E-Commerce Strategy

Starting an ecommerce business is relatively straightforward. Growing it? That’s a different story.

With e-commerce giants like eBay, and Amazon, you have a distinct problem: Can you compete?

The average consumer is now bombarded with multiple messages from brands each day, and add tothat the fact that many people are operating on multiple screens, getting a potential purchasers attention is becoming increasingly difficult.

 The typical computer user now switches between screens up to 21 times an hour.

So what is the ordinary business’s strategy for competing on-line acquiring new customers and just as importantly retaining those customers?

Unless you have a large budget at your disposal, the watchwords are patience and guile. So your first objective is to gain advantageous positions on the Major search engines (Primarily Google and to a lesser extent Bing) for organic (Not Paid For) searches. The methods to achieve this guerrilla strategy are discussed in detail in my article “Google Ranking Secrets”

But back to basics:-

Ecommerce Marketing Strategy: The Start Point

Web Site Design

Firstly the technical considerations:

1. Responsive Design: Your website must look good on all types of devices from PCs to Tablets and Phones
2. Speed – 40 percent of users will abandon a webpage if it takes longer than three seconds to load. The main culprit is probably the size of your graphics on the page. If you use someone like us to build your site we, as apart of our package, will ensure that all graphics are optimised for the web and file sizes will be reduced to ensure a minimum load time. If you are building your own site, you need to purchase a graphics optimisation tool.
3. Secure – 85% percent of consumers won’t browse an unsecured site. Make your website HTTPs instead of HTTP by purchasing an SSL certificate.
4. Mobile-friendly – over 60% of online traffic comes from a mobile device. Not only that, but 53.4% (Source Statistica ) of purchasers use a mobile device to buy products and services. Search queries on mobile devices are growing fast and this percentage will grow to 70% by 2020).

1. Actionable – Your website is not a brochure, it’s a 24-hour sales process. The typical shopping cart abandonment rate for online retailers varies between 60% and 80%, with an average of 67.91%. It is claimed that the best optimised checkout process has an abandonment rate of 20%, therefore you must design your process to capture the sale and failing that find out why buyers are not completing the purchase.
2. Buyer Trust: What makes your prospective buy from you? These are your main considerations
3. Who Are You? Make sure the customer knows who they are dealing with. People buy from people, so include information on your location, who owns the business and a short bio of your history and market experience.
4. Domain Selection: Don’t use silly domain names with words like Cheap, Free etc in the title, not only will it put your customers off but more importantly it will also demote your standing on search engines.
5. Contactable? Be available via phone, email, and chat. If you are not online, ensure that you have an auto response and a notification link to your mobile phone
6. Search: Make it easy for the customer to search your site, use fuzzy logic searches not the standard ones included with products like Woo Commerce and Shopify (Call us on 01606 631044 to find out how).
7. Increase Trust: Display prominently your Trust seals.
8. Safety of Purchase: Clearly display your warranties, refund policy and any product guarantee that are included with customers purchase
9. Order Tracking: Offer as standard a tracking service informing the customer of their tracking details as soon as they have placed an order.
10. Buyer Certainty: Ensure you display reviews and testimonials prominently

Professionally Designed

If you listen to the misleading advertisements suggesting that without experience you can design your website you will in all probability not get a successful result. There is a science in designing a website that works (Call us on 01606 631044 and we will explain why.

37% of buyers will leave a website because of poor design or navigation, and 46% will leave a website because of a lack of message (it’s not clear what the company does). Don’t be penny-wise and pound foolish.

Getting It Out There

At its most basic, e-commerce marketing strategy is about sending the right messages to the right person at the exact right moments. To do that, your marketing strategy should strive to achieve these goals:

• Research your competition and notice the elements of competitors websites that would attract you as a buyer.

• Match your presentation to your target audience. Define to product/service Age group/s, socio-economic sectors, USPs.

• Use the same selling principles that a face to face salesperson would use (A.I.D.A)

• content, content, content. Probably the biggest mistake e-commerce sites make is they attach their website to an e-commerce module like Woo Commerce or Shopify and basically their website becomes just a listing of products. This is no good for the prospective customer and its absolutely of no use when it comes to optimising your positions on search engines.

And finally, you need to decide on a complete marketing strategy encompassing Search Engine Optimisation, Pay Per Click advertising, Social media and email marketing. Call us on 01606631044 to discuss the full range of your visibility options.

So if you are serious about developing a successful online presence your first step is to talk to us and ask about our Digital Competitors analysis (Digital Competitor Analysis..article coming shortly)