5 E-commerce Tips for Small Business
Whether you are starting out with a new ecommerce website, thinking about how you can sell your services online or already have an established online presence, these 5 tips have been created for all to consider:
1. Start with your website...
The key to doing business successfully online is your website. Most websites out there, whether brand new or established, can do with improvement and there are so many resources out there for small businesses to tap into. Check out www.hubspot.com (opens in new window) for some really great ideas and tips on ecommerce and online marketing.
Many websites underperform due to a lack of understanding of the importance of search engine optimisation. Effectively, ensuring that your website is a viable platform to be found online. If you haven’t got any techies on the inside that can help you with this then explore external agencies or look up resources that help you understand the basics. ‘The Art of SEO’ is a book (about as thick as a telephone directory) which seems to have a good reputation about getting started with SEO.
2. If you can’t optimise your site - what other channels can you use?
How about selling via marketplaces? By marketplaces we mean sites such as, Ebay and Amazon. These websites can provide a viable and relatively simple way for businesses, particularly, retail businesses, to sell their wares effectively.
Many businesses actually do more direct sales via marketplaces than they do via their websites. You do have to pay them a fee for participating and they also take a percentage of your sales – but it’s often a good first step for businesses setting out on the ‘selling online’ journey.
3. A trusted brand?
Whilst the online arena has flattened the advertising playing field with small businesses going head to head with very large established brands, there’s still an issue of trust.
Small businesses starting out in the online arena may not initially have lots of customer testimonials and a well known brand to see them through – and so you have to consider how you too can build trust.
A professional and website design is clearly an important factor as first impressions count, if it looks dodgy then customers are more likely to believe it is dodgy.
Ensure that you clearly promote information that users are looking for returns policies, delivery details, T&Cs, payment gateways, and where possible, relevant accreditations – such as payment security and associated memberships.
4. Grow trust...
As your online sales develop ensure that you create a process to regularly collect customer testimonials. Getting feedback from your customers on a regular basis and sharing the positive comments they provide to you is very powerful for new users to review. In your confirmation of purchase email or post purchase email why not include a simple ‘how are we doing’ survey (you can set this up very quickly via online survey resource www.surveymonkey.com (opens in new window)) . This way you can track feedback and also ask customers to share their experience with you gleaning some positive content for your website and also learning about how you can improve your online services.
5. Make it simple for people to buy...
There’s a great saying ‘make it as simple as possible for people to buy’ - after all, if you’ve put in all the marketing activity to get people to your website then you don’t want to lose them by not providing a range of payment methods.
Common payment methods include: PayPal, GoogleCheckout, SagePay, CardSave and others.
Why not seek out your competitors and see which payment methods they are offering and ensure that you measure up.
Made Simple Group Ltd
Registered Office address: 145 - 157 St John St, EC1V 4PW, London
Company Number: 05104525 Vat Number: GB820956327