Ecommerce is Growing
Online spend is now double what it was ten years ago and as more and more smartphones and tables come to the market this figure is only set to increase in the years to come. In a survey run by Broadband Choices of 2,000 adults, 36% said they did the majority of their shopping online while one in ten admitted that they buy something online at least twice a day.
It comes down to a matter of choice and ease of access. Go online and you can pretty much any item that you want from anywhere in the world, and if you’re willing to pay for it, have it shipped to your doorstep. Compare that to the weekly trudge round the shops and it’s easy to see why more and more people are shopping online.
It comes down to a matter of choice and ease of access. Go online and you can pretty much any item that you want from anywhere in the world, and if you’re willing to pay for it, have it shipped to your doorstep. Compare that to the weekly trudge round the shops and it’s easy to see why more and more people are shopping online.
The Competition Is Hotter Than Ever
With this popularity comes competition. Online shops are now competing for your cash and this opens a new realm of advertising techniques and digital strategies in order to win you over. Onsite they might offer you free shipping or a discount codes, but the real fight is out there on there on the street. Not the Main Street, but on the broad and varied lanes of the internet highway as ecommerce sites across the globe as themselves, how can we get potential customers to find us?
On Main Street this is easy. Pick a prime location, maybe an advert in the local paper to say that you’re open for business and wait for the customers to roll in. Online though, it’s a little trickier. The chances of someone just stumbling across your website and spending money are very small, there are billions of websites out there that they’re more likely to come across if you don’t put the effort in. You’ll need to put some effort into the makeup and search engine optimization of your site and if you don’t have a clue what that is, well then you’re probably going to have to go and talk to the experts.
On Main Street this is easy. Pick a prime location, maybe an advert in the local paper to say that you’re open for business and wait for the customers to roll in. Online though, it’s a little trickier. The chances of someone just stumbling across your website and spending money are very small, there are billions of websites out there that they’re more likely to come across if you don’t put the effort in. You’ll need to put some effort into the makeup and search engine optimization of your site and if you don’t have a clue what that is, well then you’re probably going to have to go and talk to the experts.
Ecommerce Isn’t Easy
Getting your site and up there at the number one spot on global search engines has become a big deal. Why? Well because there’s big money in it. A recent case study found that at position 5, a website selling bingo cards received 6,000 unique visitors per month. While at position one 50,000 unique visitors a month. That’s a lot more traffic and a lot more conversions meaning a lot more money. This blog post by an internet marketing agencyproves that it’s not always easy for brands to get it right when setting up shop online. Even Posh Spice can get it wrong.
A combination of poor loading times and un-optimized title tags and page titles causes the outlet for Victoria Beckham’s new ecommerce adventure to fall a little short of the mark. The facts pointed out in the post speak for themselves. Even if Mrs. Beckham could get her site to rank at position five for the keyword ‘designer dresses’, she could drive 6% of that search traffic to her site and if only one in ten bought a dress (which are rather overpriced for what they are if you ask me, but I don’t suppose her target audience is surfer nuts from California) she could drive a further profit of £12,000.
A combination of poor loading times and un-optimized title tags and page titles causes the outlet for Victoria Beckham’s new ecommerce adventure to fall a little short of the mark. The facts pointed out in the post speak for themselves. Even if Mrs. Beckham could get her site to rank at position five for the keyword ‘designer dresses’, she could drive 6% of that search traffic to her site and if only one in ten bought a dress (which are rather overpriced for what they are if you ask me, but I don’t suppose her target audience is surfer nuts from California) she could drive a further profit of £12,000.
Take Your Customer On A Journey
For those looking to set up an ecommerce websites, it’s a dog eat dog world out there and the customer is a fickle and short tempered source of income. Due to the fact that there are so many ecommerce websites out there, if your site doesn’t work properly or has some teething problems then potential buyers of your product could be immediately turned off due to your poor web design and go somewhere else. The trick is to test, take a look around the market and see what other ecommerce sites are doing to get customers in the ‘front door’, so to speak, and towards the checkout. What I mean here is getting them to find your website through a relevant search topic, have them land on your home page and go through the motions of browsing your site, choosing a product and purchasing.
You’ll need to walk your customer through this process, it needs to be simple, the content needs to be relevant and not spammy and your system needs to be able to stand up to a fair amount of traffic when a lot of people are using it if you want to be successful. And there are other things to think about as well. What about when you’re customer leaves, you want them to come back don’t you? Mailing lists, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages and Pinterest boards all go into making an ecommerce site work.
Creating a site that is easily found by customers is only half the battle. The rest of you job is making a website that’s both attractive and easy to use with quality content, quality products and the staying power to get customers hooked.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article, I write on a number of subjects from ecommerce to employment advice. Why not check out Getting The Job You Deserve or some of my other articles on Wikinut
You can also follow me on Twitter
You’ll need to walk your customer through this process, it needs to be simple, the content needs to be relevant and not spammy and your system needs to be able to stand up to a fair amount of traffic when a lot of people are using it if you want to be successful. And there are other things to think about as well. What about when you’re customer leaves, you want them to come back don’t you? Mailing lists, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages and Pinterest boards all go into making an ecommerce site work.
Creating a site that is easily found by customers is only half the battle. The rest of you job is making a website that’s both attractive and easy to use with quality content, quality products and the staying power to get customers hooked.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this article, I write on a number of subjects from ecommerce to employment advice. Why not check out Getting The Job You Deserve or some of my other articles on Wikinut
You can also follow me on Twitter
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