So you want to start to expand into eCommerce.
A 600 billion dollar industry with no shelves to keep stocked, no cashiers to hire, no store to keep clean. It’s just your product and your customers, without the thousands of dollars in on-the-ground investment a brick and mortar store needs – I can see why you’re interested.
But there are some things that are just as important as a physical storefront that you probably haven’t dealt with before.
Here are the essentials:
How To Make People Stop By Your Online Store
You probably have many ways of attracting people to your stores. Flashy displays, coupons, and sales events can all make people more likely to drop by.
It’s not really so different with an online store. Discounts and sales still make people more likely to buy. Having a well-designed website makes people more likely to shop on your site. And coupons still work – they just need to be e-mailed instead.
But there is one major point of difference, and that’s getting people to see your store in the first place. The internet is a big mall in the world, and even with a great site, it’s very possible you’ll be overlooked.
So how can you make sure you are getting the amount of traffic you want?
It’s simple: get people talking about your store.
Word of mouth, as well as social media, is a great way to boost the search rankings of your store. Get exciting about what you sell, and encourage them to share it with their friends and family. The more link and discussions there are about your site, the more likely that search engines like Google and Bing will rank your site higher, causing more people to click on it. This method is known as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, and it’s the best way to get a steady stream of traffic every month.
Another way of getting traffic is by advertising, something you might have experience with. There are many ways to do this, but perhaps the most widely used is a method called pay-per-click advertising. To break it down, you create a small advertisement that shows on either a website or search engine. Every time someone clicks on the ad, you pay a small fee, the cost of which depends on how many people are competing for the same space. Once the prospect clicks the ad, you can direct them either to your website, or another page which is designed to sell them a certain product.
If you do direct people to your website, you need to make sure it’s as well put together as it possibly can be. An eCommerce website is designed to sell products, while a traditional retail website is designed to drive people to the stores, so make sure you’re setting up an entirely different site for your eCommerce division. Your website is just like your traditional storefront… set up promotions so that they’re highly visible, and design it strategically so visitors see what you want them to see. Set up a review system, and reward buyers for participating. Set up a loyalty program, so that they keep coming back.
I cannot possibly go through all the different ways to create a good eCommerce website and marketing strategy, but these are the major ones that differ considerably from offline retail.
Next week, I’ll be talking about the most important parts of any eCommerce business – how to get your product to the customer in one piece, and quickly, as well as why that’s important.
So your online store isn’t doing as well as you’d like, and you’re trying to figure out why.
You’ve done all the essentials.
Your website looks great, and it is both easy to navigate and easy to use.
Your products are clearly labeled, and there are various incentives to buy, including a strong returns policy, discounted shipping, and promotions.
You are driving qualified traffic to the site with a variety of initiatives including SEO, social media, and Pay-per-click campaigns.
There’s just one small problem.
People still aren’t buying your products.
The thing is, it doesn’t matter how great your site is, how easy you make it to buy, how many people come to your site if they aren’t interested in what you’re selling.
But wait, you’ve done your research. You are certain people want what you offer.
Then most likely the problem is not what you’re selling, but how you’re selling it.
Why Are Product Pages Important?
A product page is more than just a place for customers to buy your product… it’s also a place you can convince them to buy it.
The more relevant information about the product on the page, and the more reasons to buy, the higher the likelihood of someone buying it.
In fact, you should treat every product page as a salesman for the product. Some product pages have a mere paragraph describing the product.
Would you expect a door-to-door salesman to limit his sales presentations to a few words?
Explain every virtue and overcome every possible objection to buying the product, and don’t worry if it runs a bit long. Generally, the more expensive/obscure the product, the longer the page needs to be.
You don’t need to take my word for it, take a look at the Kindle’s product page.
It’s not random chance that the page runs extremely long and features multiple sections. Printed out, it would exceed 5 pages.
It’s designed that way, because Amazon has found that a long product page works best for the Kindle.
And it might work best for your product too. So the next time you’re designing a product page, make sure it actually sells the product.
