With the rise of eCommerce, entrepreneurs across the globe have the invaluable opportunity to build up their very own international business. So long as you have the right business strategy on hand and have set up your eCommerce with a future-oriented mindset, you can develop a digital enterprise built to stand the test of time and reach customers worldwide.
But what constitutes a future-oriented approach when developing an eCommerce enterprise? We’ll be answering just that in this article, by sharing our top tips for setting up an eCommerce venture designed to sell to local markets and the world.
Invest in the right tools for managing your enterprise
The first thing that any budding digital entrepreneur should do is look into the right investments for building their company. This includes virtually every logistical investment you could make for your eCommerce enterprise, spanning from your website builder and marketing platforms, all the way through to your graphic design tools.
If you’re operating with minimal capital to begin with, look into the free tools already available to you. This includes low-cost and no-code eCommerce platforms, as well as free design tools like the Adobe Express app.
Social media platforms can also help you maintain a low-cost approach to marketing your enterprise. It’s all about building plenty of anticipation in the lead-up to your launch so you have an audience waiting and ready to go once you’re all set to finally ‘open your doors’.
Develop branding that’s driven by research
As with any business, you want to ensure your company’s branding aligns with the values and preferences of your target market. This means conducting market research before launching your eCommerce website.
Read through industry reports collated by market research companies that outline the consumer habits of your target market, and what selling points they’re most likely to appreciate as a result, such as convenience, uniqueness, and lower costs. From there, outline the key selling points and perhaps even the unique value propositions of your products.
Your branding should be visually appealing to your target audience. Conduct a competitor analysis to determine what your existing competitors may be doing well, and where they could improve. This can help guide your branding and support you in maintaining the strongest position possible to fill a gap in your market.
Ensuring site usability is key
The worst thing that can happen to any eCommerce website is that you launch with great anticipation, only for your excited customers to realize your site is incredibly clunky and not at all easy to navigate.
Usability testing and UX optimisation are vital for ensuring your eCommerce website is a site that people want to visit. This is the process of testing usability elements like page loading speed, ease of navigation, and even user interactivity (including which pages people click through to, and how much time they spend on these pages). Running diagnostics like speed testing, and even tweaking your navigation menu to boost user navigation, can all help to improve the usability of your website, and strengthen your customers’ online shopping experience.
Investing in the usability of your eCommerce website can also be valuable in ensuring that your site is SEO-friendly. Simply put, if you want your website to appear on search engine results pages for product keywords like ‘dry shampoo’ or ‘wireless mouse’, then you should make sure your products are published with SEO best practices in mind so that they will be more likely to appear in Google search and Google Shopping results too.
Don’t neglect your remarketing and retargeting
ECommerce business owners need to keep in mind that there is no such thing as exponential growth, even when you’re trading to a global consumer base. You don’t want your consumers to make just one single purchase with you and then never visit your store again. That’s why the secret to eCommerce success doesn’t lie in customer acquisition but in customer retention. And the best way to retain your customers is to invest in your remarketing and retargeting campaigns.
Remarketing is the process of getting customers back on your sales funnel and positioning them to make an additional purchase. This can be achieved in a few different ways, but one of the most potent platforms is email marketing. Email marketing can be used to inform repeat customers about upcoming sales, or to share other exclusive deals with them to build customer loyalty and aid in boosting your business’ customer retention rates.
Then there’s retargeting. This is the process of developing tailored ad campaigns that align with every segment of your sales funnel or customer journey. For instance, if your marketing tools have been able to detect that a customer clicked through to your website via an ad, and went so far as to add items to their shopping cart, your retargeting strategy can help remind those prospective buyers about the items they left behind. This sends them a nudge to pick up their shopping experience where they left off.
Investing in your remarketing and retargeting strategies helps reduce your risks of wasting funds that you spent on the arduous act of customer acquisition.
Map out any potential expansion opportunities
Finally, just like any other business, you want to ensure that your eCommerce enterprise is scalable, or that there is room for you to expand into new avenues. This diversification can also be beneficial in securing repeat customers, as loyal shoppers who’ve purchased with you in the past are likely to buy your new wares if they’ve come to expect a certain level of value from your brand.
Of course, maintaining your same standard for quality is vital when mapping out any expansion opportunity, so don’t cut corners when partnering with new suppliers. A drop in quality won’t do anything but dishearten your existing customer base and deter new customers from doing business with you.
The best approach to expanding your business is to start looking early for additional suppliers or relevant new products. That way, you can make sure you have new products ready to go as you accrue more capital through store sales. Expanding on your inventory and launching new products at the right time can also help keep your momentum going following the initial launch of your website.
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Building up an eCommerce website isn’t too dissimilar from opening up a brick-and-mortar retail store. The only difference is that there is a bigger focus on investing in your brand’s digital presence, as well as its digital infrastructure.
In time, however, you should find that your eCommerce website will begin to branch out into new markets, both locally and globally. So long as you ensure that your branding stays well-researched and sensitive to other cultures as you enter those new markets, there’s no reason why your store can’t become a global sensation, and you can make an enterprise that truly does sell to the world.