Electronic commerce, otherwise known as ecommerce, has reshaped the way people buy and sell products and services online. Nowadays, ecommerce is the most popular way to make transactions over the Internet. Needless to say, there are a lot of ecommerce businesses these days, which makes the online market rather crowded and highly competitive. Nevertheless, a lot of new ecommerce stores arise and with the right approach, even a small business can compete with the industry’s giants.
That means that every ecommerce business can become reputable and successful online with the right strategy in place. However, the main issue with ecommerce businesses is the need for constant expansion and growth. The more popularity your business gains, the larger your consumer base will be. That makes it difficult for business owners to sustain their ecommerce stores, as they grow and develop further. Still, with a bit of planning, you can support your business and scale it properly when the need arises. Here are a few ways you can make your ecommerce growth more sustainable.
Build relationships over social media
Building long-lasting and more personal relationships with customers is essential for business success. Social media provides means for you to connect with your target audience and effectively communicate with them. What’s more, social media offers you an opportunity to promote your brand organically and improve your online visibility, as well as your presence. Moreover, many ecommerce platforms can be integrated with the main social media channels, which allows you to open storefronts on networks where your customers are most active.
That way you’re allowing your customers to browse through your goods more conveniently and it also brings you closer to your audience. The better your relationship with your customers is, the more engagement and loyalty you’ll inspire. In addition, loyal and satisfied customers can become brand advocates and promote your business further through word-of-mouth recommendations. Aside from building relationships, social media allows you to gather feedback, in order to determine the overall impressions online consumers have about your brand, as well as improve your efforts to build a better reputation.
Focus on user experience
User experience (UX) is one of the most important factors that determines customer engagement and loyalty. It’s important to understand that online consumers have specific expectations and needs when it comes to browsing ecommerce websites. In short, your customers want a seamless experience. That includes a highly functional website that’s user-friendly, fast, responsive and easy to navigate. Having a responsive design is crucial when appealing to mobile users, as a responsive website can adjust to any screen size.
Moreover, navigating through your website must be as efficient as possible. Customers prefer well-organized product categories, a well-developed search engine and meaningful recommendations based on their activities. Aside from its functionality, your website needs an awesome design rich in exceptional visuals. That’s why, it’s important to invest in ecommerce website development, in order to ensure a seamless user experience and thus guarantee customer satisfaction. If you fail to deliver on user experience, your customers will turn to your competitors.
Leverage email to deliver your messages
Email is another great way to sustain your ecommerce growth, by having engaged and loyal customers. Furthermore, email newsletters can help you deliver more personalized messages and custom content to your leads. The main reason is that 72% of online consumers prefer to receive promotional offers via email rather than social media. Simply put, you can use social media to build relationships and use email to lead customers down your sales funnel. Moreover, email is a great way to remind customers about abandoned carts, unfinished check-out processes and more, which helps with customer retention.
Also, you can provide catalogues for your customers to browse, as well as include special promotions and discounts to make them more engaged. In addition, you can use email segmentation to categorize customers based on their preferences and other attributes. That way, you’ll know how to craft specialized messages and effectively communicate with your audience. As a matter of fact, email segmentation can increase the open rate by 14.32%, as well as the click-through rate by 100.95%.
Focus on data
Many online businesses, ecommerce included, gather big data to improve their business operations and efficiency. Data can play a huge role in sustaining your business growth. The main reason is that it provides actionable information that will help you remain relevant to your audience and make more strategic and data-driven decisions.
Online consumers change their habits often, mostly because they have the tendency to follow the latest trends imposed by either the community or newest technological developments. Either way, it’s important to keep up with these trends, if not even predict them, in order to meet your customers’ expectations and their new demands. Data can help you determine these trends and also optimize your business to make the most impact and yield the best results. Staying on top of the game is simply essential to sustaining your business and allowing it to scale properly.
Improve customer support and service
Customer support and service are also important aspects of business success. Aside from having a seamless customer experience, online consumers expect from brands to help them out with any issues they may have. What’s more, they expect this support to be fast and accurate, otherwise, they might consider abandoning a brand altogether.
In fact, consumers are more concerned about customer service than about product quality or price. That’s why it’s important to enable a two-way communication with your customers where they can voice their opinions and concerns. Also, make sure there are various ways customers can contact you, such as phone, email, live chat etc. Lastly, make sure you always answer to customer feedback respectfully and on time.
Sustaining ecommerce growth is never easy. Most of your efforts highly depend on your customers and how satisfied they are with your brand. If you ensure an excellent customer experience and satisfaction, you’ll be able to sustain and scale your business more efficiently.
Raul is a B.Sc. in Innovative entrepreneurship and has a lot to say about innovations in all aspects of digital technology and online marketing. While he’s not enjoying travel, football and great food, you can find him on Technivorz.com