But what if you’re selling hundreds or thousands of different items?
The above applies to items that are particularly difficult to sell. However, you cannot take that approach to all your product pages if you have hundreds of them.
So what common elements can be included in all your product pages that helps sell all your products?
First, make sure to include some kind of review system. Not only does that provide you with credibility, but in many cases reviews can do the selling for you!
Of course, make sure reviews are easy to create and easy to view.
Secondly, make sure the product page layout is suitable for the type of product you are selling.
Are you selling computer hardware? Then you will want to include the technical specifications of each part in every product page.
If you’re selling food products, you might want to include how long the food can be stored.
In short, it depends entirely on what you’re selling. But whatever it is, make sure you are providing all the necessary information for a potential buyer to make a decision.
Product pages are an incredibly powerful way to increase sales for your online store, if utilized properly.
But they often aren’t.
Have you tweaked your product pages lately?
There are quite a few sites out there that will teach you how to expand your online store, boost sales, and attract more customers.
But growing profit is a result of not only increasing sales, but also cutting costs.
In fact, you might be surprised how much your bottom line improves by keeping in mind a few simple principles.
Here are a few quick tips to reduce costs while maintaining quality.
Try to use discounts strategically. Discounts are a great way to boost traffic to your site, and work well as attention grabbers. There’s nothing that quite gets a potential customer salivating like an 80% off sale.
Some sales can easily bring in an influx of customers that more than offsets the profit loss per item. The influx of new traffic discounts bring can be so encouraging, that you might even decide to offer a site-wide sale. After all, with that much more traffic, surely your profits will increase, right?
Well, hold on a minute. Before you decide to offer that sale, make sure you’ve taken into account how much you’re planning to make per item, how much new business you think you’ll be getting, and most of all, whether you will be making a profit! It sounds like common sense, but it’s not uncommon that a site-wide sale turns into a disaster.
Also, consider using discounts strategically by considering your profit margin per item. Once you are able to identify your lowest and highest profit products, you will know which to offer huge discounts on, and which to avoid discounting. By offering discounts on popular items that don’t need any additional incentives to buy, you are potentially reducing your profit rather than increasing it.
Another incentive often used to increase traffic is offering free shipping. But free shipping can be a double edged sword, depending on the item. In fact, on some low-cost items, free shipping can actually cost you money every time you sell those items! On the other hand, offering free shipping is a proven way to increase sales and traffic.
Consider finding other ways to cut shipping costs so that you can offer free shipping. Depending on the size of your operation and how many orders you ship per month, one way of cutting your shipping costs is by using an order fulfillment service. Generally, outsourcing your fulfillment is a far cheaper option than hiring a fulfillment team and renting out a warehouse. Top outsourced fulfillment providers enable you to ship from multiple warehouses and have favorable shipping rates with courier companies due to the amount of product they ship daily. Not only can this save you a lot of money on your shipping costs, but it can also make the actual delivery-time far shorter.
You don’t have to do everything yourself. In many cases, it’s not only cheaper to outsource jobs and specific projects, but also results in higher quality work from specialists. This not only applies to fulfillment, but also to graphic design, customer service, web design, SEO, anything you can think of. That doesn’t mean that you should outsource all of these things. It just means you should keep an open mind when considering a problem that you don’t have expert resources on hand to solve. You don’t have to outsource to a foreign country, there are many outstanding specialty firms in the U.S. Explore your options the next time you have situation that needs a specialized solution.
How have you cut costs for your online business in the past?
Being able to listen and understand your customers, and vice-versa, is critical in any online business.
How can you know what kind of new products people would like to see if they’re not telling you? Also, why would they tell you if you don’t ask them?
There are so many ways to talk to the people who buy your products. E-mail, phone, social media: people are more chatty than ever. But there are certain underlying principles inherent in all good customer communications, no matter how they are carried out.
