Marcus RichardsAs an entrepreneur, you know that there is no greater feeling than starting your own business and watching it grow. Starting a new e-commerce business can be daunting, especially if you’re not sure where to start. If you’re new to e-commerce, or even if you’ve been selling online for a while, these tips will help you take your business to the next level. So, what are you waiting for? Get started today!
Get Shipping Sorted
If there is one thing that a new e-commerce business needs to get right before they focus on anything else, it is to get shipping sorted. You might not know this, but for many new e-commerce businesses, shipping can be one of the reasons why they end up making a loss, due to spending more money on shipping than needed.
Shipping is one of the most important things e-commerce businesses need to focus on. Not only do you need to consider shipping if you are bringing products into your business to sell them on your site, but you also need to consider shipping for your customers. No one wants to wait months to receive an item, neither you nor your customers. Some shipping companies are better than others, especially with regard to reliability. When you are looking for a shipping company, you should look to partner up with one that is reliable. A shipping company like MyUS will get your products to the people or businesses you want them to go to on time. With the variety of services they offer, as well as their competitive shipping rates, your business is sure to benefit. This partnership will allow you to provide impeccable services to your customers, and will ultimately grow your business.
Have a Functional Website
The next thing that you’re going to want to focus on as a new e-commerce business is to have a fully functional website. What exactly does this mean? This means that your website needs to have all of the product descriptions as well as the relevant categories to make searching their website easier for customers.
More than this, your website should not take more than three seconds to load, since this is the amount of time it takes for people to leave. In addition to this, the layout of your website needs to be simple and it would be a great idea to have a static navigational bar.
Focus on Cart Abandonment
If there is one thing that hurts retailers and e-commerce businesses, it is caught abandonment. Did you know that due to cart abandonment, e-commerce businesses lose around $18 billion in revenue every year?
The good news is that not all hope is lost. There are many things that you can do to prevent caught abandonment, such as push notifications, and email reminders. One effective strategy for dealing with cart abandonment is giving a customer a small discount on items that are in their cart. Think about it this way; making a discounted sale is better than making no sale at all.
Get Started with SEO
One of the most important things to do to grow as an E-commerce business, especially if you are new, is to get started with SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization and it can be described as any efforts that you make to make your website more discoverable.
Why is SEO important? Because you are running an online business and to get customers, people need to find your website. One of the most effective strategies for increasing your ranking is content creation, and another is to use social media.
Include Social Elements
Something that might be a bit of a challenge as a new e-commerce business, but which needs to be done as soon as you can, is to include social elements. What are social elements? Social elements could be anything that adds social proof to your website that might persuade a potential customer to either use your services or buy your products.
A few examples of these could be customer testimonials that you host on your home page, or ensuring that you get reviews for your products or services with Google My Business.
Don’t Forget Mobile Users
Finally, another important tip for new e-commerce businesses, especially if you want to start making a profit in the very early stages, is to not forget about mobile users. You might not be aware of this, but in the last six months around 79% of all smartphone users in the US made a purchase online using their smartphone.
There are even more statistics that might surprise you, but the point is that by not making your site compatible with smartphones, you will be losing out on money.
