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5 Things To Know Before Launching Your E-commerce Business
Amidst the ongoing chaos, numerous protests all around the world, and the ongoing pandemic, e-commerce seems to be doing very well. In fact, many brick-and-mortar businesses transitioned to the e-commerce space, thereby giving the e-commerce industry a 20% growth boost. This has made e-commerce an enticing space to jump into right now. While the e-commerce industry may seem like it is a paradise for people who are interested in starting a business, the truth is that there is a lot to consider.
In this article, we will explain five important tips everyone needs to know before launching an e-commerce business.
Optimize Your User Experience (UX)
A short explanation of what UX is: think of the experience people get when they’re using your e-commerce platform; what are the elements that form their experience? Your checkout page, search icon, product page, the design of your online store, the color, the fonts, and a lot more. If these elements are well-optimized, your customers will find it easy to navigate your store, make their purchase, and maybe leave positive feedback. On the other hand, if these elements are subpar then your potential customers won’t stay, and will be discouraged to come back by the low-quality user experience. This is why you must invest your time, resources, and money into making sure that your user experience is regularly optimized to serve your customers well. To do this, always analyze your e-commerce platform to see how the UX performs. Test your platform and conduct surveys asking your customers for feedback about their experience with using your platform.
Additionally, new UX trends and tech features get rolled out from time-to- time, and these features can improve the UX of your e-commerce platform. You have to monitor UX trends so that you will know when new and better UX features become available. Using outdated UX designs is just as terrible as not paying attention to your UX altogether.
Invest in Image SEO
Think about Instagram and Pinterest, which are some of the most popular social media platforms available. Both are picture-centric. Many vendors started on Instagram and Pinterest, while many also used both social media platforms to amplify their e-commerce business. Thankfully, users can visit vendors’ sites right from Instagram and Pinterest, so, vendors now see both apps as e-commerce tools.
Why did Instagram and Pinterest become so prominent? A quick answer is that human beings respond well to visuals. Internet users want to visualize the products they’re planning to buy, even if it’s just online window-shopping. This is why e-commerce businesses with high quality images attract more people than their competitors who neglect imagery.
As you’re planning to launch your business, take many beautiful pictures of your products, and make them into a product-related or product-only catalog. You can use them for marketing campaigns, and share on social media – you can use the same images across several sales channels.
One of the benefits you will enjoy when you post product images is that when internet users search the image you posted on search engines (e.g. Google), there’s a chance that Google will bring up your image, and they will end up on your e-commerce store. So, you need to learn product photography, or hire a product photographer and maximize image SEO for your e-commerce business.
Encourage Social Buying
Since the worldwide lockdowns, online shopping and general stay-home shopping have skyrocketed. One of the avenues people have been doing their stay-home shopping from is through social media. This is called social buying, and it’s not limited to social media apps only. Internet users also connect with mutuals to talk about products and services on forum sites. Mutuals share their experiences with using a product/service, vouch for the quality products that suited them, thereby influencing their followers to buy the product/service.
As an entrepreneur, you have to keep up with potential customers anywhere they are, and social buying is the new trend that has become more prominent since March. To encourage social buying, first, you have to have a social presence. Put your business on all of the popular social media platforms. Connect with potential customers on forum sites. Share images of new products, as well as links to buy directly from the social media platforms, and make sure to stay active on social media.
Use Creative Tech
There are so many cool tech features people use in the present world. Some of the beautiful tech features can improve your customers’ experience, so integrate them into your e-commerce platform right from the beginning. It is better to build your platform with the right tech as you’re starting, don’t wait until later to do surface integration – your designer understands this.
Now, what type of creative tech features are we talking about? Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and QR Codes are some of the trendy tech features e-commerce stores make use of these days and they provide customers with a better experience. AR lets people try on dresses, makeup, shoes, etc. right from home. Sephora is one of the stores that use AR, which allows customers to try on lipsticks from their home or wherever they are. AR-based try-on tools help customers see how a product will look on them so it gives a brick-and-mortar type of assurance, that is, you know how a product will look on you, or if it will fit into your space before buying. AR and VR e-commerce tools provide an immersive experience.
You can include a QR Code when a customer makes a purchase, use the QR code to tell your customers more about the product, tips, reviews, updates, etc.
Create Good Quality Content
You may have heard about the importance of creating and posting quality content so many times that it is starting to sound cliché to you. Content creation, and by content, we mean written content, is one of the ancient traditions of e-commerce that is not going obsolete anytime soon. So you better get on with the culture. Well written content will save you a lot of marketing cost, and help you drive traffic to your business. And at what cost? If you can write good quality content by yourself, you will be spending next to nothing on creating and posting it, which makes it almost free. You can hire a content writer to help you create good content, so that might cost you some money.
The important thing to note about quality content is that it can help you grow your brand. Other types of content you should consider investing your time and resources into are quality videos, webinars, podcasts, etc. Diversify.