A short response time is critical to maintaining good relationships to people who want to speak with you. Consider this. When you're talking with someone in person, how would you feel if they took a few hours, or even days, to answer a question or to respond to a comment you made? People like to think that the person they're talking to is paying attention to them, and the single best way to assure them of that is to respond to them quickly. This is especially important in the case of any customer complaints or service problems. People are far more likely to be understanding if they think you are actively working on the problem! On the other side of the spectrum, nothing annoys someone more than being ignored, which a slow response time might make them feel. Do both yourself and your customer a favor, whether on e-mail or social media, respond as quickly as possible.
Actively seek to communicate with your customers; you can't wait for your customers to come to you in this day and age. This might come as a surprise to you, but your customers like to hear from you, and often. Well wait a minute, you might say: don't people find constant e-mails or discount books annoying? The answer is that it doesn't matter what you're sending them or how often: as long as the customer is interested in that material. Instead of posting their opinion on your Facebook page or ranting about it during a customer service session, be proactive and ask them for their opinion! Not only will you gain valuable information about your customers that you can utilize to produce better products and marketing campaigns, but you will also make them feel like their opinions are important to you.
Be everywhere. Whether it's Facebook, review sites, forums, or chat programs, you need to make sure you are giving your customers every opportunity to contact you. This not only allows for more and better conversations, but also lets you head off potential problems before they negatively impact your online reputation. If you constantly keep your brand presence in the back of their mind, the next time they want something that you happen to be selling, who do you think they will go to first?
To summarize, the key to good communication is to communicate quickly, actively, and in as many ways as possible. Of course, there are other aspects of good communication I haven't talked about here. All the communication in the world can't help you if you insult your customers, for instance. But these fundamentals are good rules to follow in almost every instance.
How has a conversation with a customer impacted your business?
How important is creating a successful survey for your online business?
Customer research is a critical part of any online business, especially an eCommerce store. While there are many ways of conducting research, the most common and generally most effective way is just to ask people what they want.
Would you like to see this car in neon green, for example, or would you prefer a dark blue? Surveys are a great way to ensure you are spending your resources on the areas that have the most potential to bring in more sales. Too often however, surveys go out and get response rates in the single digits. So here are a few quick tips to ensure you are getting the most from your customer research initiatives.
Ask Relevant Questions
Ask questions that will actually help improve your business! Creating the questions is the first thing you need to do with any survey, and one of the most important steps. But the longer a survey is, the less people will want to fill it out, so the number of questions you can ask is limited. That means avoiding questions that you want to ask but are not critical to your immediate goals! Figure out exactly what you want to learn before you start creating the survey, then craft questions that will move you towards answering them.
Make the Survey Easy to Fill Out
Accessibility and ease of use is an important factor in increasing survey response rate. First, make sure the layout of your survey is designed in an intuitive manner, and that the instructions are clear. Is it a multiple choice survey, or do the respondents have to write answers? It's also essential that you avoid using jargon or complicated words when writing the actual questions and answers. The more people understand what you're asking, the more likely it is you'll get the data you're looking for.
Create Shorter Surveys or Offer a Reward
People have short attention spans, especially in the era of the internet, smartphones, and YouTube. The shorter your survey is, the more likely customers will be to fill it out. Of course, sometimes you need more detailed information, and that requires longer surveys. In those cases, you can offer a reward for filling out a longer form. For example, coupons, raffles, and free products are typically used to encourage more respondents.
These are the simplest and more effective methods of increasing response rates on surveys. Depending on the industry, people will be more or less likely to respond. As with all things in business, test, test, and test again until you find what works for you.
Do you have any stories where a successful survey helped you make a decision?
Great fulfillment providers have specialized software that is optimized for eCommerce order fulfillment. Even though there are hundreds of fulfillment companies out there, not all of them were built with eCommerce in mind. Traditional warehousing companies are not good fits for modern online stores. Ask your potential fulfillment partner what kind of technology solution they used to manage your order fulfillment. Does it allow you to see and manipulate your orders in real-time? Does it allow you to approve or disapprove orders? Is it cloud-based? Do you get low-inventory alerts so you’re on top of your fulfillment? These are essential questions you should ask, not just to see if they have the technological capability to enable you to compete in today’s market, but to see how much control they offer you over your fulfillment.
