Running a successful e-commerce operation isn’t easy, especially when you are up against harsh competition. There are many things to optimize and improve, ranging from your online shop to shipping operations. With so many things to do, you can easily get lost or start several projects, spread your resources too thin, and end up having to drop some of them.
Where do you start, then?
The post-pandemic era is the perfect time to level the field and help your business stand out from the crowd. Here are several strategies that you can implement to build a successful e-commerce business.
Make product pages impeccable
If anything, the worldwide pandemic made the e-commerce industry bloom. However, people are eager to go out and start shopping in brick-and-mortar shops. Pre-pandemic, over 70% of consumers spent over %50 when shopping in physical stores. The chances are that these numbers will go up when all the restrictions are lifted.
That’s because consumers value the discovery phase, during which they inspect and compare products firsthand. What you can do is make your product pages impeccable. You should update your product descriptions and make them more detailed, add more high-quality product photos, and add the compare products feature.
Deliver the shopping experience that resembles offline shopping, and you may hit a sweet spot.
Update your online shop
Modern consumers don’t have time to wait for the pages to load or to search for products. Instead, they go to the competitor who has done a great job updating the online shop and introducing search features. When it comes to your website, there is always something that you can do.
Start with necessary design updates ensuring that you are in line with the best current practices in the e-commerce site design niche. Next, you can work with your developers to make necessary changes to improve the loading speed.
Finally, you can revisit your product categories and search feature, ensuring that categorization follows the same logic and search really works.
Improve your shipping practices
Shipping is the bread and butter of a successful e-commerce operation. Why? Because good shipping ensures you live up to your “will be delivered in X business days” promise. Plus, the best practices can help you prevent damaging goods in transportation and potentially save big bucks in returns and reclamations.
It’s a huge aspect of the e-commerce business model, especially if you handle warehousing and shipping internally. In this case, you should break down your operation, assess the current situation, and make relevant improvements.
For instance, you can use NFC-based warehouse tracking systems to become more efficient and polypropylene strapping to ensure product safety throughout your entire supply chain.
Seek help from a digital assistant
Scaling up is a significant issue for many e-commerce operations. As more and more people place trust in online shops, the pressure on customer service and support teams increases. If you fail to service consumers in need, you risk losing them to competitors who can. Fortunately, you don’t have to spend a fortune to scale up your online operation.
Chatbots are valuable assets to have in this scenario. Why? Because you can have one chatbot across different communication channels answering your customers’ questions. In fact, digital assistants can even streamline online sales these days. Consider adding one to your team.
Boost your brand reach
Marketing is capable of driving lead generation and sales like nothing else. Now, before you say you don’t have money to fuel those paid ads campaigns on search engines and social media, you should know that there are more cost-efficient alternatives. There are many ways to boost your brand reach and increase sales.
One of the things you can do is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s a long-term strategy that can help you target your customers better. You can also start blogging regularly, providing valuable and relevant information to your target customers.
Finally, ongoing sales and discounts can also help you attract more customers and ensure repeat business.
Invest in a dedicated mobile app
Modern consumers are used to shopping on their mobile phones. One of the most important things you should do is streamline mobile shopping for them. To do it, you can get a mobile app for your online shop. However, this can be an expensive project as you will need to work with mobile app developers.
A more affordable variant would be to make your online shop mobile-friendly. It will enable your customers to have a great shopping experience on their smartphones and tablets.
Making your e-commerce business more competitive is not hard. Before you choose a strategy from this list, consider researching your competition – it will help you choose the best strategy to get ahead of them. If you have enough time and your budget allows, feel free to implement several strategies at once.
