Reaching E-commerce customers across different platforms

The future of trade lies in electronic commerce. With more than 3 billion Internet users for the time being and more than 1 billion websites, there’s an endless number of trade opportunities on the Web.

Due to those facts, you might think that it’s enough only to launch an e-store and money will start pouring in. The truth is much different. It takes hundreds of hours of hard work to build a user-friendly e-Commerce website that could start bringing profits. The most important part of this entire process isn’t the store itself. The essence is generating leads and turning them into your loyal customers.

This article will show you how to achieve that goal.

Enrich website content

If your e-Commerce website is merely an Internet store whose only role is to sell items, your online business won’t take off. First and foremost, every e-store owner needs to understand that digital marketing is a field that requires a lot of entertaining features. Your website might be an online store, but it’s crucial to sugarcoat its main function with someinteresting content features.

• Informative blog: Write, order and publish craftily composed blog posts. If a customer reads something relevant and well-written on your website, they’ll spend more time on it. This is the first prerequisite for turning a visitor into a lead. Also, make sure your posts contain the keywords relevant for your business, to improve you SEO features.
• Witty product descriptions: The key content feature of every ambitious e-Commerce website,product descriptions should send your unique marketing message to your potential customers. What’s more, it will make your business stand out from similar online ventures. If affordable, hire a professional copywriter to add a flair of creativity to those descriptions. If not, roll up your sleeves and follow these tips to write appealing descriptions on your own.
• Engaging visuals: Add your original videos and images to your e-store. Also, avoid posting stock images and videos made by other people or businesses. What you need is originality and uniqueness, rather than generic content.

When you ensure that your website contains all these features, you’ll be able to retain different groups of customers.

Insist on your brand story

When an e-Commerce owner is trying to reach their customers, they should simultaneously work on their branding. Therefore, you should ask yourself why your customers would buy on your website and not on some other e-place. Because you’re different from others? In what ways? Write down those essential ingredients of your business vision.

This brainstorming session will help you define your advantages and use them to attract customers. So, you should note down every original feature of your business that crosses your mind. When it’s finished, analyze those details and focus your promotional campaign on your unique brand story.

Connect the store and social media

You’ve prepared your content for your future customers and defined your brand story. Now is the time to move onto one of the crucial phases of your e-Commerce effort: launching your brand into the realm of social media. The most practical platform for your first step onto this territory is Facebook. For starters, you can set up a Facebook business page. It can be launched in a matter of minutes. Additionally, you can use a plethora of ad tools to improve your presence on that network.

What you should do next is establish proper communication between your e-store and that business page. It’s essential to share your special content features to attract Facebook users to your website. While sharing your products and special offers is a must, don’t overdo with it, but put your promotion into a shiny wrapping of well-composed content, just like you did on your website.

Finally, perform the same action on other social media and launch a wide-range social campaign for reaching new customers.

Polish the cart

How many times have you almost bought something on an e-Commerce website and left it before you finished the purchase? When people are shopping online, they know that they don’t have to buy anything immediately. That abundance of freedom offers them comfort that they don’t usually have when shopping offline. As a result of that comfort, they abandon their cart knowing that they can return and finish the purchase whenever they want. This is where a wise e-Commerce owner will launch a special cart action to nudge their customers to finish their purchases.

• Add various payment options: Instead of restricting your potential buyers to one or two payment methods, offer them several handy options. Many of them will leave the website if you don’t accept their credit cards. Therefore, let them pay with PayPal and Stripeand all the mainstream credit cards (Visa, MasterCard, American Express etc.).
• Speed up your procedures: Sometimes it might happen that a customer wants to buy a larger number of items from your e-store. This is why you need to have some ready-made solutions for this purpose, such as a quick invoice template or automated email marketing automation tools. They will speed up shopping and improve the functionality of your e-store.
• Simplify its design: Carts shouldn’t be colorful. At this page of purchase, your customers shouldn’t be exposed to any distractions. Hence, your trademark business colors should dominate the checkout page and that’s about it when it comes to design features of this page.

When you make changes to your cart, track the abandonment rate. If the situation is the same, apply different variations of these tips until this rate decreases.

Spread to new markets

E-store owners should bear in mind that the modern e-trade market is rapidly changing. This is so mostly due to the enormous upsurge of mobile technology. Since more than 60% of Google searches come from mobile users, it’s vital to grasp the moment and start searching for new customers in this market.

The crucial thing to do is adapt your e-Commerce website to mobile users. Responsive design works for ordinary websites, but e-stores have some special demands, so you might consider creating a mobile version of your commercial website. Another option is to create an app, which will make your website even more easily accessible for your potential buyers and customers.

The greatest thing about the contemporary Internet market is that it has a huge potential for online commerce. The omnipresence of social media and a large rise in the number of mobile users dictate some new trends. Therefore, follow these innovations and adapt your e-Commerce website to the ongoing changes. It will ensure your further growth and higher revenues in the bustling market of online trade.

AuthorBio: Mark is a biz-dev hero at Invoicebus – a simple invoicing service that gets your invoices paid faster. He passionately blogs on topics that help small biz owners succeed in their business. He is also a lifelong learner who practices mindfulness and enjoys long walks in nature more than anything else.