Five essential ecommerce tips

When you’re trying to sell things online, there are simple things that can trip you up. A few tiny tweaks will make a huge difference to the success of your website and your business bottom line.

Make use of SEO

Search engine optimisation (being found on Search engines) is one of the most important aspects of building a successful website. With careful website structure, content updates and relevant external links, you can boost your ranking in Google searches. This will bring in more traffic that's interested in your products.

Overcome fears

Give people instant peace of mind, by giving them a guarantee, displaying your shipping process, security levels, FAQ's, if you are a bricks and mortar store as well - promote this clearly, give a phone number, display your returns process etc.  Make these points stand out in your website design, pictorially as well as within the content.

Build a community

Being online is much more than just having a website, it’s important to get involved with customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. One obvious way to do this is to have an active presence on social media sites. You should utilise the power of technology by enabling your website content to automatically feed into these social media sites and act as teasers (talk to your Bloomtools consultant, on how our software can do this for you) to bring the audience to your website with an interesting and authoritative blog.

Make things easy for your customers

Once you have a customer who's keen to buy from you, then you should make it as easy as possible. It’s important to only have a few steps between adding items to a shopping cart and paying. If people are required to fill in too many forms, reject too many upsells or do too much off site to complete a registration, then you may turn potential customers away to your competitors.

Keep in touch with customers

Building a database is a great way to keep in touch with previous customers or website sign ups (poitential buyers - the ones that come to your website and don't buy immediately. Find something that they will be happy to give up their email address for). You'll be able to share insights into your industry, offer sales codes to entice customers back, and generally remind people about your company on a regular basis.

Have a clear website design

Web users like websites that are well laid out and easy to navigate. Keep your pages uncluttered and have obvious steps for people to take. They may be looking at a product that isn't quite right, so instead of them leaving your website to look elsewhere, include a few suggestions of similar products that they may be interested in.

Your website is an invaluable tool for growing your business, so make sure to follow these simple tips to achieve the best results. Then contact our team of ecommerce experts to help you get even better results for your online shopping business.