Visit us next week to see what other critical advantages there are to hiring the best fulfillment provider for your business.
Cost can vary widely between fulfillment companies. There is no single price that you can compare and contrast since fulfillment is very much based on what you are shipping and how much. For example, one company might charge you less per shipment, but might charge you for the technology solution they give you. Another might give you that same technology for free. Even if you do calculate the overall cost of your fulfillment, you'll need to be careful on the level and quality of the service they provide. One fulfillment company might charge more than another, but it might offer a 100% accuracy guarantee and shipping within one business day, whereas the other may not. Fulfillment is a vital part of any eCommerce operation, so don't skimp on quality order fulfillment: it will affect your sales in the future. Here are some questions to ask your potential partner. What is your average accuracy rate? What happens if you make a mistake? Do you own and operate your own warehouses? How quickly will you be able to get my product to various parts of the country? How responsive is your customer service? It's important to see the level of service they are offering so you can get the most bang for your buck.
The differences between a good fulfillment provider and a mediocre one can be vast, and if you understand those differences you'll have a better chance of choosing the right partner for your product. If your company has a quirky and unique culture that is evident through your website and your customer relations, for example, you might want a company that will let you brand your boxes or include marketing material. If your company ships pet supplies, you might want a fulfillment partner that has a lot of experience shipping pet supplies. Some fulfillment partners can offer freight services at rates that are cheaper than you can find yourself, or specialize in international fulfillment. Any of these factors can make the difference between a strong business relationship and frustration with your service.
Have you considered outsourcing your order fulfillment?
So you've decided to outsource your order fulfillment. That's great! Outsourcing your fulfillment is an excellent way to save yourself time and money, as well as getting rid of the complications of dealing with the whole pick, pack, and ship process yourself. Even after you decide to outsource there is an even more difficult decision: choosing a fulfillment partner. There are hundreds of fulfillment companies out there. Some excel at certain kinds of product fulfillment, others at certain industries. One thing is for certain, make sure you choose the right service for your product, because choosing the wrong one can not only distract you from growing your business, but can actually harm your company. Don’t just choose the cheapest service you can find either. Choosing a quality provider can provide you many advantages that will save you more money in the long run.
The first thing to determine is what kind of fulfillment you're looking for. Are you shipping frozen meals or food items that need special refrigerated sections? Are you shipping large furniture? Maybe children’s toys or electronics? Every fulfillment provider has certain types of products they specialize in fulfilling, so be sure to ask about their current customers and if they can handle your product.
Choosing a service which specializes in your product can increase the speed and accuracy of your fulfillment. Once you've decided what kind of fulfillment you want, you'll need to decide on the scale. Do you ship 200 orders a month, or 1000? Many fulfillment providers have a certain level of monthly volume they require from their customers, so choose a provider that's a good fit for the size of your company. You'll also want to make sure they will be able to sustain your growth. Finally, if you're selling online, you'll need to choose a provider that is able to integrate with your shopping cart, which leads to the next point: Technology.
Great fulfillment providers have specialized software that is optimized for eCommerce order fulfillment. Even though there are hundreds of fulfillment companies out there, not all of them were built with eCommerce in mind. Traditional warehousing companies are not good fits for modern online stores. Ask your potential fulfillment partner what kind of technology solution they used to manage your order fulfillment. Does it allow you to see and manipulate your orders in real-time? Does it allow you to approve or disapprove orders? Is it cloud-based? Do you get low-inventory alerts so you’re on top of your fulfillment? These are essential questions you should ask, not just to see if they have the technological capability to enable you to compete in today’s market, but to see how much control they offer you over your fulfillment.
Visit us next week to see what other critical advantages there are to hiring the best fulfillment provider for your business.
The quality of an online retailer’s order fulfillment can make or break a business, so it pays to make sure you are getting the best fulfillment service on the market. A substandard fulfillment company that is not suited to handling your product can cause delays and frustration for you and your customers.
