7 Ways to Make Your eCommerce Startup Stand Out
Amidst a sea of eCommerce merchants, the toughest challenge is making your brand stand out.
Competition is fierce as it is. Everyone wants to survive and thrive in their respective niches. Giants like Amazon and eBay only make it harder to do so. How can your business possibly hope to stay afloat?
Make Your Ecommerce Startup Stands Out From The Crowd
Operating an eCommerce store can be smooth sailing as long as your company is willing to incorporate certain tactics and strategies. Here are seven of those tactics you can use to boost your eCommerce presence and sail toward ongoing profits.
1. Build a Powerful Brand
It’s practically impossible to set yourself apart from the crowd solely based on your products and services. Most of the time, there are multiple retailers selling exactly what your business is selling. The only way to positively differentiate your eCommerce startup from competitors is to create an impactful brand.
Everything—from your logo to your content to your vision and mission statements—tells your brand’s story. All of these elements essentially encompass your brand’s personality. It’s this unique positioning that drives brand perception and attracts customers.
2. List Items that Move
While every impression reinforces your company’s brand, there’s no need to post every product you sell. In fact, slow- or no-selling items should be excluded. Reserve the feature area of your eCommerce store for high-selling products that boost your SEO and make up for the products with lackluster sales.
To boost sales for low-selling products, there’s always the option of discounting or marketing those items in a different way.
3. Create a Mobile-Friendly Web Store
Buyers are increasingly likely to access eCommerce websites from a smartphone or mobile device. Shoppers want to make purchases with ease while on the go. But slow loading pages, confusing navigation and a difficult checkout are a big turn-off. When customers have a bad mobile experience with one site, 40 percent will simply go to a competitor and make their purchase.
To avoid losing nearly half of your mobile customers, make sure your store is user-friendly, responsive and loads quickly on mobile devices. Optimize your site’s searchability and simplify the checkout process.
In addition to keeping your customers happy, a mobile-optimized web store can deliver higher Google rankings, wider market ranges and an edge over market competitors. Your web store also will benefit from easier content management and lower maintenance.
4. Be Everywhere Your Customer Is
On-the-go customers also go to all manner of places when shopping online.
An overwhelming majority of buyers go online to research before they buy. They’ll visit your website before hopping over to Amazon. Then they’ll do a price comparison on eBay before looking for similar offerings on Etsy. Afterwards, they’ll visit a product comparison site before returning to your website to read reviews and view an unboxing video on YouTube. Even as they research, they’re using live chat, Facebook Messenger, chatbots and video calls. Your company ought to be in all of these places as well.
Having a presence on all of these channels reinforces the accessibility of your brand and makes it easier for customers to interact with you—which translates into greater sales. A brand that is everywhere is more trustworthy. More importantly, a brand that is able to deliver a cohesive communication experience also cements itself as being customer-focused and will have an easier time standing out from the rest.
5. Make Globalization a Goal
If the goal is truly to be everywhere your customer is, then going global also must be on the table for your eCommerce startup.
Though some startups simply won’t be able to fulfill global orders or provide long-distance support, those that can are able to benefit dramatically.
The advantages of globalization are many. On top of boosted sales and revenue, your company is automatically primed for global expansion. Additionally, globalization boosts brand awareness, sustainability and customer access.
Two areas that help with globalization include having strong international payment processing options, and having backend systems that supports global operations.
6. Free Shipping
When Amazon first proposed free shipping, many eCommerce merchants weren’t able to offer the same. But, over time, free shipping has become an integral part of achieving and maintaining a competitive advantage.
Eating the cost of shipping may sound uncomfortable initially, but associated costs are controllable and the long-term benefits are worth it.
Customers accustomed to free shipping remain loyal to those merchants who offer it. When a requisite spending amount delivers a free shipping incentive, customers normally add on to their order to receive it.
And let’s be honest: Amazon is waiting to steal your customers if you don’t offer free shipping like they do.
7. Don’t Forget to Follow Up
Once a customer has made their purchase and received their shipment, check in with them. Show appreciation for their business by thanking them for their purchase. Demonstrate the value you place on a good shopping experience by requesting feedback. Make sure their satisfied with their product or service, and ask whether or not they need any additional information or assistance.
Purchase follow up is the perfect opportunity to go the extra mile and add a personal touch. Whether it is a phone call, handwritten letter or a branded thank you card, this personalized outreach serves to be quite a stand out experience for your customers.
Using these seven tactics will make your eCommerce store stand apart from the rest and in turn you’ll see your sales increase.