Building your own business is a fun experience that pays off – literally. Being a new entrepreneur is exciting because everything is new. However, sometimes, new entrepreneurs get a little too excited about the wrong things. As an experienced entrepreneur, I’ve made my fair share of mistakes. That’s why I created some crucial eCommerce tips for new entrepreneurs like you, so you can get on the right track from the beginning and actually make some money on your new store.
1. Experiment like your business depends on it.
To really succeed, you’re going to need to experiment a lot. You’ll need to create ads for different products. Test different copy, formats, and images. Experimenting with ads is what will eventually bring in customers and drive sales. Once you’ve created profitable ads you can start experimenting on your website. Many people focus on improving their website first. However, you don’t know how customers are responding to certain features if you don’t have any yet. Avoid making assumptions about your customers. Be open to being wrong about what really works – you won’t know the truth until you look at the data.
2.Commit to a schedule for consistency.
When starting a new eCommerce store, you’ll want to follow a consistent schedule so that your customers can know when to check back. For example, if you add new products each week, you should do it on the same day of the week so people check back on your website on that day every week. If you commit to a blog, adding posts on the same days will encourage people to keep checking back. As soon as you become inconsistent, you start to lose your customer loyalty.
Libra Web Solutions services include Ecommerce App Development, MCommerce Strategy, Ecommerce Hybrid App Development, Mobile App Development for eCommerce, and Small Business eCommerce Mobile App.
3.Start building relationships with relevant influencers.
It takes a few months to find the best influencers to promote your products and even then it’s not guaranteed. From personal experience, I found a great influencer to promote my products, and less than six months later they had been doing so many sponsored posts that they were no longer effective. Finding a great influencer is a lot harder than it looks. Sometimes an influencer has a high price but it doesn’t convert to sales.
4.Make your website visually appealing.
Your entire website should be very visually appealing. Product pages should have multiple product images showcasing different angles and uses. Your homepage should have an attention-grabbing banner image that allows the customer to picture themselves with the product. Even your blog posts should be very visual. You should have several images, gifs, and maybe even a video in each post to separate bodies of text.
5.Be specific with your product categories so customers can easily find exact products.
In the early stages when you only have 15 products it can be tempting to lump all of your products into generic categories. However, as you grow your store, you’ll want to be a bit more specific in your product categorization. Having product categories such as ‘Women,’ ‘Men’ and ‘Children’ don’t do much for SEO purposes and yet they’re common to find in many stores. What’s worse is that some stores lump all of their women’s fashion under ‘women’ with no subcategories at all. Most people don’t like browsing an entire collection to find out that they don’t have dresses in their store. Look at how Amazon organizes its product categories. You can find very specific items with ease. The easier you make it for a customer to find exactly what they’re looking for the more likely they’ll buy from your store.
Libra Web Solutions services include Ecommerce App Development, MCommerce Strategy, Ecommerce Hybrid App Development, Mobile App Development for eCommerce, and Small Business eCommerce Mobile App.
6.Create unique content.
If you’re dropshipping products, odds are you need to find a way to stand out among your competitors. The easiest way to do this is by creating unique content. Pumping out blog posts several times a week is a great way to build an audience, and educate visitors while keeping your website looking fresh and up to date. You can also create videos online to build your brand. Luxy Hair created YouTube videos which led to their massive success. Today their YouTube channel has over 2.9 million subscribers. Unique content can make your business much more profitable.
7.Learn to recover abandoned carts.
Experiment with different abandoned cart apps and email formats. You won’t be able to recover every cart. However, even if you can convert between 1-5% of them, you’ll be better off financially. The abandoned cart rate, on average, falls between 60-80%, according to Baymard. While it may be normal to experience abandoned carts, you shouldn’t stop doing everything you can to make the conversion happen. You should have the first email sent within six hours of the cart abandonment to better help the conversion. Consider also sending at least 3 emails afterward trying to recover it. You can offer an additional discount to help convert the sale. You could start with a 10% discount and in your last email offer a 15% discount if they haven’t recovered it yet.
8.Start building links.
To reduce ad spend while increasing revenue, it’s important to build external backlinks. You can do this by promoting your products on relevant and popular blogs or magazines or by writing guest posts on blogs. The more sources you have driving traffic to your website, the less you’ll spend on ads. For example, even if you write a guest post on another blog, you might not be featuring a specific product but you may get clicks to your website. Once you’ve gotten clicks to your website you can retarget them with your best-selling product which will be a lot cheaper than trying to find new customers. When my store was days old, I was able to get a couple of sales using this method.
Libra Web Solutions services include Ecommerce App Development, MCommerce Strategy, Ecommerce Hybrid App Development, Mobile App Development for eCommerce, and Small Business Ecommerce Mobile App.
9.Make sure your store is finished before you start selling
When someone launches an online store for the first time, they often fail to complete several steps in the process. The biggest mistake I’ve seen store owners make is having an empty homepage. Don’t forget to fill in placeholder text with your own copy, logo and add graphics to your homepage. You’ll also want to make sure you have products categorized properly (such as dresses, skirts, etc) rather than grouping everything together without categories. Adding contact information, refund policies and shipping details are also important to include on your website. While it’s amazing how excited you are to start selling, it’s important to make sure your website is optimized to ensure that you land sales. Having a finished store will allow your customers to feel confident purchasing from your new store.
10.Outsource your weaknesses
When it comes to running a business, there will be things you can do better than everyone else and things that everyone else can do better than you. While being an entrepreneur requires you to be a jack of all trades, there will be some tasks that you struggle with. Whether it’s writing great product descriptions, accounting, or marketing, you need to make sure that you’re doing what you’re best at. Find someone to do the things you’re the worst at. Collaboration is the secret to success. Work with others who are strong where you’re weak. If you stick to what you’re great at, you’ll see a greater return on your business. If you outsource your weaknesses, you’ll create a balanced and profitable business.
If you have any queries contact us at info@librawebsolutions.com. At Libra web solutions we successfully transformed around 80 e-commerce ventures for customers from the UK, Australia, India, Hong Kong, and Singapore since 2008.
