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Doing the same thing you did yesterday and the day before yesterday will not give you a different result.
What does a successful online shop look like? It is a visually appealing website, with easy and clear navigation, where you can quickly find and buy the goods you need. In theory, everything is correct. In reality, an e-commerce shop is a business tool that generates revenue. A business platform for attracting new and old customers.
What to do if sales on the site are falling? Preventing a problem is easier than dealing with its consequences. Let’s talk today about a systematic marketing checkup of the online shop.
Site problems
If a website is unclear, awkward to use, or slow to load, it can scare away potential customers. If a site takes more than 3 seconds to load, the user will leave! Place product information, promotions and discounts in a logical order. Thoughtful and intuitive site design, easy search, simple checkout process and optimisation of specific pages increase sales.
Help the user get to any page of interest in two clicks. Pay attention to such sections of the site as “Payment Methods” and “Checkout”. You may have to change the structure of categories and subcategories of products on the site. Web analytics will tell you which pages need to be changed first.
Traffic
Even if you have a good product and a user-friendly website, without a steady stream of users, sales are unlikely. You need to actively work on attracting your target audience through SEO, content marketing, social networks, advertising and other channels. How to do this and the mistakes not to make are described below.
Untargeted traffic
It is important not only to attract traffic, but also to pay attention to its quality. If visitors to your site are not interested in the product or service you offer, they are unlikely to make a purchase. It is therefore important to focus your marketing efforts on your target audience.
Inaccurate product descriptions and images
Online shoppers can’t touch the product before they buy it. That’s why it’s important that every product page is well-designed. Users should be able to easily find the information they need and navigate between sections using an intuitive navigation structure.
Stelvel Ltd (Bulgaria) develops customised solutions for the optimisation, visualisation and ergonomics of e-commerce shops.
Fierce competition
If your business is in an oversaturated market niche, it will be difficult to stand out from the competition. You need to find a narrow segment. Perhaps a USP that brings something to the market that your competitors don’t. It could be an additional service or an accompanying promotional offer that makes your online shop stand out.
In the perception zone of an online shop user, content is only photos, text and videos. Therefore, content plays one of the most important roles in business promotion.
Marketplaces
It is almost impossible to persuade a potential customer to switch from a comfortable marketplace to an online shop. Regular marketing promotions and campaigns can get their attention. “Outbid the giants” personalisation and individual approach helps. Stand out from the crowd, influence emotions. Customers appreciate a personalised approach and a sense of engagement. Personalised loyalty programmes generate the most revenue.
SEO optimisation
SEO is long but cheap. But if you decide to promote your online shop using SEO alone, you will have to wait a long time for customers. For low-frequency queries, your site may rise in the rankings, but it will take at least a month or two. For medium and high frequency queries, this period can be up to 6 months. It all depends on the market and your competitors. During this time, the search engine may introduce new algorithms and the site will need to be refined.
The SEO strategy involves working on the preparation of content (text, images, video) to improve its visibility in the search engine: optimising pages for the right keywords and phrases, easy-to-read URLs, web page titles and meta tags. This is constant and painstaking work.
Contextual advertising
Contextual advertising is the fastest and most cost effective way to attract customers, traffic and applications to a website once it is launched. A well-designed pay-per-click (PPC) strategy can guarantee that a site or product page will appear on the first page of search results.
A common misconception is that you can set up contextual advertising once and for all. This is not true. Each business has its own nuances. You need to analyse ads and user responses, refine and change the context, test ideas. Add new product queries, filter out negative words, monitor rates.
Social media
Do you still think that social media is the place to get free customers? Don’t forget that most users go there to relax and have fun. To get one new customer through social networks, your offer has to be seen by 10,000 people. Experts estimate the conversion rate on social networks to be: reach 10,000 = 1 sale. No hashtags, mutual likes and comments will bring such a result. To successfully promote your products and online shop on social networks, you need targeted advertising.
Price and delivery
High prices or expensive delivery can put customers off. Marketplace customers are already used to special conditions: free or courier delivery, pick-up points near their homes. It is important to research the market and offer competitive prices, as well as convenient and affordable delivery options. The prices of an e-commerce shop should be in line with the market. If you sell more expensive products, there should be a compelling reason for the customer to choose you.