Outsourcing some of these responsibilities can save you time and resources. Not to mention, it also ensures high-quality execution. But what tasks should you allocate?

In this article, we will discuss five crucial areas where outsourcing can make a significant impact on your ecommerce business. Let’s begin!

Order Fulfillment

Order fulfillment is a complex process that involves picking, packing, and shipping products to customers. Outsourcing this task to a third-party logistics provider or fulfillment center can improve productivity and delivery times significantly.

These businesses have the infrastructure and expertise to handle large volumes of orders efficiently. By leveraging their capabilities, you can enhance satisfaction and even reduce overall costs.

Check out the ecommerce fulfillment options by Cart.com as an example. They offer a wide selection of services that can streamline your operations and ensure you deliver the best customer experience with each order. Some of these include:

• Order Management – Real-time order control and inventory tracking/monitoring.
• Shipping and Freight – Built-in transportation management features that allow you to maximize savings and profit.
• Returns Management – Inventory management system that ensures all returned items are tracked seamlessly. 
• Value-Added Services – Kitting, bundling and FBA-prep, packaging, gift wrapping, product refurbishments, folding and more.

The more tasks that you outsource, the more time you will have to focus on core competencies. 

Customer Service

Excellent customer service is essential for building trust and loyalty among your customers. However, managing inquiries, complaints, and returns can be time-consuming as your brand grows.

By outsourcing to a dedicated team, you can ensure that your customers receive prompt and professional support. These teams are trained to handle various scenarios, ensuring a positive experience for all of your buyers.

Digital Marketing

Digital marketing is another crucial aspect of driving traffic and sales to your online store. However, it requires a deep understanding of various channels, including SEO, PPC, social media, and email.

Outsourcing your digital marketing efforts to an experienced agency can help you develop and execute effective campaigns. These agencies stay up to date with the latest trends and best practices, ensuring that your marketing efforts yield the best results.

Content Creation

High-quality content is vital for engaging your audience and improving your search engine rankings. Unfortunately, creating compelling product descriptions, blog posts and social media content is easier said than done.

Outsourcing content creation to skilled writers and designers can ensure that your content resonates with your audience and drives conversions. The right professionals can craft copy that aligns with your brand voice and appeals to your target audience.

Website Development and Maintenance

Your website is the face of your ecommerce business and a well-designed, user-friendly site can convert visitors into customers. However, developing and maintaining everything requires technical expertise.

Outsourcing web development ensures your site is optimized for performance, security, and user experience. Professional developers can create a responsive design that works seamlessly across devices.

Furthermore, they can conduct regular maintenance, such as updates and security patches. These are essential for keeping your site functional and secure.

Final Words

As you can see from the above, outsourcing key ecommerce tasks can save you time, reduce costs, and improve the overall efficiency of your business. By delegating these responsibilities to experts you can concentrate on growing your business and meeting your goals.

This is because the content doesn’t come from you; it comes straight from your satisfied buyers. It’s a win-win: They want to tell the world about their purchase and you do, too. Without further ado, here are four smart ways to use customer-generated content in ecommerce.

Customer Reviews on Website

 The effectiveness of consumer-generated content boils down to the power of social proof. People tend to trust what others say. Seeing others bought a product or love a brand can be very influential when it comes to persuading customers to convert. And, the numbers don’t lie.

As Business Insider reports, shoppers who interact with consumer-generated content are 97 percent more likely to convert than those who don’t. In turn, brands see a 78 percent boost in conversion rates.

One of the simplest ways to reassure shoppers that others have bought from your online store is to post customer reviews on product pages. Seeing positive reviews helps shoppers gain confidence in the item they’re considering—the more, the better. It’s the same effect as choosing to eat in a crowded restaurant because you figure the food must be good if it’s so sought-after.

Even negative reviews can be helpful because they bring possible pitfalls to shoppers’ attention. The key is collecting detailed reviews so users can know exactly what went wrong or fell short of expectations; while contributing to the honesty of your review section. This also allows shoppers to judge for themselves whether the failing was a specific situation or a general problem.

An example would be “my senior dog didn’t love this specific toy” (personal preference) versus “this toy fell apart in my dog’s mouth so we had to take him to the vet and get emergency surgery” (universal shortcoming).

