eCommerce startups and small online stores need strong, effective marketing strategies to stay afloat in this competitive space. Any small business owner will know the benefits of taking their products to the digital market, and that eCommerce can be very effective at driving sales of products online. eCommerce can also help entrepreneurs reach new customer bases and segments beyond their local area, even opening doors to national or even international markets, thus driving competition and creating a more even playing field.
However, starting an online store can be daunting for small business and startup owners, particularly with competition so rife and the marketplace so crowded. Without understanding the tricky eCommerce terrain and what it can throw at you, you could be walking into shark-infested waters (proverbially speaking, of course).
With some key strategies in place, small business owners can launch and grow successful eCommerce brands and build a solid foundation for long-term stability. This guide will outline five crucial tips for eCommerce success that can hopefully inspire brands to grow from ambitious startups into blossoming household names, whatever their product niche.
5 Vital Small Business and Startup eCommerce Tips
1. Plan thoroughly before launching
Rushing into eCommerce without a clear idea of your goals, objectives and strategy will be a costly mistake. It’s crucial to strategise your approach before you launch your site.
- Define your eCommerce goals - Study your competitors and audience niche, and identify any gaps or opportunities in the market that your brand and products could fill.
- Decide what to track - Use your goals to influence the metrics that you want to continually track, whether that’s total sales, revenue targets, conversion rates, or maintaining a positive cash flow. Track and optimise these over time.
- Quality over quantity - Depending on your sector or industry, you may benefit by carefully curating a targeted product line that meets the demands of the right type of customer, rather than bombarding them with a broad range of loose product variations.
- Choose the right eCommerce platform - Research the most appropriate and affordable website platform and solution that suits your business needs and level of technical proficiency, such as Shopify. Will it be able to accommodate your product lines as you grow and scale?
- Define your marketing strategy - Outline how you plan to drive traffic to your website and maximise the number of conversions you can get from the outset. This can involve a healthy mixture of SEO, content writing, social media, email marketing, referrals, and professional networking.
Thorough planning sets your eCommerce venture up for success from day one.
2. Build your online presence
The marketing strategy you outlined in the previous step will be the stepping stone for building your online presence. As an eCommerce brand, you need to make sure that customers can easily find your business online, and that will materialise with a few specific steps.
You’ll need to refine your digital presence across various marketing channels, including (but not limited to):
- Your website - This is the most important eCommerce facility and the place where most of the purchases, conversions, and marketing activity will need to materialise. Invest in a professionally-coded, well-designed, mobile-optimised, and fast-loading site that suits your brand and is easy for users to navigate. Integrate this with your database, inventory and other channels if you can. Luckily, there are many low-code and no-code options which can help those that are less technically proficient.
- Social media - Creating business pages on social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and others will be imperative for driving awareness and conversions. Using these channels to showcase your products, share discounts, offer insights and expertise, add recommendations, and respond to customers will work wonders at cultivating a strong online presence.
- Online directories - Adding your business to key local and national directories will add credibility to your brand and drive potential high-quality traffic to your site.
- Review sites - Actively collect and manage customer reviews on platforms like Trustpilot and Google Business Profile. Positive reviews foster feelings of trust in customers both current and new.
3. Make content a priority
A crucial ingredient for helping customers discover and engage with your brand at multiple touchpoints is high-quality content. This means that your website pages - including sub-pages of individual products - need to be rich in relevant, authoritative content that addresses your audience’s pain points.
Ideally, through effective competitor and keyword research, you’ll be able to thread high-intent search terms with low competition into your content. Rather than trying to directly compete with major industry players, use a healthy mixture of high-volume keywords and longtail keywords with lower volume, but that might offer more value to your specific customer base.
For example, it’s important to thread high-volume keywords like “plasterboard”, but if you can thread longtail keywords like “uses for plasterboard”, “is plasterboard waterproof”, and “is plasterboard fire-resistant” (among others) into your content, you’ll be addressing specific search queries in a single resource. The main keyword, while generating more searches, is likely more competitive, whereas the longtail keywords may have lower search volume, but present better ranking opportunities for your niche.
You can apply this content and SEO writing approach to almost any product category, from mainstream staples like wholesale food and kitchen appliances, to specialised equipment like microscopes used in veterinary labs or other niche settings.
Of course, apply the same writing principles across your website blogs, social media posts, directory listings, GBP profile descriptions, and any guest posts that you may add to relevant third-party sites.
It’s important to remember that content should always address users’ needs above appeasing a search engine’s ranking criteria. In other words, write for humans over search engines, and you’ll be on your way to establishing authorship and expertise for your eCommerce brand.
4. Take high-quality product photos
There’s a famous saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, and while that’s partially true, in eCommerce, you need a balance of both imagery and captivating verbiage. After all, some users are visual, others prefer to read, but ultimately, you can’t ignore that product images are vital for encouraging consumers to buy online.
Product images are crucial to boosting conversion rates and to providing an immersive window into how your products work and add value to consumers. Invest time and resources into creating a portfolio of strong photos that make the products look irresistible to consumers.
This could involve:
- Using DSLR cameras with macro lenses and tripods for crystal clear, detailed shots
- Choosing backgrounds and contexts relevant to how customers will use the product
- Styling photos attractively with complementary props, colours and lighting
- Capturing products in lifestyle situations and different angles/close-ups
- Photographing all colour options, accessories and bundles
- Outsourcing photography to a professional commercial or eCommerce photographer if needed
5. Make your buying process simple, quick and secure
eCommerce goals ultimately revolve around encouraging as many consumers as possible to complete purchases online.
If your checkout process is long-winded, confusing, and unsecured, you could be dissuading swathes of customers from buying from you.
Therefore, eCommerce site owners must ensure there is a fast and seamless checkout process. This could include making guest checkouts an option to speed up purchasing or creating calls-to-action (CTAs) that take users directly where they need to go, saving them time from navigating menus, pages, and sub-pages.
It’s crucial to ensure that you implement a secure payment gateway on your site, one that will protect consumers’ personal and financial information and ensure the transaction is encrypted.
Launching an online eCommerce store may not require a huge upfront investment, and may be born from a good idea. Following these tips will help you sow the seeds for long-term success in eCommerce, and give you a solid foundation to work with. Start small, refine your approach based on data, and scale up over time. Growing at a sustainable pace is not out of reach, and with careful planning and execution, you’ll be well on your way to creating a profitable eCommerce brand.
