E-commerce has become a huge business in recent years. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the sector was experienced rapid growth, and since the lockdown led to the closure of all but the essential retail outlets, the e-commerce industry has exploded. And while this has meant that the number of customers buying goods online has increased, the competition among e-commerce sellers has as well. If you run an e-commerce store, you should therefore make sure you are constantly working to optimize it to keep up with the competition and increase your online presence. Here are a few useful tips for every e-commerce business.
Infographic created by Fiserv, an omnichannel commerce company
Do Your Research
As alluded to earlier, the number of competing e-commerce websites has never been higher. It is therefore important that you are sufficiently monitoring your operation to make sure that you are making your business as profitable as possible. Take advantage of website analytics to research the strengths and weaknesses of your website. Consulting statistics on what your best-selling items are, what demographics are viewing your website, and your customer conversion rates will give you a good idea of what to prioritize, as well as who to target with your marketing campaigns. This can consequently enable you to make your business more profitable or cost-efficient. For example, if you find that one product is particularly fast-selling, you can buy the materials in bulk to reduce your manufacturing costs. Equally, you can accordingly adjust your advertising materials if your demographic is younger or older than you anticipated.
Reduce Your Shipping Costs
For e-commerce traders, carrier costs and packing materials will inevitably swallow up a large portion of their revenue. This also means that sellers with suboptimal shipping processes may be shrinking their profit margins by a substantial amount. It’s therefore important, especially when you are starting out selling online, to minimize the amount you spend on shipping, try to save money with an interstate courier quote, or hiring a global logistics company. A large part of this is shopping around for quotes from logistics companies since courier services can vary a lot when it comes to prices and services offered. For instance, if you are operating in Texas and sending goods to somewhere else in the state, local Texas courier services may be cheaper than national ones. If you are sending particularly heavy goods, you should also consider taking advantage of flat-rate shipping, which charges you based on the dimensions of the goods, as opposed to the weight. And one has to be particularly careful when delivering the goods. Package delivery issues like USPS lost package is a rising cause of concern.
Be Consumer-Friendly
Given the amount of competition in e-commerce, it’s important you actively work to keep your customers satisfied. Enacting consumer-friendly policies may not attract that many additional people to your online store, but it will increase the likelihood that you retain customers for repeat business. In particular, you should try to offer free shipping if at all possible since additional fees are one of the most common reasons prospective customers fail to check out goods. One way of doing this is to incorporate handling fees into the total cost of the item so customers are not put off by the additional charges when checking out. Offering a free returns policy will also go a long way to endearing your company to its customers.
Featured Image by Pixy.org