Create a Social Media Hub for Customers’ Posts

 You’ve asked your social media followers to use a certain hashtag to share their photographs and stories involving your products.

So what are you going to do with them? You’ve created a handy hub for potential buyers to visit and scan user-generated content.

Just think back to Coca-Cola’s highly successful campaign asking users to share pictures of themselves with personalized bottles of soda. This campaign earned Coke a two percent increase in revenue.

Go beyond merely collecting social proof, develop a system for reposting the cream of the crop for all to see.

According to Attrock, Social media is more important than ever in ecommerce for scaling businesses. Social media platforms like Facebook can now directly integrate with cloud ecommerce software like Shopify. This means storeowners can use customer-generated content to target potential buyers at the point of purchase.

Host a Crowdsourced Contest

You have something online shoppers want for free. They have compelling content and creative ideas for promoting their favorite products. Tap into these motivations with a crowdsourced, content-based contest.

Ask your followers to submit photographs or stories for voting, then aggregate them in one place. People can vote with their “likes,” “favorites” or comments.

Just make sure your contest is legal on each respective social media platform. Be certain to also establish clear parameters so everyone knows what’s at stake.

Feature a Customer of the Week

Encourage customers to post by picking a “customer of the week” and rewarding their diligent sharing efforts.

You might send a free t-shirt to someone who shares a great gym story, or email a coupon for 25 percent off to someone who makes the funniest pun involving your products. This will boost customer loyalty as shoppers see the human side of your online store.

Call out customers via Twitter to let them know how much they mean to you:

Using customer-generated content in ecommerce is a no-brainer, and these four ways to do so are just the starting line.

Engagement is the ability of a product (a brand, a blog, an application) to create solid and lasting relationships with its users by establishing a link between the brand and the consumer. The more we know about the user, the more we can implement better tactics to ensure that this relationship is solid and lasting.

Engagement can be measured in different ways, with repeat purchases, repeated visits to a site, or in web statistics through elements such as bounce rate and residence time, number of pages viewed per user, time remaining on the web page or comments on a post. In short, it is necessary to measure and increase the user’s love for what you do.

But how can you improve user engagement without coding on your website?

In this article, I’ll talk about Smartarget, an interesting tool you can use to better connect with your users and increase sales.

Smartarget Popular Features

Smartarget is a fantastic tool that will help you increase engagement with your users by using different useful apps.

Registration is free (without credit card), and after you will confirm your email, you can start using it.

With the FREE account, you will get:

• Unlimited websites
• Unlimited Apps per website
• Performance reports
• Monthly 50 clicks on apps

One of the most popular features of Smartarget is the “Whatsapp – Contact US” app.

See how it will look like on my site:

Users that will click on the message will be redirected to the WhatsApp API, with your phone number to get in touch with you.

Another interesting feature is the “Email – Contact US” app.

See how it will look like on my site:

When clicking on the message, users will be able to send a direct email to you.

The icon can be placed on any corner of your site, top, bottom, right or left.

But there are many more formats and interesting apps you can try, such as:

• Corner Ribbon (you can customize a message to appear in the corner of your site. For example, to get more subscribers)
• Skype – Contact US (users will use Skype to get in touch with you by clicking on the message)
• Telegram – Contact US (users will use Telegram to get in touch with you by clicking on the message)
• Facebook – Contact US (users will use Messanger to get in touch with you by clicking on the message)
• Contact Us – All in One. Clicking on the message, will open a menu where users can choose their favorite way to contact you. It looks really nice, see:

A feature I like is the “Exit Popup“.

In your Smartarget dashboard, you can personalize the message to be shown to your users when they leave your site.

For example, if you have a blog and you want to sell your eBook, or course, or training program, you can use this feature to invite users for a special discount:

You can customize the action type, which means the message will be open in a new tab or the same tab.

The delay of the message to appear can be customized. So, for example, to get your message displayed after 3 seconds, just type “3” in the “Delay before Flash Card appears” field.

You can set the message to be dismissed after of period of time, such as:

• X Days
• Every page refresh
• Never
• Dismiss period X days
• Works if you picked X days

Boost eCommerce Sales and Increase User Engagement Using Smartarget

Smartarget works with all platforms. No matter what CMS you are using, Smartarget apps work across all platforms:

• WordPress (the plugin can be found here)
• Shopify
• Wix
• ecwid
• Shift4Shop

If you have an eCommerce, there are some particular features you can use to boost your sales and increase user engagement.

