Estimated time to read: 7 minutes.
Starting your own online store is like going on an adventure! A successful trip requires excellent upstream organization. The same goes for your future online store. Anticipation is essential to ensure the success of your eCommerce site.Table of content:
- Plan your e-commerce strategy
- Choosing the right niche industry
- Study the competition
- Do not stoke too much product
- The importance of quality photographs
- Pay attention to product descriptions
- Define your marketing objectives
- The digital communication strategy
- Launch strategy
- Conclusion
Plan your e-commerce strategy
As with developing an SEO strategy, the first step in creating an e-commerce marketing strategy is to plan and direct your future efforts to where they will pay the most.
Choosing the right niche industry
If you have not yet defined the product you want to market on the net, a good e-commerce strategy begins with a good choice of industry. Observing the companies that are currently on the rise will give you a first idea of the sectors on the way to establishing themselves in the coming years. For example, sectors in which e-commerce is not yet king such as personalized care, food or lifestyle are expected to experience strong growth.
Study the competition
Before embarking on anything, it is important to do a market study to analyze what the competition is doing, the products or services it sells, how it communicates, the audiences it targets... you play like a true marketing pro and benchmark by organizing this information in a large summary table to get an overview.
Do not store too much product
One of the biggest mistakes of e-merchants is to want to stock their products from the start.
I advise you to start with dropshipping suppliers because you will have little investment and you will be able to integrate a lot of products.
Why dropshipping? When you start your business, you don't know what products are going to work or not work, so stocking up at this point can be fatal to the life of your small business.
Tell yourself that a product that doesn’t sell is money that goes out and doesn’t go in your pocket, let alone storage costs if there is.
On the other hand, an essential thing, you must be able to update your stock with that of the supplier in order not to sell an unavailable product. Sales are scarce at first, so don't go cancel sales and lose a customer because of it. Nowadays, there are many modules that allow inventory synchronization.
The importance of quality photographs
it is interesting to note that the human being is first attracted by what he sees. The information assimilated by the brain is visual in origin. Then comes the reading of the product description and the analysis of the texts. People value visual information more than purely textual information. Product photos therefore play an important role in the purchasing decision.
Pay attention to product descriptions
The content of product descriptions plays a major role in the process of converting a visitor into a customer. Beyond the product photos, customer reviews, call to action ... the product description can really be the key element that will switch the prospect towards the act of purchase.
An effective product description is above all an exhaustive description! It must therefore first describe the product and its characteristics.
But beyond the basic information on the operation of the product and its context of use, do not hesitate to highlight information such as its place of manufacture, its benefits for the customer and its advantages over other similar products.
The goal is to allow the user to get a concrete idea of your product. Photos will help him project himself, but they are not always enough.
Define your marketing objectives
You need to set specific:
- Measurable
- Accessible
- Realistic
- Time-bound marketing goals
Once formulated, your goals may look like this:
- Increase sales by 15% for the next quarter.
- Increase the conversion rate by 3% for the year
- Cut customer service calls in half in the next 9 months.
So, to assess the profitability of your online sales business, check them regularly to identify progress on sales, marketing, and customer service goals.
The digital communication strategy
If you want to optimize the engagement of your targets, you must first define your objectives and your overall strategy. Therefore, each email, each post on social networks will be oriented towards these elements to help you move forward.
Once you have defined your goals and the means to achieve them, you can now take advantage of existing content. It could be print content, banners that you can integrate into your digital communication models. When these models are created, consider testing them. This lets you know more about what to do and make sure that everything that has already been put in place can attract your potential targets.
Finally, get your message out across different channels to make sure you reach every segment of your audience, then measure the results you get. If things don't work, make changes and measure again.
Launch strategy
You must attract your first buyers and for this it is important to offer an attractive offer such as a 15% or 20% discount on the entire site, free delivery, or a contest.
Announce this news daily on all your social networks even before the opening date of your online store! To get people talking about you, negotiate partnerships with influencers whose audiences match yours. For example, send them a sample of your products for free. They will test them and if they are happy with your products, they will talk about it and present it to their audience. In the long term, you can also set up promo codes that these influencers will relay to their community.
Conclusion
While there are many tips to help you launch your online store, there is no secret to being successful. Keep practicing each of these tips. This allows you to make changes to continue to optimize your business's engagement rates.
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