Does your fulfillment partner demonstrate flexibility in terms of order handling?
One common criticism of outsourced order fulfillment is that, considering the volume of orders and breadth of products that fulfillment centers must handle, there is no way they can manage the fulfillment of your specific product as well as you can yourself. Considering that the accuracy rates of good fulfillment services are generally over 99.5%, that criticism does not have much merit. What fulfillment services lack in specialization for your product they make up for in professionalism, economy of scale, and strong relationships with courier companies. That said, there is a need for some measure of flexibility when shipping certain kinds of products. How does your fulfillment provider handle certain kinds of packaging, marketing materials, or promotional requests? Do they allow you to brand your boxes and invoices? Make sure your fulfillment partner gives you the necessary leeway to ensure that every box you send out gets you the maximum return.
How much control do you have over your fulfillment?
One of the benefits of outsourcing your fulfillment is that you have professionals handling your fulfillment for you, leaving less for you to manage. That does not mean you should give up all control of your fulfillment process. The level of control you have will vary depending not only on what level of access your provider will give you, but also how much control they have over their own warehouses. Many fulfillment providers do not own and operate their own warehouses, outsourcing the actual warehousing operations. This means that you will never have direct contact with the people actually shipping your product, so make sure to ask whether your partner owns and operates their own warehouses.
The other aspect of control is technology. Top fulfillment providers have robust technology solutions that make it easy for you to keep track of and control the most important aspects of your fulfillment. For example, the ability to set low inventory alerts, different levels of user access, and visual reporting on which one of your products ships more than others. Just like your shopping cart system, fulfillment is, in a large part, technology based, so don’t skimp on functionality. Cloud-based technology is also a huge advantage, ensuring that you don’t need to be in the office to manage your fulfillment.
Finally, the most basic, and important, measurement of a good fulfillment provider is the level of speed and accuracy they provide. In the era of Amazon Prime, online buyers expect the option to receive 2-day shipping to anywhere in the US. It is essential that your fulfillment partner has the ability to implement that level of speed. Likewise, order accuracy must, at the very least, include a 100% accuracy guarantee.
If your order fulfillment service is inflexible, denies you control over your fulfillment, has inferior technology, or does not ship quickly or accurately, your customer satisfaction and profits will undoubtly be affected. The speed and reliability of online fulfillment is one of the most important factors online buyers consider when determining where to shop.
Is your order fulfillment killing your online profits?
How important is a website to an online store? The short answer: there are few things more important. For any online business, your website is the gateway to any transactions, much like a traditional storefront would be for a brick and mortar. So it’s baffling that so many online stores hoping to sell their services and products to savvy online customers don’t invest in a solid, professional looking website. First impressions are incredibly important in the online market, mainly because there are so many other websites that are competing with you.
Putting up an incomplete or unattractive website is a bad idea for several reasons. For one thing, it diminishes your credibility, and credibility is hard to come by online. The internet is like a shady neighborhood with a few high quality stores, and putting up a bad website is like putting up a crooked store sign. Your product might be the best thing on Earth, but if people decide not to buy your product because of how your website looks, then that doesn’t matter. Putting up a good website indicates to customers that enough people buy from you that you are able to afford a professional design.
Aesthetics are not the only factor that people look at when they visit a page. Even with a well designed homepage, people might still question whether they might be better off buying from a more well-known website. Some great ways to make sure they don’t? Encourage recommendations from existing customers! People who receive a recommendation from a friend or family member are far more likely to buy than one who doesn’t. Encourage recommendations by adding social share buttons to your site. Another method of increasing a customer’s chance of buying is by adding legitimate customer testimonials, as well as a certification from a trusted authority like the BBB (Better Business Bureau). Just like someone shopping offline, people will check labels and the back of the box, so to speak, to make sure what they are purchasing is exactly what they want.
Creating a well designed website with the ability to convert customers is crucial to any eCommerce business. Does your website have a high conversion rate?