Techblog
Top 5 e-commerce tips for growing businesses
With the increasing popularity of online shopping, growing businesses need to adopt the right e-commerce strategy to generate sales and drive revenue growth. Read on to see what you can do to help transform your customer "in-store" experience.
By the myBusiness techblog team
The global online commerce sector has grown rapidly over the past few years, with global e-commerce revenue expected to reach US$963 billion by 2013[1] according to a study conducted by J.P. Morgan. These growth projections speak volumes of the sheer commercial potential of e-commerce activities. The proliferation of mobile devices has further transformed the e-commerce landscape, as the latest mobile technology continues to push the boundaries of customer interaction in the online retail space.
Here are a few quick tips on how growing businesses can better capture the interests of your target audience and drive sales through e-commerce sites:
1. Monitor your site's web traffic regularly
Web traffic provides a reliable gauge of how effective your e-commerce site is in attracting the desired demographic of visitors for your products and services. Besides evaluating the effectiveness of your website and marketing campaigns, regular monitoring of web traffic lets you gain valuable insights such as the popularity of your web pages, the busiest viewing time, or even the sequence of how visitors navigate a website. With these insights, you can make changes to your website so that online shoppers can find and purchase products easily in order to maximise sales conversion.
Use free tools such as Google Analytics to keep track of traffic that's coming to your site, as well as learn more about the behaviour of your site visitors.
2. Ensure checkout is working and easy to use
Online businesses need to understand how the presentation of merchandising opportunities and payment platforms can impact sales. Successful e-commerce operations are built on ensuring that the checkout and payment processes are secure, convenient and user-friendly for the average online shopper. There are a variety of payment systems, such as PayPal, which can be integrated into your e-commerce site to make every online transaction an easy and enjoyable experience for your customers.
3. Map out the buying habits of your customers
Cross-selling is a key component of e-commerce, and online retailers need to present a wide range of complementary product offerings to entice consumers and influence their buying decisions. The process of mapping out the purchasing history or buying habits of consumers can help facilitate these cross-selling opportunities and foster deeper customer engagements.
For example, what you can possibly do is to use tools to track how your customers are navigating within the site. Do they tend to look at some products after they select certain products? Simply by looking at their journey through your site, you can derive what you should recommend to them and other customers during their next visits.
4. Keep your website fresh and appealing
Online retail is a highly competitive field and from the customer standpoint, there is no greater turn-off than a poorly maintained website, or one with an outdated look and feel. A good way to keep your online store fresh and appealing is to regularly update the main merchandising features of your website — it can be something as basic as making sure that the sales and promotion banners on your site are regularly updated — and to consider conducting an overhaul of the overall design at least once in two year.
Starting on e-commerce today
As the online commerce landscape continues to evolve, businesses need to keep abreast of how retailers today interact with customers. Start exploring how you can broaden the capabilities of your e-commerce site in engaging your targeted customer base and achieve online revenue growth for your business.
You can also utilise a variety of e-commerce tools out there to help you in creating a good platform to sell your products to customers online. Take for example the Singtel eShop Builder. This feature-rich e-Commerce platform comes built-in with Web Content Management System capabilities that make it easy to update product catalogues. It is also integrated with local payment gateways such as eNets, Paypal, Smartlink and OnePay - allowing your customers more convenience to shop 24/7.
[1] J.P. Morgan Internet Investment Guide, January 2011