How to grow an E-Commerce website?

. 7 min read
How to grow an E-Commerce website?

Tips to grow your E-Commerce business

The internet has provided us with numerous ways to earn money online and one of the most popular of them all is creating an eCommerce website. CMS platforms like Shopify and woocommerce make it easy for you to create and launch your eCommerce platform, but how to grow your eCommerce business?

If you have googled for eCommerce business tips then you have come to the right place. In this article, we tell you how to grow a business quickly using organic methods.

As easy as the whole idea may seem, it is not that easy. Launching a website takes a few minutes but generating sales and converting your small business to a powerhouse will not happen overnight. It will take time, but it will happen eventually if you follow the following steps here on how to grow your eCommerce store.

1. Make your eCommerce website responsive

Recently, a survey conducted by Google showed that 61% of internet users would leave a website immediately if the website is unfriendly or unresponsive on mobile. The result is not shocking when you consider that a majority of internet users now access the internet through their smartphones and not their desktop.

The number of mobile phone users has increased in the past few years. This makes it all the more important for you to make sure that your website is mobile responsive. Your customers will generally leave if they cannot navigate your website well on their phones. If they cannot find what they are looking for they will look for other alternatives. You will end up losing customers simply because you failed to keep up with the digital trends.

Apart from making it mobile responsive, the eCommerce site should also load quickly. The lesser the loading time, the more time will the customers spend on your website. Since your goal is to increase sales, the checkout process should be simplified and you should provide all the popular payment gateway options to make it convenient for your customers.

2. Offer free shipping

You may not be too willing to offer free shipping but there are a lot of advantages to offering free shipping across all products on your website. People are likely to buy products from your store if you offer free shipping.

A recent survey has shown that individuals are more likely to click on the buy now button if the website is offering free shipping and free delivery on the product. So if you do not offer free shipping yet, it is time for you to rethink your business decisions, as it can greatly affect your sales.

animated character texting with the chatbot

3. Add a live chatbot

Yes, you have the contact form on your website and a registered email address where your customers can drop in their complaints and feedback but if you google how to grow my eCommerce business all the eCommerce business experts will tell you to add a live chatbot.

The live chatbot helps you to increase your conversion rates. The live chat system will help your customers to quickly resolve their queries and problems which will ensure a seamless customer experience across your store. A study has revealed that customers find the live chat box very helpful because of the quick response rate. It establishes effective communication between your customers and you.

There are more advantages to a live chat. You can use the data from the chatbox to figure out the problems that your customers face and can start working on them.

4. Automate your emails

The fourth point on how to grow online retail involves email marketing. Since you intend to generate sales, you must already be aware of the importance of email marketing in driving up sales. Email marketing can also be the main source for you to generate leads and then there can be a major bump in the rates of lead generated if you automate your emails.

Sending emails manually is extremely time-consuming, and not to mention you have to be on your toes all the time to see what is going on your website and how the customer is behaving. An easier solution to this is automating emails. Major eCommerce chains have seen a bump in their leads and sales after automating emails.

Automating emails helps you to send out relevant and timely messages to your customers. You can preset triggers like when a customer has a cart full of items but it is not buying anything for a long time, you can send an email reminding them of all the items in their cart that are going to be out of stock soon or you can set a trigger that sends out an email as soon as it detects a customer has abandoned his or her cart.

5. Content is king

Yes, content is the king even when it comes to eCommerce websites. Previously, on how to grow my eCommerce business articles and blogs, you would find tips about adding fancy apps and using the latest technologies to build your eCommerce website to generate sales, but now it is different.

Now all that matters is the content on your website. Create stories around your products and your journey and you can see the sales figure increasing. Your customers want jargon-free content now that they can connect with. Visuals are important but the content is important as well. Create blogs and articles to engage your customers.

6. Make a list of all the slow-selling items

Let's be honest, not all items sell well. Some do not sell quickly and hence you have to figure out ways to sell them quickly. One of the quickest ways to clear out your inventory is to make a list of all those slow-selling items and then offer discounts on them. These discounts tend to attract new customers and at the same time, you get to sell out these items and stock up new items in your inventory.

You can offer discounts on items like seasonal items or perishable items.

7. Use social media to market your products

Social media can be quite a powerful promotional tool if you can use it the right way. There are several social media platforms, you do not have to use all these platforms. First, consider the websites or the platforms that your target audience uses the most or engages the most with and then you can create a campaign plan for your eCommerce website.

The major platforms that most online retail stores use to promote our Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. You can run ads on them. You can set up the ads yourself, or you can get a dedicated social media marketing team on board to create the ad campaign.

These platforms also provide a place for you to constantly interact with your customers and monitor their comments on your social media handles.

8. Build trust

For any business to bloom you need to build trust. How to do that? Add reviews of products on your product page. A majority of the buyers will not add the item to their cart if there are no reviews. Reviews increase trust 99% of them check out online reviews before they buy anything. You can display reviews from social media websites on your product pages as well.

Alternatively, you can add trust badges. You must have seen a lot of eCommerce websites adding trust badges on their websites. Some have them right at the top of every page, while others have them displayed right on the checkout page. The trust badge has the most impact on the checkout page because the majority of buyers will not provide their card details or confidential information on a website that is not secure or they cannot trust. Once you have managed to build trust with your customers, you will see sales go up.

animated characters availing rewards provided to them

9. Reward your customers

Rewarding your existing customers is very important if you want to retain your old customers. Believe it or not but old customers are worth more than new customers. It is because it is harder to sell to new customers than sell products to old existing customers.

So for our last tip on how to grow your eCommerce business, you consider running loyalty programs on your website and rewarding your customers with loyalty points that they can use to avail discounts on products or avail free shipping now and then. The loyalty program is more effective than coupons.

Whatever your strategy is for generating sales, always make sure that you use organic methods to drive up sales. Using methods that are against google guidelines or in general wrong will only get you and your business banned.

Also Read:

1) E-commerce Business Ideas: What Should You Sell?
2) E-Commerce Customer Service – 10 Best Practices [guide]
3) What are Some Ideas to Start an E-Commerce Venture?
4) OkCredit: All you need to know about OkCredit & how it works.

FAQs

Q. Which CMS platform is the best for creating an e-commerce website?

Ans. Shopify and WordPress woo commerce are the most popular options when it comes to eCommerce websites.

Q. Do I need to invest in digital marketing?

Ans. To grow your business, you need to have a foolproof digital marketing strategy.

Q. Do I need to include a call to action?

Ans. Yes, this is a must. You need to add a call to action on every page where it is needed.