For example, with the Information message, you can show important updates and information on your site:

Again, the message is entirely customizable and can be placed anywhere on your website.

A Smartarget app I found useful for eCommerce owners is “Social Sales“. By using it, you can improve user’s trust by making users think that there are currently ongoing sales on the website.

You can change the message, the name to be displayed and the product, with the target link:

To boost engagement via social media, you can use both these features:

• Instagram Follow Us (it will display a message to invite users to follow you on Instagram)
• Follow Us (a menu tab will appear with icons that can be clicked to invite users to follow you on social media)

Smartarget Prices

As mentioned earlier, with the FREE account, you will get:

• Unlimited websites
• Unlimited Apps per website
• Performance reports
• Monthly 50 clicks on apps

Once you reach 50 clicks per month, the apps will be visible on the homepage only until the next month.

After that, you can upgrade to the premium version, with Unlimited clicks on apps, at$4.16/mo:

Final Words

I find Smartarget such a great tool to use to boost user engagement and increase sales on your website. And without using coding.

The integration is really simple and the reports function will display interesting data such as how many clicks you got, clicks per device type, the average time to click, clicks per app and clicks per URL.

I plan to create an eCommerce site in the next months and Smartarget will be on my top tools to use to increase sales and improve the engagement with my visitors.

Now, it’s over to you.

Are you going to test Smartarget?

What are your thoughts?

Please share your comments in the form below, thanks!

But, since you’re still new in the business arena, you have to pay attention to your money so you can enjoy the benefits of an eCommerce business. Your financial health can significantly affect your eCommerce business’s opportunity to thrive and succeed. When you’re a frugal entrepreneur, you can project your eCommerce business’s profits, and create a financial roadmap. 

For you to better utilize your financial resources, take note of these money-saving tips: 

1. Acquire Fulfillment Services

The products and services you offer to the market can affect your business’s brand and image. When your business sells substandard products that take months to deliver, customers will demand refunds or exchanges. 

These situations will cost your business a lot of money because, aside from losing profit, you’ll have to pay more to meet the demands of your unsatisfied customers. These practices can even become the reason why your eCommerce business will experience debt or bankruptcy. 

When you acquire third party fulfillment services for your eCommerce business, you can provide better products and services to your customers. Paying for fulfillment services is actually a smart investment because of the following reasons: 

2. Take Care of Your Inventory

Working with them allows you to send all of your products to a specific warehouse, saving space in your own home. 

Since fulfillment services use spacious warehouses, your products aren’t placed in a cramped area or stored with bigger and heavier products. This will guarantee that your eCommerce business can deliver high-quality products, not ones that have dents or damages on it. 

3. Faster Delivery

You’ll have a lot of things on your plate once you decide to start an eCommerce business. Being pressed for time won’t allow you to focus on the delivery of your customers’ orders. This is especially true if your eCommerce business still has few employees. 

Fulfillment services prioritize on the shipping and delivery of your customer orders. Most of these third-party fulfillment services offer same day pick and pack services, which means that the warehouse picks and packs the orders on the same day that the customer placed their orders. The faster the delivery is, the happier your customers will be! 

4. Identify Effective Marketing Channels

Marketing plays a crucial role in the success of your eCommerce business. Regardless of how innovative your products are, if no one knows that your business exists, you can never gain any profit. 

Although there are countless marketing channels available today, commissioning all of these for your eCommerce business’s exposure doesn’t warrant positive results. On the contrary, paying for marketing channels without studying its appropriateness to your eCommerce business can lead to financial loss. 

If you want to maximize your marketing expenses and avoid any losses, take the time to choose a marketing channel. This is an important decision to make as it can affect your business’s financial stability and reputation. 

To make this process easier, here are some tips to help you choose the right marketing channel for your eCommerce business: 

• Consider your target audience: The marketing channel you choose should be accessible and apt to your target audience. If your products are for young professionals, social media marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are great options as this segment usually spends time online.   

• Look at your competitors: Identify how your competitors market their products. Since you cater to the same target audience, the marketing strategies they use can help you narrow down your options and assess which strategies work and don’t work. 

