In
the very early stages of your
Ecommerce
store
your focus should be set on building your brand and getting as much
exposure as you can.
But
if the only people to know about your store are your friends and
family then what steps can you take to make your first sale?
Check
out our guide to find out...
Get
socially active
When
it comes to building your brand, your social profiles are a great
place to start. You need to show the world what you're about, and
social media gives you the freedom to do that. To attract people that
want to buy your products you need to start posting content that
specifically targets them. You should aim to strike a balance between
posting shareable content, and hitting your followers with
promotional posts so you can encourage sales.
Take
action:
Shop
around for a good
social
media management tool
so you can take care of all of your accounts in one place. The best
platforms will help you curate content, give you analytics on how
well your campaigns have performed and provide metrics on how engaged
your followers are.
Create
an SEO strategy
Search
Engine Optimization (SEO), is something that you must invest time
into if you want to attract people to your store. You can invest in
paid for ads, or try and attract organic visitors – but we'd
suggest utilizing both of these techniques in order to drive the most
traffic to your store. If you check out
Google
Adwords
you'll be able to set up ad campaigns and do keyword research to help
direct traffic that will convert.
Take
action:
Set up a Google
analytics
and Adwords account to get a birds eye view of your store so you can
see where your web traffic is coming from and how well your campaigns
are being received.
Put
in some PR work
A
store launch is a great opportunity for publicity, so set an official
launch date and send out a press release. It's hard to get publicity
from a press release so you need to make sure it's newsworthy and
that you target publications that would be relevant to your product.
Another
great way to create a buzz around your store is to approach
journalists, bloggers and entrepreneurs who are influential within
your industry. These influencers will have a large following to their
blog and on their social channels so by encouraging them to link to
your store, can be a great way to gain exposure.
Take
action:
Send
influencers a free sample of your product to encourage them to blog
about it across their social channels.
Start
creating content
Did
you know that website conversion rate is nearly
6
times higher
for content marketing adopters, than non-adopters? Content marketing
is highly regarded as one of the best techniques that you can use to
increase your reach, and improve your conversions.
When
it comes to creating content, you can choose from plenty of options
including e-books, infographics, product videos etc, but if you're in
the early stages then you should start by setting up a blog. Blogging
can make a huge impact on ROI, but for this to work, you need to be
creating posts that appeal to your audience.
Take
action:
If you don't have one already, create a buyer
persona
so you know who you are targeting. Next, go back to your keyword
research and find out the search terms that your customers use. Once
you have this information you can create content that is based on
those search terms.
Using
this technique will not only help with SEO, but it will attract more
leads to your store as you have created content that aims to answer
their problems.
Build
your email list
According
to this report by
Direct
Marketing Association
,
an impressive 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a
result of an email marketing campaign. There's no denying that an
email campaign can help with conversions, it's just a case of
building that list in the first place. Although it may seem tempting,
we don't recommend buying a list of contacts as it wont be targeted
and you'll just end up annoying people.
Take
action:
Create valuable content such as an e-book and offer it free next to
your email sign up button. That way, you know that you're building a
targeted list of contacts to your email list. Once you have a built
up list, hit them with exclusive offers and deals so they feel valued
as a customer and are more likely to buy.
Run
a contest
A
contest is a great opportunity to build up your following and drive
plenty of qualified inbound links to your store. Giving away your
product also gives the winner (or winners) the chance to try out your
product and if they like it, become your customer for life. Social
media is the perfect place to run a contest, and you will find plenty
of
third
party tools
to help you manage it the whole process.
Take
action:
Set up a landing page for your contest with all of your T&C's and
an email sign up button so you can build your leads. It's also worth
putting relevant offers on your landing page so you can encourage
more sales.
Integrate
with other tools
There
are plenty of tools and plug-ins that you can integrate with your
store to help speed up your sales cycle. According to this
HelpScout
post
,
3 in 5 Americans would try a new brand or company for a better
service experience. Providing exceptional customer service doesn’t
cost a lot, and it can really help improve conversions. Integrating
with tools such as
LiveChat
gives you the ability to talk to your web visitors so you can answer
any questions and help them on their way to purchasing your products.
Don't
limit the places that you sell your products either. Integrate your
store with Amazon, eBay, and even Facebook so you can make it really
easy for people to buy your stuff!
Take
action:
With everything from Facebook Shop, Amazon Marketplace, eBay and
LiveChat, check out all of our
apps
and add-ons
to see which integrations would work best for your Ecommerce store.
Streamline
your shopping process
The
last step that we recommend is to make it really easy for people to
buy your products. Your shopping cart process can make a huge
difference as to whether people continue through to your checkout
page. In fact,
Baymard
Institute
found that on average, 68.07% of shopping carts are abandoned – so
make sure you tackle this problem early.
There
are many reasons as to why people leave including slow loading times,
not enough pricing methods, or that extra costs were added at the
checkout page...
Take
action:
Give the customer plenty of payment choice; use a fast server so you
don't have page load problems; be clear with extra costs upfront
including tax and shipping – and if you can, offer free shipping to
encourage more sales.
The
rest is up to you...
We
hope that this post has given you plenty of food for thought on how
you can take action today and start making your very first sales!
Good luck with your new adventure - and if you need further help
pushing your conversion rate then check out our pro-grade ecommerce tools today
!