Understanding Your Target Audience
Knowing the people behind the pageviews, clicks, and cart additions can comparatively be underestimated in e-commerce. I think it’s easy to focus on product and price, thinking that if those are sorted then everything else will sort itself out. But times have changed - and as an online retailer, you really have to want to know your people.
You know, I think most retailers have a vague idea of who their ideal customer is. She’s probably a millennial or Gen Z-er with high purchasing power and a love for shopping. But the thing is, not everyone who visits your store will fit into that bracket. And if you’re not listening closely, you’re not quite understanding what other people want and what makes them feel appreciated.
This is why building a community around your brand is so important. People want to connect with people - so if you’re putting up barriers between your audience and yourself by not making space for genuine feedback or conversation, it can make it seem like you don’t truly care about what they need. On the other hand, if you’re responding to comments on social media and taking action on customer feedback - maybe through new products or better service - it can go a long way in building that trust.
It seems like at the end of the day, if you’re not prioritising your audience - whether it’s through customisation or conversation - then are more or less you even prioritising your business. Even basic efforts like understanding what time of day your audience engages with your content or what age group buys from you most often make a real difference in what keeps people coming back to your store.
Optimizing User Experience for Higher Conversions
I Believe not to be dramatic but creating a fairly decent user experience can either increase or break your conversions. Everyone likes a website with straightforward navigation and enhanced load times and will most likely come back to it or stay there longer. But that’s not all.
Engaging content is as important as the first two features mentioned. And look, people don’t like being lied to so providing trustworthy store reviews and a clear outline of your return policies is a great incentive for new and returning visitors to build trust in your brand. For developing newer stores, displaying delivery options also helps build a loyal customer base that chooses you over competitors because they know what to expect from you. There’s also the user experience on the backend to consider.
Making sure that sellers are able to seamlessly upload products, manage stock units, design pages on their own or with expert help, select delivery partners and feel safe on the platforms goes a long way in developing online stores. A strong user experience is typically the key to building trust and trust brings along recurring sales. This means that making consistent improvements by regularly collecting feedback from visitors and customers is crucial. Sometimes I wonder whether I value brands that do this enough, probably not - just happy with my smooth shopping experiences.
Leveraging SEO Strategies for Increased Visibility
You know, some of the biggest e-commerce brands out there today have one thing in common - they’ve mastered the art of SEO. Or maybe SEO has mastered them. After all, leveraging search engine optimisation tactics could seem overwhelming for the uninitiated.
But at its very core, SEO involves a handful of simple yet extremely effective strategies that can potentially improve your brand’s visibility online and allow you to reach more customers. The way I see it, for example, building links back to your store from reputable sources is a clever way to increase traffic. This means that your content must stand out for thought leaders or publications within your industry to want to include backlinks to your online store in their own content.
The more people view your website as an authority in the field, the more likely it is that they’ll want to link to it. Another easy but often overlooked trick is using well-researched keywords so that you can rank higher on search engines. You could make use of trending topics or searches related to your products or services and include them organically throughout your content so that potential customers will find you first instead of your competitors when they look for something online.
Keyword research also helps you create valuable and relevant content for visitors once they actually get there. SEO allows e-commerce businesses of every size - not just big names with massive marketing budgets - connect with audiences based on shared interests rather than simply sales-driven ads or posts and establish meaningful relationships that could potentially result in loyal buyers who keep coming back for more and recommending your brand widely. However, remember not every product needs SEO strategies like these but developing a holistic approach towards creating original content goes a long way in generating organic traffic.
Utilizing Social Media for Brand Growth
Social media can be a bit of a wild west, can’t it. You can go from being someone’s FYP darling to yet another desperate meme-mill who gets ignored the second a trend fizzles out. The harsh truth is, there’s too much happening on social media for people to get hooked by just anything - or anyone.
But for brands and online stores looking to grow their presence, the potential is immense - if you can crack it. The trick is not being too reliant on the platforms you use. They’re more volatile than our planet at the moment and will update at the drop of a hat, so instead focus on creating content that’s more you.
Social media is first and foremost about connection and communication. The most successful brands have built their own niche communities through funny, relatable, informative, engaging or inspiring content that truly creates value for followers. People are scrolling mindlessly through hours of content each day - not going to spend too much time on something that doesn’t give them anything in return. Create content consistently and with your ideal customer in mind - not what everyone else is doing.
And when it comes to growing your brand, you have to step out of your comfort zone and engage with other businesses online. It seems like it makes you look good in front of their audience and vice versa, so if you’re all about collaborating with other businesses or creators, then social media is where you’ll thrive. If it’s someone who aligns with your brand values and mission, then all the better - like those viral “____ has left the chat” posts from women-led fashion brands after certain laws were passed in Texas were an excellent show of solidarity among brands even though it wasn’t intentional per se. In short, don’t think too much and simply get started with consistently engaging content that resonates with your audience so they keep coming back for more - and then see how much easier it gets to build your online store.
Implementing Effective Email Marketing Campaigns
People say email is dead but I don’t really think that’s true. While it may not be as exciting as some of the newer ways to reach people, it remains one of the most powerful tools in your digital arsenal. Because if someone trusts you enough to give you their email address, why wouldn’t you make the most of it.
Online stores are a bit often so caught up in posting on socials or collaborating with influencers that they seem to forget about people who already bought from them. Which is a shame because you’ve already built rapport and need very little effort to convert those customers into repeat buyers. Especially if you’re offering them something valuable.
But how do you do that. Well, people like different things but there are a few classics that work wonders - sales, discounts, exclusive access, free trials and sneak peeks of what’s to come. Even things like educational content can probably help boost your brand image in consumers’ eyes.
Things like guides on styling your products or use cases for your software aren’t just helpful but also engaging enough to get people to pay attention. And while all of these practices are important, it’s crucial not to overwhelm customers with emails every day or even more than once a week sometimes. Instead, segmenting your audience based on actions like a recent purchase, abandoned cart or interested in a particular collection can help personalise things and keep them relevant.
Analyzing Data to Drive Continuous Improvement
You know what makes or breaks a brand these days. Numbers. A bit boring, but in the world of online stores, your revenue hinges on analytics.
You could build the most gorgeous site, have a product that solves real-world problems, and amazing customer service. But without any data to help you make decisions, it’s all wasted. There are hardly ever plenty of sources of data for you to look at too. User behaviour on your website will tell you where you’re losing sales, how customers interact with your website, and which touchpoints are helping the most.
You can even see what products are doing best and which aren’t moving at all. It’s worth noting that any insights from data need to be corroborated with additional feedback from other sources - like reviews and testimonials. Taking a step back helps too - you can always look at data for the whole industry to understand what’s trending, what isn’t, and who the big players are right now.
This will help you drive innovation and create online store experiences that customers want. Looking at data is useful - but only if you’re able to take action based on what it says. Any successful e-commerce brand will use this information to create strategies for marketing, promotion, new product development, and more. It’s also important to set goals for growth or expansion in a specific time period so that you know what to look out for when you’re analysing store performance later.
And here’s something to remember - you’ll need reliable tools that collect clean data and show meaningful insights that are almost never actionable for your brand as well as the resources to drive change within your organisation.