Setting up an online store is a very fragile procedure and has to be planned out accordingly. If you are planning to set up an e-commerce shop, your goal is obviously to sell your products or services. You are either starting a new business or you are simply moving your offline business to the world wide web. Unfortunately, setting up an online store isn't as simple as 1-2-3, although, if done correctly, can be as simple.
Back in the day, opening an offline store works quite simple. You open it up (which involves paper work and product handling), spread the word with flyers, banners, customers walk in, look around and possibly buy your products. The big difference between an online and offline store is quite frankly the fact that the customers are not in your physical store. In an online shop, they are simply looking at pictures and prices and in a matter of seconds, they can be in a completely different website. The trouble a customer has to go through, driving to a location, walking around and investing time, simply doesn't exist in the online world.
If you want to successfully start an online store, you have to look out for three important factors. First, you need to manage the design of the store, as well as pictures and navigation. Next, you would want to make the purchase as easy as possible. Make sure that if a visitor wants to buy, they don't go through some complicated checkout process and end up getting frustrated. Lastly, you want to get the right type of traffic/visitors. If you are selling selling adult entertainment products and your traffic is coming from a pet accessories website, then you may want to reconsider that strategy.
Let's begin with the design of such an e-commerce website. How do you know when your design is good? Well first thing is you want to always highlight your products, so that visitors don't have to search for them. Any when it comes to design, the only way you can know if it's good is by monitoring the bounce rate. A visitor will now within 3 seconds, whether he will continue shopping or not. If your websites design does not meet the psychological standards of a visitor, he/she will leave or also known as bounce off the site. Keep track of that percentage as your site get's traffic before implementing design changes. Read more about bounce rate and design changes here.
Second most important factor in setting up an online store is the checkout functionality. There are many type of checkouts and shopping carts. You can either have your visitors register to the site before purchasing or simply have a one time checkout system. The one time checkout process seems more simple and elegant, but if the user decides to buy more stuff, he would have to fill out the information all over again, in most cases. If you are planning on keeping your visitors information for future purchases and feel like your products will need to be repurchased, then having a registration form is not a bad idea. Having both choices available will be the ideal way of processing your purchases on your site.
Lastly, you need to worry about getting the right type of traffic to your site. There are many ways to generate traffic, whether it's ranking the search engines for related keywords, online press releases, having a social media campaign to attract customers or getting visitors from the offline world to go online (which is a whole different strategy). Subscribe to this blog for the next upcoming posts on online advertising or simply contact our online business marketing consultants.Setting Up An Online Store
Setting up an online store is a very fragile procedure and has to be planned out accordingly. If you are planning to set up an e-commerce shop, your goal is obviously to sell your products or services. You are either starting a new business or you are simply moving your offline business to the world wide web. Unfortunately, setting up an online store isn't as simple as 1-2-3, although, if done correctly, can be as simple.
Back in the day, opening an offline store works quite simple. You open it up (which involves paper work and product handling), spread the word with flyers, banners, customers walk in, look around and possibly buy your products. The big difference between an online and offline store is quite frankly the fact that the customers are not in your physical store. In an online shop, they are simply looking at pictures and prices and in a matter of seconds, they can be in a completely different website. The trouble a customer has to go through, driving to a location, walking around and investing time, simply doesn't exist in the online world.
If you want to successfully start an online store, you have to look out for three important factors. First, you need to manage the design of the store, as well as pictures and navigation. Next, you would want to make the purchase as easy as possible. Make sure that if a visitor wants to buy, they don't go through some complicated checkout process and end up getting frustrated. Lastly, you want to get the right type of traffic/visitors. If you are selling selling adult entertainment products and your traffic is coming from a pet accessories website, then you may want to reconsider that strategy.
Let's begin with the design of such an e-commerce website. How do you know when your design is good? Well first thing is you want to always highlight your products, so that visitors don't have to search for them. Any when it comes to design, the only way you can know if it's good is by monitoring the bounce rate. A visitor will now within 3 seconds, whether he will continue shopping or not. If your websites design does not meet the psychological standards of a visitor, he/she will leave or also known as bounce off the site. Keep track of that percentage as your site get's traffic before implementing design changes. Read more about bounce rate and design changes here.
Second most important factor in setting up an online store is the checkout functionality. There are many type of checkouts and shopping carts. You can either have your visitors register to the site before purchasing or simply have a one time checkout system. The one time checkout process seems more simple and elegant, but if the user decides to buy more stuff, he would have to fill out the information all over again, in most cases. If you are planning on keeping your visitors information for future purchases and feel like your products will need to be repurchased, then having a registration form is not a bad idea. Having both choices available will be the ideal way of processing your purchases on your site.
Lastly, you need to worry about getting the right type of traffic to your site. There are many ways to generate traffic, whether it's ranking the search engines for related keywords, online press releases, having a social media campaign to attract customers or getting visitors from the offline world to go online (which is a whole different strategy). Subscribe to this blog for the next upcoming posts on online advertising or simply contact our online business marketing consultants.
