As an e-commerce merchant, there is much more to know about online retailing besides processing credit card transactions and shipping the goods. To be a profitable business owner, you must understand the aspects of what makes your business run.
From your customers and competitors to your inventory and website, below are seven of the best practices to follow when trying to become a successful e-commerce merchant.
Know Your Customers
To be a successful e-commerce merchant, you truly need to know your customers. You need to know that your customers are not looking to buy goods or services, but rather looking for solutions to problems. Consider your industry and the problems your customers could encounter that would cause them to shop online at your store. If you sell clothing and accessories, consider what styles and colors are in season to help your customers keep up with the latest trends in fashion. If you sell music and movies, consider what artists, songs, actors, and films are popular to help keep your customers entertained.
Know Your Competition
On the other side of the spectrum, you need to know your competition. What makes you stand out from your competitors? How do you operate your business differently? Better? Worse? If your competitors are having sales, should you have one too so you can keep up with them? Compare your prices and shipping options as well as your inventory and product options—sizes, colors, free standard shipping, same-day delivery, price matching, less expensive. Know your competition inside and out so you know how to build a successful e-commerce business and attract consumers to your website.
Update Your Inventory
Updating your inventory with some new, trendy products and providing a variety of products will help your customer retention. By offering new items on a regular basis—monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, etc.—you will entice customers back to your website to see the new things you have in store. Keep an eye on what products are selling like hotcakes to help you determine what new products you want to add to your inventory. Also, keep in mind that you may need permission from your merchant account provider before you start processing credit cards for these new items.
Update Your Website Content
While it is a great idea to keep your inventory fresh, it is an equally great idea to keep your website content fresh. Part of keeping up with your competition is rewriting your website content so your e-commerce site stays current in Google search results. Consider optimizing a few pages for SEO keywords that you want to rank better in Google or creating new pages to attract new customers.
Track Your Website’s Success
How will you know what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong on your website if you do not use tools to track your success? Correct—you will not know! Use tools such as Google Analytics to see how many people have viewed your website, how many conversions you got from each page, how website visitors entered certain pages, and what keywords and phrases they searched to find your site. Google Analytics is free to use. All you have to do is incorporate the source code into your website.
Optimize Your Website for Mobile Shoppers
Part of being a successful e-commerce merchant is providing your online shoppers multiple ways to view your site. By optimizing your website for mobile shoppers, you can target a completely new market: smartphone and tablet shoppers. More than one billion mobile phone users own smartphones and statistics prove that tablet shoppers spend 21% more than PC shoppers and 54% more than smartphone shoppers. With a mobile website, you can make it easier for your customers to shop and even more tempting for them to buy.
Provide a Simple, Secure Checkout Process
If your checkout process is too difficult to reach or too complex to finish, your customers will most likely abandon their shopping carts and leave their order incomplete. Make sure that you provide a simple and secure checkout process that your customers can reach in one click and finish in one or two pages. With Visa’s new Visa Consumer Authentication Service, cardholders no longer have to enter their Verified by Visa password, which streamlines the 3D Secure checkout process even more.
Share Your Success Stories
There are many things involved in operating an online store, and the best practice tips are endless. As an e-commerce merchant, how did you climb your way up the success ladder? What tips do you have for startup merchants? What pitfalls should new merchants look out for to avoid failure? Join in on the conversation and share your e-commerce success stories.
Author Bio:
Meghan Faye Wolff is the senior copywriter and marketing specialist at Instabill—a credit card processor that offers merchant account solutions worldwide. Meghan writes website content and blog posts as well as manages the company’s social media. For the latest e-commerce news, follow Instabill on Twitter @instabill_com.