A successful ecommerce business doesn’t run by itself. You need to continually promote your products, communicate with your customers and update you website to deliver engaging content and offers that will convert into sales. You need ecommerce consultancy that is proven, get’s to the point and delivers fast results.
Capturing people’s attention and delivering sales isn’t as easy as it was 5 or so years ago. You can no longer just set up a quick Google Adwords campaign and expect the orders to role in.
The sheer number of ecommerce brands on the internet, means competition in almost every sector is fierce. This means you have to work tens times hard to get someone to buy. Your customers are now more complex than ever. They also have different motivations to buy so every step of your customer’s buying journey must be optimised from the point where they search for your products to the point when they buy and beyond.
The days of online impulsive customers buying are gone. A purchase, even for cheap items, is now more considered, because there is much more information at your customer’s fingertips.
A common opinion is that customers now need to have contact with your business up to 8-10 times before they even buy from you. Yup, it takes that long for them to take notice of your brand, become interested and buy.
This could be a combination of a website visit, a re-marketing ad, an email, a Facebook view, a tweet and even a direct mail shot. Gaining customer confidence is now more difficult and brand loyalty is a very rare thing because of the availability that never used to exist. However, if you do manage to achieve brand loyalty then those people will be advocates for your brand and will spread the word across the internet.
Ecommerce is a very broad term that encapsulates many different areas that can potentially cost your business customers and money. There is the technical side that includes your choosing the right website platform, hosting and speed optimization techniques to ensure your site performs to its optimum level. You then have to address the on-site factors such as SEO, conversion analysis, product merchandising, website usability, user journey and mobile optimization. The final part of the jigsaw is the marketing side that covers attracting website visitors, customer acquisition, email marketing, social media, customer loyalty, data collection, PR and brand marketing.
In addition to these areas you also need to concentrate on customer service and, possibly logistics, if you sell physical product.
I can help you to iron out the weaknesses in these areas and to streamline your online operation so you can focus on running your business. I have helped over 65 small and medium-sized companies to achieve better results by fixing areas of weakness and fueling the areas of opportunity.
With just a day of ecommerce consulting I can audit your online business and help you to fix these problem areas and identify opportunity for growth that are realistically achievable within your budget. Very often, there is ‘low hanging fruit’ that can transform a business in the short term.
I will teach you how to:
Getting people to your website is one thing but then you need to convert them into customers. There are many areas on your website that may be causing you to lose customers at vital stages of the checkout process. I will help you to identify these areas, fix the issues and then make recommendations to improve conversion rates even further. Many changes are quick and easy without any real investment. You just need to know where to look.
Acquiring new customers is an area where many businesses fail because they don’t know where to start. If you wait for people to find your website then it is very likely that you wont succeed. It is important that you take a sensible approach and focus your energy and budget on targeting customers that will convert and not those who won’t.
There are many different ways to do this with many great tools available that are either free of very low cost to use. What’s more, the web allows you to extend your reach and find people in other geographical areas, sometimes across the other side of the world. This can open up new pockets of customers that can transform your business from a small operation into a powerful online brand.
If you are an established ecommerce business then you already have sales from existing customers. You have made contact with them, they have bought from you, they are familiar with your brand and your have their trust. Believe it or not, many businesses forget about their existing customers and focus constantly on chasing new ones. This is a bad strategy because it is much easier and far cheaper to convert an existing customer than it is to acquire a new one.
Once someone has made a purchase, you must seize the opportunity to retain them and continue to build a long-lasting relationship. Once a purchased has been made, the risks for the customer are lower and that element of trust is highly valuable provided they get a good experience.
I will teach you how to really nurture your customers and how to maintain a good relationship with them that will lead to future sales. You need to keep the relationship fresh, engaging and relevant whilst covertly building a brand that they will learn to love.
Your website may have some great products visually but if they are not presented in the right way then you are unlikely to sell anything. Visitors to your site need to be inspired and they need to be able to find products quickly using the lowest number of clicks. Your products should also be presented in the right way so your visitor can make an informed buying decision. Simple attributes like a description, features, size, materials, image zoom, video and extra images can make a huge difference in terms of your conversion rates. Often overlooked elements like returns policies, FAQs and shipping costs can cost you sales.
I will guide you through what makes the perfect product page. I will also show you how to merchandising your website to ensure a clean customer journey that leads to orders.
The shopping cart is one of the most over-looked areas on any ecommerce website. You cannot assume that, just because somebody adds a product to their shopping cart, they will buy it. The basket drop-out rate on many ecommerce websites is phenomenal but if this is addressed correctly it can mean a significant uplift in your revenue and profit. Simple features like visible delivery costs, promotional codes, returns policies and delivery timescales on your product pages can all improve conversion rates before the customer gets to the basket. Within your shopping cart we can look at areas like messaging, button placement, delivery options, steps to complete order, etc.
Customer information is at the heart of every online business. Without information about your customers you are unable to trade anywhere near your potential. To ensure your business is continually growing, you need to focus on collecting visitor data and growing your intelligence so you can be more targeted with your marketing. By collecting email addresses and regularly communicating with your prospects and customers, you will begin to understand what makes them tick and how to get them to spend more money with you. The better the quality of data you own, the better the response from your emails and the more revenue you will generate.
Every visitor to your website is different. When people arrive on your website you need to know where they go, what keeps them there, where they leave and why? You website analytics can help you to understand how your site is being found and what people are actually doing when they reach it.
I have an expert knowledge of Google Analytics and how it can help you to identify site weaknesses that are costing you sales, opportunities that can produce more orders and areas that can improve your search ranking. There is so much going on under the hood of your commerce website and there is a wealth of information that can transform and significantly grow your online business.