E-retail sales have surpassed the $4.2 trillion mark. In addition, the same study shows that the number of people who shop online has ballooned to over 2 billion.
That’s great news for ecommerce businesses.
To get your fair share of the $4.2 trillion pie, you need to be strategic about your marketing, customer acquisition, and sales tactics. Here are 15 small business ecommerce tips to help you succeed.
1. Focus on Customer Experience
One of the best ways to boost your sales and grow your business is to put your customers first. To do this, focus on delivering an amazing customer experience. Research shows that customer experience (CX) has become the biggest differentiator between brands, even overtaking product and price. With so many brands competing for the same customers, customers have the upper hand. Today, they buy experiences, not just products.
2. Don’t Skimp on Tools
A big mistake many small businesses make is to skimp on tools. They either try to do things manually or save on costs by using outdated tools.
In the long run, this is more expensive than investing in up-to-date digital solutions.
Your customers expect nothing less than fast, efficient, and personalized service. To deliver at scale, you need to automate your processes through the use of automation tools. Skimping on these could lead to slow growth, or worse still — losing your customers.
Make sure to invest in the best ecommerce platform for small business, analytics tools, and other business tools you’ll need to succeed.
3. Invest in SEO and Content Marketing
With a brick-and-mortar store, your chances of selling increase when there’s a lot of foot traffic in the store. The same applies to your ecommerce website.
That’s why one of the small business ecommerce tips you must religiously act on is optimizing your store for search engines.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the practice of making your website rank higher on search engine results pages, making it more visible for the keywords associated with your brand and products.
Besides SEO, you also need to invest in content marketing. This is the practice of creating and promoting content to attract, convert, and retain customers.
SEO and content marketing are essentials for ecommerce stores to boost traffic, educate visitors, and convince them to buy. With the competition being stiff, you must make sure to get these two right if you’re to see results. If you don’t have the knowledge or time to DIY, you can always hire a freelancer or agency to take care of them for you.
4. Have a Robust Social Media Marketing Strategy
With over 3.6 billion users, businesses have no reason not to have a social media presence. Especially as a small business, you don’t have the same marketing budgets as your bigger competitors.
This is where social media marketing (SMM) comes to play.
Not only is social media a cost-effective marketing channel, but it’s also a great tool for offering good customer service.
5. Offer Cross Channel Experiences
Today’s shoppers are advanced. They may start a shopping experience on one platform, continue on another, and complete it on a totally different one. As a small ecommerce business, you need to have a system in place to offer a seamless transition between these various channels. You must enable cross channel experiences. Failure to do so could result in you losing customers to competitors who do.
6. Build an Email List from the Get-go
To successfully build an online business, you need to build meaningful relationships with your customers. One of the best ways to do that is via email marketing. With email marketing, you can:
- Nurture leads
- Convert leads
- Onboard customers
- Retain customers
But to do so, you must proactively build an email list. You also need to invest in an efficient email service provider (ESP).
7. Use Quality Product Images
One of the biggest challenges of ecommerce is helping customers experience your product before purchasing. The best way to overcome this is to use high-quality product images. Besides quality, you should also use as many product images as possible. Doing this will give shoppers a better feel of what to expect from your product.
8. Leverage Influencer Marketing
When people think of influencer marketing, they usually imagine high-profile celebrities. Of course, these are beyond your budget as a small business. As a small business, you can leverage micro-influencers. These are influencers who have between 10,000 to 50,000 followers. While their following may not be huge, if they have an audience that fits your buyer persona profile, they can help drive your marketing and lead generation efforts.
9. Consider Starting an Affiliate Program
Affiliate marketing is the practice of rewarding people (affiliates) who promote your products by offering them an incentive to do so. Create an affiliate program and promote it to relevant publishers who can help you reach your target audience.
10. Drive Conversions with Live Chat
Live chat is a powerful tool you can use to drive website visitors down your funnel faster. By engaGet started with iTransform today.ging with them, you make them feel like they’re in a real store with a real assistant helping them out. Because their questions are answered in real-time, they can come to a buying decision faster.
11. Make Sure Your Ecommerce Website Is Mobile-friendly
Research shows that people use mobile devices more than desktops. That’s why you should ensure your website is mobile-friendly. Failing to offer customers a mobile experience could lead to you missing out on a huge chunk of traffic.
12. Track Your Performance
Keep tabs on everything you do in your business. From website traffic and conversions to sales to all your marketing efforts. Regularly analyze the data to help you:
- Have a clear picture of your business’s health.
- Create better iterations of your marketing campaigns.
13. Give Your Customers a Voice
Giving your customers a voice is a powerful strategy to help build trust, encourage conversions, and drive sales. To do this, encourage customers to leave reviews on your store, on social media, and on third-party review sites.
14. Master Cart Abandonment Recovery
Cart abandonment is the bane of ecommerce. While it’s unavoidable, you can recover some abandoned carts and add more revenue to your bottomline. Experiment with different strategies, tools, and apps designed specifically to recover abandoned carts.
15. Get Customer Feedback
Getting customer feedback is another excellent way of building relationships with your customers. More importantly, it can help you determine your strengths and weaknesses. This will help you create better experiences for your customers, leading to higher retention rates and the likelihood of word-of-mouth recommendations.
Small Business Ecommerce Tips, Big Wins
Use the 15 small business growth strategies outlined above to give yourself an edge. All it takes are some small changes to result in big wins for your business.
Need digital solutions to take your ecommerce business to the next level?