When you open an e-commerce, the main objective will be selling the products. Either in terms of quantity or price, the profit must come from somewhere.
I won’t talk about the obvious telling that you must have a great product, but here we will talk about how you can sell your product that is already great but you can’t find someone interested.
First of all, don’t think you should be somewhere else with a physical store or being part of someone’s brand. With e-commerce, you are in the right spot.
Online sales represented 19% of global sales in 2021, compared to 15% in 2019.
Font: Fit Small Business
Only this data is already incredible, but if you try to compare a one-shop retainer with a one-shop e-commerce, it’s not even fair. E-commerce can sell globally, while the other sticks with the neighbor.
So why are you not selling enough? The problem can come from a bunch of directions, so let’s dive into each one of them.
Design
This is the main one, your site needs a good design to make the buying process easier for your customers.
A good design must look clean, great in terms of usability, and solve your customer problems.
Is not rare to see many e-commerce with poor navigation and bad design overall. As store owners, we often want to improve and make a revolutionary website that stands out from many others, but your client wants something easy.
Site made by colored byte: Katherine Elizabeth at Home
An ugly design won’t be perceived by everyone because taste is a matter of who’s looking at it. But a poor design will get your customer away by:
- Is a lack of contrast between the text and background
- Confusing navigation to go to each product
- Low-quality images of the product
- Lack of information about the product and the website overall
- Fonts that are too big or small, in many variations
- Not being responsive
The problem is far more complicated than just a matter of taste. A good design will look for usability, first of all, and that’s just the beginning.
In Shopify, the templates already show the way it’s supposed to look. Most of the designs there are properly made to have a great online store.
You can try just organizing the images and the copy on your own. If you’re not used to design and marketing, stick with the basics until you have more knowledge or get a professional to help you in the way.
Traffic
Now you have a great product and an outstanding website, why you don’t sell yet? Because there’s no one going into your online store.
Most marketers will tell you the importance of having good SEO, navigation, and seamless design, and I’m one of them.
But you can also have a little boost.
Two types of traffic can come to your website: organic and paid.
The paid traffic is the reason why Facebook, Google, and other online companies are so big and getting a lot of money. They have the data of each user and what they like, so you can get your product in front of your ideal customer by paying those platforms to do so.
The process is often called pay-per-click, and it’s one of the best investments you can make along with your website.
According to WordLead, Google search ads have an average ROI of 200%. For every $1 advertisers invest, they earn $2 through Google ads.
You gather the data from your target audience and make some advertisements for them. With the visitors, you will have some actions inside your website like “add to cart”, and “checkout process” that will be filled with customers that either bought or tried to buy from you.
This data will be better time after time, so in some months your growth can be exponential.
The organic traffic is like the paid one, but you will need more than the right target audience and money.
With this kind of work, you will bring people into your store by going viral with content or providing information to bring awareness.
I’m not telling viral like an actual influencer, you don’t need to be the greatest to start selling.
But nowadays is very common for each user to gather information before buying something. If you provide what they want, you will be the first on the list.
There are many channels you can work to make good content marketing and bring you results, like:
- Blog
- Video Comparisons
- Video Reviews
- Infographics
- Video trends
- Model photos
- Tutorials
Since it will be a slower process than paid marketing, start doing this now to have the results as soon as possible.
And keep in mind that in some companies, the organic can be much better than the paid, so it’s a matter of testing what’s best for you.
Media presence
In the past, we needed to spend a lot of money to get brand awareness by advertising on TV or radio. Fortunately, now we can have a huge presence without spending anything at all.
It’s hard to buy from someone that is not trustable. You can either be afraid of scams, quality, values of the brand, what they support, and many more.
Everything about your company will bring more of your ideal customers into the buying process.
Social media
Is the most common way to have an online presence outside your store. You can build groups, and communities, solve clients’ problems, and humanize your brand.
In social media, you will have a lot of social proof like reviews, customer testimonials, announcements of products, and many things that will bring not only visitors but people who already know who you are.
More than just it, some people search for your social media after viewing something on your website to decide if they will buy from you or not.
Advertise
Some advertisements in other people’s channels can be a huge step for your brand. Sometimes there will be a beginner influencer who has the style and the traits of your ideal customer, so it would be a great thing to make a publicity with them.
Each person works differently in terms of partnership, but it is worth it. First of all, the followers of an influencer trust their opinions, so it is easier to tell how good your product is.
Besides that, you will get more people seeing your brand outside your channel, so it will get out of the box that you only have yourself talking about who you are.
People trust other people’s opinions to buy.
These are the main 3 things to start selling in your store. If you’re still not selling, go broader in terms of checking the quality and demand of your product, or get a partner in marketing to help you with each step of the process.
