Starting an ecommerce business can be an exciting and rewarding venture, but it’s not without its challenges. To be successful in the ecommerce space, there are several critical factors that you need to consider for eCommerce Success.
The online retail space amounted to 4.9 trillion U.S. dollars worldwide last year and is expected to grow over 50% over the next four years. That is a massive growth rate and a clear signal that getting into the ecommerce space with your new, veteran, or startup business is critical to future success.
About 27.6% of the world’s population shops online, and most individuals use their mobile devices to find new products. Not only do you need an online store with a high in-demand product offering, but it also has to have a layout customers can easily navigate to make a purchase.
Many factors must be considered if you want your business to succeed in this space. If you want to learn more about those factors and how they can help your business succeed, check out our list of the critical factors for your online business.
Start with the Product
It’s all about the product. As an ecommerce entrepreneur, you can have a beautiful website and stellar customer service, but if your products are lacklustre or stale, no one will want to buy from you—and they certainly won’t recommend the store to their friends.
This is a point that’s easy to overlook in the early stages of launching an ecommerce site. You’re so busy looking at everything else that it’s easy to forget what’s actually selling – moving units. Without quality products and services, no amount of user experience optimization or marketing can make up for it.
That means finding the best price point for what you are offering to make you stand out among the competition and then delivering on the promise of quality every time.
Personalized Marketing
Second in line among critical factors to consider in eCommerce success is personalised marketing. It is the most effective marketing strategy. This means you are using data about your customers and the products they buy to get in touch with them at the right time with the right message. This can help you increase sales and loyalty among your customers.
Personalised marketing can be done through email, social media, or other channels. It includes sending targeted emails based on what someone has previously purchased or searched for online, as well as targeting ads based on a person’s demographic information like age range or location.
Using data to fuel personalised marketing efforts has become easier than ever, thanks to sophisticated algorithms that analyse past behaviour and make predictions about future purchases based on that behaviour (or lack thereof).
Clean UI/UX & Mobile Ready Services
If you want your ecommerce website to be successful, then your website must have a clean interface and user experience. This is because the site must look good and work well regardless of your customers’ device or browser. If you want to be able to do this, then you should use a responsive website design.
Mobile-friendly website design has become crucial among top critical factors to consider for eCommerce success in recent years because many consumers now use their mobile devices as their primary method of accessing the information on the internet.
Having a mobile-ready ecommerce platform can help with this problem by allowing users to access all of the same information from any location at any time without having issues accessing it through their phone or tablet computer devices.
Keeping an Eye on Competition
You should always keep an eye on your competitors and find out what they are doing right, what they are doing wrong, and what you can do better.
It also helps to have a way to check in on the other competitors in your niche to ensure you are not overpricing your product or forgetting to offer supplementary services/products.
For example, if your major competitor starts offering free shipping, you will have to problem solve how to do it yourself to stay at the leading edge of your industry.
SEO is Crucial
SEO is an integral part of any ecommerce business, and you won’t be able to reach your goals without it. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, and it’s a process of improving the visibility of your website in the search engine results.
SEO aims to get people to find your online store so they can buy from you. It does not guarantee sales. However, it will make it easier for people interested in what you offer to find your site when they search on Google, Bing, or DuckDuckGo.
Good Security & Easy Payment Processing
Ecommerce sites have to be secured. You want protection to avoid data leakage of private information like credit cards or addresses and cyber walls against fraudsters. If you do nothing else, ensure you have an SSL certificate on your website and two-factor authentication for your users.
Payment processing is also essential for ecommerce security—accepting credit card payments securely via your website. There are many different payment gateways out there that offer various services at different prices. Finding one that suits your needs can be challenging, but it’s worth doing if it means keeping customer data safe in transit between their devices and yours.
Simple & Quick Shipping
Even though shipping is a ‘backstage’ process, it is of the utmost importance to your customers. Your customers want to know that their order will be delivered quickly, efficiently, and safely — and they also want to feel like they got a great deal on their purchase.
Remember, your main competitor in this space is Amazon. They offer One/Two/Same Day shipping that is next to impossible to fight against. You want your shipping to be as smooth an experience as possible, so customers don’t mind waiting an extra few days.
Engaging Brand that is Easy to Remember
Having a memorable brand is not something you should take for granted. When building an ecommerce business, branding is one of the most important factors to consider. Your brand should be unique and memorable so that customers can easily recognize it from other brands in the market.
Make sure your branding is consistent across all channels and mediums. You want the different online channels and social media accounts to use similar logos and colours to look connected but not necessarily identical.
High-Quality Customer Service
As a business owner, you need to provide your customers with a good experience that keeps them coming back for more. It might be tempting to skimp on customer service when the margins are slim, and profits aren’t looking so great, but in the long run, it’s better for your business if you prioritize it now.
Customer service can be achieved in many ways—and plenty of resources are available online to help guide businesses through providing quality customer service. Even a simple email template can go a long way toward showing customers that you care about their needs and wants.
Take Your Time Building Your Online Store
Before you even think about creating your online store, you need to do your research. Ecommerce is an ever-growing industry, and plenty of platforms and services can help take your business to the next level.
That is why our team at OPMC has created many customized and niche-specific plugins, extensions, and apps to help you get started. We work with popular ecommerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, and Magento so that you have the add-ons you need for everything from clean shipping to tracking accounting.
Our goal is to make your ecommerce platform wildly successful with the automation in place, so you and your clients have a rewarding shopping experience. Check out our options today and let our expert team help you create a fantastic online store for your eCommerce Success.
