With the Internet enabling anyone to sell online without the need for the expense of premises; we have put together some practical hints and tips for those looking to move into eCommerce.
1. Basic common business sense rules!
The eCommerce revolution changed the way we buy and sell goods forever, it has broken down the barriers and levelled the playing field. Now whether you’re a stay at home mum looking after the kids or a global corporation, commercial success is possible, so is commercial failure! Remember normal business common sense rules still apply: The following tips are not rocket science, in fact, they are rather obvious to succeed you need to provide things that customers want to buy, at a price they can afford (preferably cheaper than anyone on the high street), then make sure potential customers know about your site and your products.
2. Market online
To help customers find you, you need to optimise your site ensuring search engines not only find you, but place your site on the first page. To do this you need to do some research to find out how potential customers are searching for and what key words and phrases they are using.
The following links will help:
searchenginewatch.com
searchmarketing.yahoo.com
wordtracker.com
Once you have a good idea of these key phrases make sure your web pages are liberally sprinkled with them.
Try viral adverting advertising word of mouth is a powerful tool. I good idea which will increase your stores visibility will pay dividends.
3. Get reliable hosting
Your online store needs to be hosted reliably, and Host1plus is reliable, secure and you can choose where in the world you want your store based. Host1plus have plenty of great deals for good, low cost web hosting no matter what the size of the store.
4. Pick the right software
Why try to reinvent the wheel by building your own store? Alternatively, even worse leave yourself totally reliant on a outside web designer. Pick a package that is specifically designed to build and manage online stores. Check out as many examples of working online stores produced with the package as possible and finally make sure you can get on with the software before building the store.
5. Good design
Get the job done, and don’t look for design awards! Your Store’s first priority is to be easy for your potential customer to located, and buy your products. You can then worry about looking good, but don’t let looking good slow your store down so, it takes so long to load that people just click away.
6. Be accessible
You are now required to take “reasonable” steps to provide access to people with disabilities to your store. This means that all the images contained in your store should have alternate text (‘Alt’) tags so that visually impaired people can use your store.
9. sell, Sell, SELL
Just getting a customer to browse through your store means your marketing has worked. Now they are here the selling begins. Make sure they see your products. Don’t place any barriers in the way and don’t ask them to register before they can enter your store. Once they are in don’t plague them with popups and surveys as one click, and they are gone, and your marketing was for nothing.
7. Build repeat custom
Once you have turned a potential customer into a paying customer you can be pretty certain they are more likely to buy for you again (assuming your order fulfilling and customer service is up to scratch). So why not use real and exclusive special offers to entice them to re-visit your site. Get them on your side and make them feel part of a your club. A newsletter is a great way of keeping your customers informed of new products, sales and new developments.
8. Build trust
Getting potential customers to part with money online involves a leap of faith on the customers' behalf. For example, will the goods ordered be dispatched quickly, will they actually arrive?
You need to build trust by reassure your potential customer by putting human faces to your store you can do this by including an about us page, which has good quality photographs of you or your staff. Under the EU Distance Selling Directive, you must make clear who you are by providing full contact details, including an address and phone number. This is also good practice for building trust.
It also helps to join a merchant accreditation scheme such as ISIS, TrustUK or SafeBuy. Finally find a prominent place to display customer feedback and testimonials.
9. Taking payment
To comply with the banks’ latest data security standard, PCI DSS, you will need to use a third party payment gateway to take payments online. Good providers provide a fast and secure way to get paid online.
The following links will help:
paypal.com
netbanx.com
nochex.com
sagepay.com
paypoint.net
rbsworldpay.com
10. Organise shipping
The users of eBay know it’s important to ship a product fast! It is not unusual to place an order and have it arrive the next day. If you want to impress your customers fast delivery is one of the best ways of doing this.
The following links will help:
paypal.com
ups.com
fedex.com
interparcel.com
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