Getting your eCommerce business off the ground these days is not particularly difficult. With the number of resources and tools available to you online, you get your site, social pages, and logistics up and running in a matter of a few days.
But, the challenge comes in to make it successful, profitable, and sustainable. Research shows that 50% of new businesses fail within the first year and 90% within the first five years. This might seem like that odds are stacked against you, but there are certainly ways of overcoming these, especially in the digital landscape that we find ourselves.
If you are looking to start your own eCommerce business, and are looking for a few pointers, you have come to the right place. We thought we would take you through a few helpful guidelines and hints to make the process of growing your online business into an empire that much easier.
Automate As Much As You Can:
Luckily for you, there are an endless amount of tools online to help you with basically anything. From starting up and creating your website, to managing social post scheduling and even managing your apparel and logistics, there are endless solutions for you.
If your budget is tight, there are plenty of ways for you to start off on free or low premium options, and then slowly work your way up to the pricier options. These will offer more features, more support, and allow you more flexibility for your business.
Many of the tools also provide you with all-in-one management solutions. Have a look at this great article from ApparelMagic on Apparel Management Software for example. This resource provides you with an all in one guide to manage various arms of your business at the same time.
This means that after implementing this system and spending the time getting it set up, you can refocus your energy on building the rest of the brand. Things like accounting, administration, inventory management, order processing, production, supply chain management, and warehousing are all in the same place.
Prioritize Your Content:
One of the most important aspects of your digital marketing strategy is going to be your content. We advise that you spend some time before setting off on your E-commerce marketing journey planning your brand identity and voice. It will be important to keep all messaging uniform and on-brand at all times and on each platform.
Set up a content calendar to schedule blogs, emails, and social posts. Once again here, getting the right support tools and automating the processes will make it more efficient in the long run, but get it all established at the outset.
Blog posts should be educational, informative, and empowering. You can share these posts in the emails and over social media, too, to get more reach.
Topics like “Five ways to dress up your boyfriend jeans” or “Six ways you should be tying your scarf” will capture the attention of your reader. You can then add a call-to-action (CTA) in the article to the scarf or jeans which just happen to be on sale that week. This is one of the most successful ways of converting traffic to sales from your content.
Take a Good Look at Your Product Pages:
Your product pages need to be as inviting and give as much information to the visitor as possible. Here you need to remember that you cannot appeal to a customer like a traditional fashion store. They cannot feel the material, try it on, and examine each aspect of the garment.
So, provide as much of that experience for them as you can. High quality and attractive images are an absolute must. Make sure that there are numerous images from all angles and of specific details of the garment.
But keep in mind, high-quality images are usually quite large which slows down your site speed and impacts your SEO. It will be worth your while compressing the images with an online tool before you upload them to make sure they don’t negatively impact you.
Here’s our infographic guide to help you craft a remarkable SEO strategy.
It is also important to have the following on your product page:
- Accurate and interesting product descriptions;
- Customer reviews and ratings;
- Pricing and shipping costs;
- A catchy CTA;
- Added features of the product;
- Any details about customization options;
- Similar product suggestions;
- Options for support or live chat.
Keep Testing Everything All The Time:
This is one of the most overlooked, but incredibly important exercises to do, especially in a start-up business. You can use tools like Google Analytics to watch your traffic and establish the success rate of something.
Take a blog post too, for example. You can monitor the success of the topic by measuring the open rate, click-through rates, traffic to the post, time spent on the article, and bounce rate.
If you add a new feature to your site, like a new CTA, or some new copy, keep an eye on it to see how it is doing. There are a few tools for you to do this, like HotJar which allows you to monitor how your customer behaves on your site.
You can also A/B test new features to see what is successful and appealing to your customer. A/B testing allows you to understand what colors are more appealing to your visitor, what copy works best, where a CTA should be placed, and what image draws them in more.
You might need to spend a bit more time doing these split tests at the beginning, but it will allow you to fully optimize your site for an incredible customer journey experience.
Also Read: Building A Strong Healthy Snacks Ecommerce Brand.
Wrapping Up
It is important to keep trying new things at all times on your site. Subscribe to resources to keep you up to date with the industry trends and keep an eye open for new, useful tools that can make your life that much easier running your business. The more you automate, the less paperwork you have, and the more you can concentrate on your brand-building.
The tools that you integrate into your business will allow you to pull frequent reports for you to constantly measure and monitor the success of your digital marketing campaigns, which in turn, will make for better decision-making going forward. It is a constant learning process, so enjoy the journey.
Building a successful eCommerce brand takes a lot more than choosing a brand name. Want to 10x your website traffic and take your eCommerce business to a new level? Reach out to Dignitas Digital today!