facebook to aid with marketing. Other hot picks right now are Wix, WordPress.com, and Squarespace.
Tip 2: Top of mind – Get on your customers radar through SEO
Like what you’ve heard so far? Wait till you hear… you can be the top search in your industry! Those catchy jingles on the radio have nothing on SEO. We want to make a name for your business and have you ranking at the top in your industry. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising a website to increase its performance in organic search rankings. SEO has an impact on the quantity and quality of your website traffic, targeting unpaid traffic rather than direct traffic or paid traffic. In other words, it helps customers (old, current or new) find your e-commerce store based on relevant google searches. For example, if you search ‘paint brushes’ on google, warehouse stationery is the top organically ranked website). The chance of a customer clicking on your website link decreases the further they scroll down the search page. Good SEO can bump your webby to the top of the list! Special landing pages and programming can improve the SEO on your website along with blog posts and keywords. Once a customer clicks through to your platform, having a streamlined and user friendly website is essential. These tactics are not only exclusive to the big honchos, they are available for everyone’s success! Whether you recruit a specialist, partner with a wicked agency, or invest some time into doing it yourself, you won’t regret it!
Tip 3: Packing and shipping logistics
How many times have you gone to order something online, only to be put off by the long shipping timeframes or high shipping costs? Consider the times you have opened a package and been wowed by the packaging, or been shocked at the unnecessary amount of wrapping or plastic when your purchase arrives. These are all aspects of packing and shipping logistics that contribute to your customer’s attitude and beliefs about your brand. Therefore, it is important to think through all of your options when determining things like outsourcing your packing and shipping, or being responsible for this yourself. We recommend reflecting on your short and long term goals and ensuring your decisions align with these always.
Tip 4: Think about changes to customer service
When your customers have a brick and mortar store they can visit with their queries and concerns, you might not have had to consider what customer service might look like outside of a physical store. When making the switch to e-commerce, you should think about how your customers will now contact you. This could be via an email, a contact form on your website, or by simply commenting on your social media posts or direct messages on these platforms. This will mean developing a plan for your customer service representatives on what mediums they could be contacted on and how to deal with this.
Tip 5: Invest in a marketing strategy
In our opinion, this one is a biggy. Now that you have moved online, waiting for foot traffic will no longer work, meaning you need to be actively sourcing your customers via a marketing strategy. A marketing strategy ensures that everything you do is intentional and purposeful. The term “marketing” can entail many things, which is why marketing agencies like us have so many categories and services. But to keep it short and sweet, we like to think of a marketing strategy as a plan of attack. It can be the simple things like developing branding that is consistent across all digital and physical media and platforms, investing in SEO services to create organic traffic to your website, or creating a social media strategy and advertising plan. In terms of your e-commerce website, implementing a marketing strategy might involve analysing if you have higher sales in one style or colour of the same product, and then using this as your feature image. Or, it could include analysing purchase frequency to identify patterns in purchasing. If you identify patterns, you can create deals such as a discount when signing up to a subscription service, which can be done via your website or email marketing. By investing in a marketing strategy you will have the steps in place to watch your e-commerce business grow. We suggest The Launch Agency for all your marketing needs… but hey, some could say we are a little biased.