The Tools You Need to Make Your Startup E-Commerce Site Successful
Have you recently launched a small startup but are struggling to gain traction? Many people believe that once a business is created, it simply takes a little time and know-how. While this may be the case for a lucky few, most companies need a bit of help along the way.
This is where finding the right tools for your business can come in handy. Unfortunately, most new business owners don’t really even know where to begin which is where we come in. We are going to give you some insights into helpful tools that can help make your e-commerce business successful!
Keep reading for more information!
Proper Photography
While every website needs photographs, sites that sell clothing are in particular need. Not only do you need photos of the clothes you sell, but you need the buyer to be able to imagine themselves wearing the item.
Some sites do this by using models, which is great but can alienate some consumers if they do not feel adequately represented. In order to avoid this issue, many websites are opting to use an invisible ghost mannequin.
Basically, this entails having a real mannequin or model wear your clothing and photograph the item from the front and back sides. From there, the mannequin or model is edited out of the photo, leaving only the item of clothing. Although you can choose to take photos of your items on a flat surface, this often will not show how the garment fits or contours to the body.
Opting to remove the mannequin or model and keeping a white background also allows the focus to remain solely on the apparel, not on other aspects of the photo.
If you happen to sell other goods online that don’t include clothing, the same principle will apply. Having a simple background and detailed photos will allow consumers to view and focus on the item that you are selling; not the background or other elements of the photograph.
Content Creation
While selling items may be the way your website makes money, creating purpose-driven, SEO-friendly content will help drive traffic. Not only will creating a blog drive traffic, but you may also see increased sales as it has been found that 47% of buyers read at least three articles before making a purchase.
By having a blog with informative, helpful information, your customers will come to trust and relate to your brand, This creates brand loyalty, which means repeat customers for you!
Additionally, when a customer finds information helpful, they are likely to share it with their friends, which will widen your pool of leads and again, potential sales.
Automatically Share Your Content
If you’re like many business owners, you work all hours of the day or night. You might finish creating the perfect blog at three in the morning and want to share it with the world. Unfortunately, depending on your timezone and where your target market is located, your customers may not be active on social media at that time.
You could just wait until morning to post the blog to your preferred social media platform, but you already know that there is a chance you’ll forget or miss the prime hour to post. Instead of waiting for the perfect moment, you might consider looking into social media automation.
There are several different companies that offer this service but they all function similarly: you plan your post ahead of time and let the service post from your account when most of your users are online. This allows for more of your followers to see your posts and the potential for more engagement, clicks, and sales instead of great content being shared at the wrong time and buried under other content before anyone has a chance to view it.
Customer Service Via Live Chat
Sales and customer support go hand-in-hand; you don’t’ want to miss a sale or lose a customer based on lacking customer service. It can become costly to employ enough people to answer all incoming phone calls and let’s be honest, no one wants to wait on hold for hours at a time!
Instead of trying to keep up with multiple incoming calls, offering a live chat on your site can be an easy alternative. Customer service representatives can maintain multiple chats at once, keeping your costs down and buyers happy.
In many cases, a customer’s inquiry can be answered by an automated response, but in the event it can’t, a live representative can take over and help guide the conversation. This allows for a timely, helpful response which ultimately will keep a customer happy and feeling as though their needs are met.
For repetitive inquiries, it’s always good to implement a chatbot. It can be a Facebook Messenger Chatbot or a Telegram chatbot. With SenfdPulse and their chatbot builder, you can build any of these chatbots for free, even if you don’t have any coding skills.
Consider Your Future Goals
As your business continues to grow, you will have many things to consider. Do you want to keep nurturing your site and expand your market? Do you want to list your e-commerce website for sale and retire?
The options are almost limitless; you can choose to sell your business in order to create a new one, you can retire on a yacht somewhere tropical, or you can find a completely new venture.
Whatever choice you make ultimately hinges on how you choose to run your business and its success. Given the tools above, you are far more likely to reach whatever your future goals entail and hopefully have an easier time doing so!
