According to Statista, global retail eCommerce sales are expected to grow to 7.4 trillion dollars by the year 2025. A clear indicator that the eCommerce industry is growing fast and will continue to expand therefore it is not easy to managing an Ecommerce store. More and more people are online shopping, which sounds good news for eCommerce businesses to scale and capture the market.
The opportunity is big, but it’s no easy feat to grab the attention of your target market in the first place and then retain the one-time buyers. Just like managing a brick-and-mortar store takes time and effort, running an eCommerce store demands the same labor.
Ecommerce businesses with their store websites have control over their customer experience, unlike those that sell their products via marketplaces. Businesses with store websites can leverage their control to gain a competitive advantage. With a well-designed and maintained eCommerce store, online businesses can attract & connect with their customers to generate sales.
7 tips for managing an eCommerce store.
1. Perform Website Backups
There can be technical disasters apart from natural ones as well. Technology can crash, human error, hacker attacks, viruses, incorrect updates etc, are all possible. Owing to these reasons, a website backup is a must. A site’s backup is a sure way to restore it in such instances. You can access your files anywhere on the internet via cloud storage. Frequent backups are essential to prevent any data loss, recent and old.
2. Optimize Loading Times
Online shoppers are ruthless. Long loading times create a bad user experience and are a potential cause for visitors to leave your site. Thus site performance impacts your conversion rate. Thus, effort must be put into website speed optimization. According to portent survey 2019, the first 5 seconds of the page-load time have the most impact on conversion rates. Speed test is ongoing maintenance; it needs to be optimized whenever new content is uploaded on the site. Always ensure quick loading times (aiming for 0-2 seconds) to prevent your customers reach the frustration of leaving your site.
3. Review Analytics
Measuring is a prerequisite for scaling. To work on the areas of improvement, one needs to identify the gaps first. Data insights come into play here. To make informed decisions performing data analysis and metrics reviews are imperative. Data insights direct the growth of your business. What pages are performing best? From where is the traffic coming to your site? What is your website’s bounce rate? All these and many other website-related questions can be answered only after a thorough study of the data at hand.
4. Optimize for Mobile Devices
Consumers not only use mobile to research a product but also to make purchases. Insider intelligence forecasts mobile commerce to reach 42.9% of the eCommerce in 2024. Having your online store accessible from the smartphone provides your customers the ease to buy. As per Google, 59% of shoppers consider the option of shopping on mobile as important when deciding on a brand to purchase. Thus, optimizing your store’s website for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets can add to your sales channels.
5. Provide Exceptional Online Customer Support
Acquire considers Live Chat to be the best customer support service. Many studies have proven that customers find live-chat support helpful, prefer it over other types of support (email or phone), and are more satisfied with their brand experience. Live Chat support also contributes toward customer loyalty & retention.
The HelpFlow CEO (a live sales & customer support service provider) has seen a 10% or more increase in conversion rate by focusing only on the website visitor’s experience. It does pay back to invest in Live Chat support. For businesses with a limited budget, it’s alright to fine-tune other contact points to deliver customer satisfaction.
6. Use Multi-Store Management Tool
If you are a dropshipper running an eCommerce store, an online wholesaler, or a retailer business, one of the best investments can be using a multi-store management tool. These businesses can benefit greatly from store management tools. They streamline manual and redundant processes while dealing to & fro between multiple source and destination stores.
Syncerize is one such multi-store management tool for effortless inventory auto-updates, product synchronization, and order forwarding. These functionalities are linked to an eCommerce store website which is the front face of a brand for its customers. And make back-end operations smooth and front-end implementations easier.
Likely possible problems like inventory shortage, new product updates and errors in order fulfillment can be avoided with easy-on-the-pocket tools like syncerize. You can choose your plan based on the size of your business.
7. Use High-Resolution Images
Product photography is an important element of marketing an eCommerce business. Having high-resolution quality images of your products displayed on the website can persuade customers to purchase. These images allow your customers to explore your products from different angles: building credibility and trust in your brand. On the contrary, low-quality images display a brand’s low confidence in its products.
Additionally, including customer testimonials that showcase product satisfaction in the form of pictures or videos can be a great kick to convert potential customers. Make sure that your product images are consistent with your brand identity.
Running an online business isn’t a straight path to follow. Depending on your industry, target market and competition, the strategy keeps evolving with time. So, follow the tips mentioned above to keep playing with the different functionalities a website offers. Put in place the outlined strategies in this article to make your website more customer-centric. Also, track the data to see what works best for your business.
