Follow these simple trends and best practices to help increase your e-commerce sales for the new year.
If you found this blog chances are you are looking to grow your eCommerce business. Whether you are new or familiar with e-commerce, you can follow these trends for 2021 and apply the best practices for your business. The good news is that since COVID-19, there has been an increase in online sales.
The Ways on How to Grow Your eCommerce Business
- Update payment methods
- Optimize for mobile because of mCommerce
- Improve overall UX
- Promote on new social media platforms
- Offer deals
- Reach your current customers
1. Update your payment methods
Paypal has been one of the most used payment methods for online purchases, especially for those who do not wish to share their billing information directly on sites. Now, there are many new methods that are used as money, wallets, and other currency related things. You may be familiar with bitcoin or cryptocurrency, but if you are not, cryptocurrency is digital currency that can be used to purchase goods and services. The other forms of payment that can be used to make payments are venmo, samsung, apple, and google pay, JCB, to name a few. By expanding the form of payment methods your eCommerce business can accept, you will be able to have more customers comfortable with checking out. You know the feeling when the place you want to go says “Cash Only” but you only have a card? That is the same feeling for someone who stores their money in a mobile wallet on their phone or does not have their credit card info on hand.
2. Optimize for mobile because of mCommerce
First, what is m-commerce? mCommerce is eCommerce but is named differently as payments are made by mobile. In other words, eCommerce is the process of buying and selling online, as a whole, and mcommerce is the process of buying and selling, on mobile. This is important to know as businesses will need to accommodate and optimize their eCommerce sites for mCommerce ability. As 79%, this is the reason why an eCommerce business should optimize their site for mobile. 77% of Americans own a smartphone and, in 2020, there were 2.05 billion online buyers. Put these numbers together and wow there is definitely evidence that you should make sure that your website is compatible with mobile devices and is easy to navigate and complete a full customer journey. One way to do this is to double check your page load times as this is a deciding factor on whether someone will exit out of your site or purchase from you again.
3. Improve overall UX
This applies to your overall website. Don’t you just love when a website is smooth and lets you navigate seamlessly throughout it? How about when the website’s colors and images blend together so well that it is aesthetically pleasing? These are part of the UX (user experience) that should be one of the main focuses for a website, especially eCommerce. If an eCommerce site was not so smooth, it could potentially look like kind of shady and could lead users to have a bad experience. This will most likely not allow you to grow your eCommerce business. So, to fix that, you should make sure that the UX is pleasant for your customers. To improve your eCommerce website and have good UX, the #1 thing you should do is make sure all of your buttons, pages, links, and navigations are working properly. The #2 thing you should do is make sure the design is appealing because all of this plays into the UX.
4. Promote on new social media platforms
You may already be using social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram but how familiar are you with the new platforms that are out there? Platforms like Tik Tok are becoming most used by a variety of demographics which allows you to reach more consumers in your target audience as well as reaching a new potential target audience. If you are wondering how you can promote on new platforms, well, here are a couple best practices. #1, you can use influencers to wear, use, promote, demonstrate, and share your products with their followers. More information on influencer marketing can be found here. #2, take your inventory items, most likely best sellers, and promote them yourself (or someone else) on your new account on the new platform. This can be done in a variety of ways, but one of the ways is by doing a giveaway or limited time offer. More about that coming up next.
5. Offer deals
Deals come in all shapes and sizes and it is ultimately up to you to decide which ones and how you want to offer deals to your customers. How can an eCommerce business grow its sales by offering deals? Well, the answer depends on how those deals are executed. Some examples of how to offer deals are to go with the classes percentage or dollar value off, or, you can take a different approach and do giveaways, free things, or offer customers to add add-ons. These examples are just the tip of the iceberg as there are many different aspects that go into offering deals. Some can be free to you, and some may require a little bit of cost but either way, it generates more sales as you are building your brand awareness, credibility, and trust.
5. Reach current customers
Understanding your customers should be a no brainer when it comes to business but keeping your current customers should be one of the main focuses for any business. This can be easily done for an eCommerce business as you can reach those who have already made purchases, were about to, or are interested in doing so. These are simple factors that play into remarketing that can initiate them to come back. What is remarketing? This is defined next.
Remarketing is when you market to those who have had experience with your business, whether it be currently, briefly, or suddenly. This can be easily tracked, especially with eCommerce and online businesses. Here are some examples of how to remarket to those who have purchased, browsed, and showed interest in your business.
Purchased Before: Send out an email of your newest and latest products.
Purchased Recently: Send a thank you and a discount code for their next purchase.
Incomplete Purchase: Send a reminder email about their cart or the items they were looking at.
Interested/Browsing: Highlight new and popular products on your website in an eye-catching way.
Reaching your current customers can be the most effective way to grow your business and sales as they have already found trust in you.
Conclusion
Though eCommerce is not a new method of doing business, there are always new ways on how to improve eCommerce businesses. As the world grows older, the way things are done will continue to change and evolve. Some of these practices may not have been as important in the previous year but, in 2021, they will be very important. Everything that has been mentioned on how to grow your eCommerce business are practices that you can implement that will help you build your business and sales.
Also, believe it or not, but here at Techna, we can help you grow your eCommerce business. As one of the top digital marketing companies, we can help generate leads and optimize your website for eCommerce. Reach out to us if you want to learn more about how we can help you!