How To Enhance Your E-Commerce Business

Ways to grow your e-Commerce business

There seem to be many experts out there who know the best ways to enhance the chances of your e-Commerce business being a success.

You can find almost any amount of handy insider advice that claims everything from the 25 ways to the growth and the top 10 tips to build your e-commerce site into a winning business.

Unfortunately, some of the information is either:

1. Full of unnecessary jargon
2. Full of false promises
3. Empty of practical advice
4. More about helping their business than yours

There is a long list of different factors at play when it comes to e-Commerce and much of those elements relate to the industry you are in and what your competitors are doing.

Before you spend valuable time, money and resources on doing what a fancy and expensive digital marketing company wants, it’s important to know exactly what you want for your business. 

The key point to focus on is that it’s all about your business and not theirs. 

The best way to help you find the path ahead is to keep things simple.

The main ingredients to getting your e-Commerce business cooking

Whatever industry your e-Commerce business is in, there’s always scope for improvement.

The most important thing of all is to get the basics right and not worry too much about the frills and glitter that can come with some e-Commerce sites.

The questions you need to answer (and truthfully) are:

• Who is your target market?
• How will they find you?
• What is your branding and what does it say?
• What is your point of difference?
• What is something special you can offer?
• Where are you spending the most and is it getting the best return?

There are, of course, many other questions but answering these key questions first means you are getting the fundamentals in line. It’s having these elements all sorted first that gives you the strongest platform to launch your business to the next level.

Arrowing in on your target market

If you don’t know who you are selling to, then you have a major problem.

Remember that you can’t be all things to everybody. Too many businesses waste their time and resources in trying to appeal to the widest possible demographic and somehow miss their key buying market.

If you try to be everything to everyone means your message is either diluted, confused or irrelevant.

The last thing you need is to be inundated with enquiries from people who are never going to buy your products or use your services.

The further down the sales funnel those enquiries are, the better chance of converting them as a paid customer. There’s more to just attracting interest and getting initial clicks on your e-Commerce website.

You may be able to draw from a variety of lead sources but it is qualified ones which are closer to a real buyer.

Qualifying who and where that lead is in the sales journey means that you can put the right amount of effort into converting them rather than wasting time on a vague prospect.

Guiding those who are marketing qualified leads into sales qualified leads is an important process. It’s a bit like passing a baton in a relay race, both speed and care are needed throughout the process.

Getting the right message out there

Any e-Commerce business needs to be a streamlined and engaging experience for the user.

Getting found is the first hurdle. That’s where putting enough resources into your SEO marketing is important. Even the most spectacular (and expensive) website is of little to no use if no one can find it.

That super-duper website needs to be positioned and created with the right content that makes sure it ranks for exactly what it offers.

If an e-commerce jewellery site sells engagement rings and wedding rings with a side offering in branded pins, but only ranks for the cheapest item – the pins – and doesn’t have any success for its big name products then something is seriously wrong.

There should be a unique selling point for any site and especially an e-commerce business. Work out what you do differently and make it shine brightest. For example, that e-Commerce jewellery site could sell the best man-made diamond rings in the country.

Making the sale

The whole point of any business is to make sales. It’s even more crucial when you run an e-commerce business and you may only get one chance to complete a sale.

Is there anything worse than having a number of sales all sitting in abandoned shopping carts or your website crashing due to popular demand?

This is where you may need the best in business IT solutions. You need to be able to communicate within your business and across the world. Any hold-up or drop in the sales process can mean a missed opportunity.

Making sure your site and your IT infrastructure can handle what you do, as well as grow with your business, is important for today and the future.

A trusted, professional team can help you have the best possible IT systems in place, take the workload off you, and streamline the sales process.

Today and into the e-Commerce tomorrow

If there wasn’t enough evidence of why an e-Commerce site is important for most businesses, then the Covid pandemic laid bare just how crucial it is to be an online presence.

Even traditional bricks and mortar stores needed to offer a way to sell and deliver their products to customers without the usual face-to-face transaction being possible.

A simple order form and shipping note was the least a business could offer. Suddenly, that desperate and most basic e-Commerce site or facility needed to be improved to add sales during one of the most difficult selling periods. 

It illustrates just how important having an e-Commerce capability is to anyone selling products or services. 

To put it as simply as possible. If your e-commerce business isn’t getting known, seen, or ranking, you need to get help, or you may not have a business at all.