E-commerce generally means commercial transactions conducted electronically on the internet. Amidst the pandemic, many businesses have taken one step ahead to make their business go online. It’s only a good start for new and existing businesses to have a strong online presence. Here’s some useful tips to ensure your e-commerce business to keep being relevant to your target audience.

Set SMART Goals

Whether you want to do your business full time or as a side hustle, ensure that you have SMART goals.
SMART stands for:
Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Timed

It’s important to keep these factors in mind when setting your goals. For example, instead of setting a goal like “Become a successful e-commerce merchant”, go for something like, “Sell one product within one month of launching my online store.” Be specific about it.
Well-defined targets (measurable) make success easier to attain and sustain (attainable and realistic). Set tight deadlines for ambitious goals. As the saying goes, “Dream big, at least of you fall, you fall on the stars”.

Stay on top of Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is always assumed as meticulous and people tend to ignore it or leave it to the ‘expert’. If you understand the importance of it, you will not miss to be on top of SEO. It brings potential customers to your site with engaging and informative blog posts.

SEO is the science of making sure your content ranks highly when searching for a related term on Google or Bing. It’s incredibly important to use SEO strategies because 90% of the users never make it beyond the first page of results.
Here are some SEO optimization strategies that can help grow your incoming search traffic:

• Optimize your title, URL, and meta-description to hit the keywords that people are searching
• Provide high-value content and keep it fresh
• Improve your website’s loading time
• Implement Google authorship
• Register your website with Google and Bing business webmaster tools

Be mobile friendly

Never underestimate the importance of being mobile friendly as everyone nowadays is always glued to their mobile. People don’t bring along laptops or use computers in today’s world. People are constantly browsing from their mobile phones.

Ensure to develop a website that looks as good on mobile devices as it does on desktops.
Google has a free mobile-friendly test tool that shows what your site looks like on mobile. It also suggests what improvements you can make to your site.

When optimizing your site for the best possible experience, ask yourself questions like:

• How will your navigation work on different devices?
• Are clickable elements easily tappable?
• Are your images beautiful on all screen sizes?
• Is the add-to-cart, checkout, and payment workflow optimized for different screen sizes?

Start content marketing

Content is king and no marketers can deny it! Every e-commerce business can benefit from creating content. Regular content posting on social media and blogging helps connect with customers on a deeper level. Blogging with relevant industry driven content will help your business to rank better in search engines too.

It’s a brilliant string to add to your digital marketing bow.
Sharing guides / tips/ hacks can be a good way of improving the customer journey and making sure your customers get the most out of your products. It may be the kind of content you should update on the website as well. If you are already on track with social media posting and blogging, start with livestream to be more engaged with your audience.

Align your business with social media

Social media is the closest to the heart for your e-commerce brand and it’s free (most of it).
Social networks like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok allow you to grow your brand awareness and your customer base.

Here are a few tips to help you establish your brand across social media platforms:

• Post regular content, daily stories, and weekly live content.
• Comment on and like competitors highly engaged followers.
• Follow accounts that follow your competitors since you know they are interested in your business.
• Leverage influencer marketing.

Cover a Range of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

As an e-commerce business, you’re not there physically for your customers. You need to provide every single piece of information that will allow or enticer your customers to make a decision. Don’t overestimate what your customers know. You need to list out all the usual, possible or even rarely asked questions in your FAQs section.

From Frequently Asked Questions to Return Policies, and from Shipping Dates to your Shipping Policies, be clear and transparent in your conversations and transactions with them.
Put yourself in the shoes of a buyer and then decide what their questions are likely to be. Cover everything that you can imagine. Even better if you can have a chatbot that can help to answer questions asked by your customers.

Don’t forget the value of email marketing

Send out a weekly newsletter with information on sales, new content, or product drops. Your email marketing strategy doesn’t have to be fancy. Take note, repeated communications via email to customers keeps you on their radar and may sway them to return for a purchase. Effective strategies include:

• Build out your email marketing list. Data equals money, so create a landing pop-up on your website that offers customers a discount of 10% to 15% off of their purchase if they sign up for your email newsletter. If you’re selling products or services in your local community, ask customers to sign up for your newsletter for that same discount.
• Be authentic. If you want to have creative control over your email marketing, lean into your own voice (or your brand’s voice) with your customers. Your business should have a personality to it, and that personality starts with you.
• Keep an eye on open rates. As you start to send out email newsletters, pay attention to your open rates. Open rates show how many people on your mailing list are actually opening your marketing emails. You can easily compare open rates for different kinds of messages to get a sense of what people want to read and what they don’t.

Remember, it’s much easier to set up an e-commerce business than sustaining it. Be sure to be on top of your business strategies in order to keep your business relevant.

Need more ideas & insights to grow your business, read WhyQ blog now.