Having an ecommerce website is one thing, but really, it’s just the very start of the process of building your site, and your business. Because first of all, no one knows it exists! And then unfortunately, once people do start visiting your site, you may find that things don’t go quite as well as you thought and that quite a few changes to your site are required.
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So let’s start to remedy some of these issues:
It’s All About Trust
If the visitor to your site doesn’t trust your site, it’s game over. They’re going to click away as fast as they can! Things that broadcast a lack of trustworthiness include a poor quality design, spelling mistakes, limited information about your products and your business, and no (or hardly any) customer reviews. And although many people won’t notice, a lack of implementing https correctly (you’ll be amazed at the number of sites that still haven’t set this up properly) can scare many people off from ever entering their card details.
So you want your site to look legitimate, trustworthy, reputable, have everything working well, and you definitely want to get as much social proof on your site as possible. The more customer reviews the better, frankly.
Can Your Site Easily Be Found?
Search Engine Optimization isn’t as easy as it used to be, but it’s still absolutely vital for any online business. You need to be found online for what you’re selling, and if you’re not easily found online, not only will you have greatly reduced sales, but you’ll end up spending a lot more money than you need to on advertising and other promotion methods.
And it’s well worth noting that even though ranking for the high competition, high traffic terms is great, the more niche terms, also often referred to as long tail terms (for example like Plasti Dip colors), can still bring in huge amounts of traffic. Ranking for hundreds, even many thousands of terms, even if those individual terms only see a few searches a day, or even a week, can bring in massive amounts of traffic when taken altogether.
You also want to make sure you diversify traffic sources. Search engine rankings do fluctuate, so you’ll also want to build an email list, be active on social networks, and if your budget allows, do advertise, as long as you’re making a profit when you do so!
It’s Not Just About Your Site
You don’t just have to sell products from your site of course. Sites like Amazon and eBay would take a cut of your sales, even a significant cut, so your profits will be less. Plus, they (understandably) can be rather demanding about what they expect from you as a seller on their site, but by selling across multiple sites, you can reach a much wider audience and leverage the traffic that those huge sites already see, to build your customer list.
So it’s vital your site can be found, that it promotes trust to the visitor because this in turns helps turn visitors into customers, and that you leverage existing platforms with traffic so that you can reach the widest audience possible.