5. Focus On Customer Loyalty

Your customers are the lifeblood of your eCommerce business. The number of customers you have can speak a lot about the credibility and growth of your eCommerce business. 

Although attracting new customers for the business is always a good thing, you should pay more attention to your loyal customers. Retaining old customers is cheaper compared to gaining new ones. 

Focusing on loyal customers can reduce your business costs as you won’t have to pay for extensive marketing materials just to get people through the door. These customers are already aware of your business’s existence, which means that you don’t have to start from scratch to entice them to buy again from you. 

Customer loyalty programs don’t always require costs. You can make your loyal customers feel appreciated by remembering their special days, sending out personal emails, providing prompt customer service, and creating a unique buying experience. 

Make Necessary Changes  

The nature of an eCommerce business is already cheaper than starting a physical store. Aside from saving money from buying or renting an establishment, an eCommerce business won’t require you to pay for utilities and maintenance. 

However, if you want to save more money, you should think out of the box and change some of your business processes. Making little of these changes can go a long way towards the financial stability of your eCommerce business. 

But thanks to internet technology, more and more people are choosing to work from home.

With computers getting cheaper and communication technology getting faster, starting a business from home has become one of the most popular ways to earn a living.

In the US alone, there are about 40 million self-employed Americans who make up today’s workforce.

One possible reason for this trend is because job opportunities online are aplenty. With so many thriving online business models out there, it’s hard to choose just one to pour all of your time and effort into multiple jobs.

Enter Dropshipping

One of the best, if not most profitable online business opportunities out there is dropshipping.

This business model has become very popular among new entrepreneurs because it doesn’t require much financial capacity. You don’t have to buy and store your inventory. Instead, you purchase your products from a third party, which also ships it out to your customer.

Sounds easy, right?

Well, it’s not as simple as it seems.

Focus on how much you can help people by selling them the products they need.

Filling out demand in the market is at the very heart of every successful dropshipping company. If you provide value to your target audience, then the money will follow!

So, want to know how to start a profitable dropshipping business? Here’s a short guide on how you can make a profit from selling products online.

Research for a Profitable Niche

To build an e-commerce business, you first need to have a product to sell. This step is often the most challenging part about starting a dropshipping business since there are tons of products that you can sell online.

Here are a few things you can do to start researching for your multi-million product:

• Zero in on a problem that you can solve
• Tap into your passion
• Capitalize on your professional expertise
• Do your research on the next big thing and get into the action early
• Read up on what customers have to say about existing products
• Browse different online marketplaces to see what people are buying
• Look for products that have a high profit margin
• Find a hobby with enthusiasts who are willing to pay
• Choose a non-competitive niche
• Listen in on what industry leaders have to say

Secure Supplier and Fulfillment

Traditional online marketplaces ships orders directly to your customers from your home.

With dropshipping, the process is less tedious. All you have to do is forward orders to your supplier who will then process the request and ship it directly to your customers.

Once you’ve chosen your products, the next step is to look for partners who can help you in your dropshipping business. I’m talking about finding the right supplier and third-party fulfillment centers that will pack and deliver your customer’s orders for you.

Therefore, be extra cautious in choosing your partners because a shipping strategy can make or break your dropshipping operations.

Set Up Your Website

Of course, you’ll need a site to sell your products online. While setting up a website these days is as easy as 1-2-3, you need a website that is specially designed to get you online sales. You need an e-commerce platform to set you for success.

There are quite a few e-commerce platforms to choose from so make sure that you pick one that will work best for your business strategy.

• Shopify – A robust platform with a massive community. Very easy to use with easy-to-install apps. Has limited CMS capabilities, so it’s not recommended for brands who bank on content to sell their products.
• Magento – It is the preferred platform for B2B e-commerce by top brands like Nike, Ford, and Coca Cola. Despite its incredible functionality, Magento can be quite expensive to set up and maintain.
• Woocommerce – The most popular e-commerce platform in the world with 2,000,000 users. Has great CMS capabilities and doesn’t ask for any transaction fee. Requires hosting and constant updates of plugins.

Create Demand for Your Product

Having a website will help, but it won’t be enough to help get your dropshipping business off the ground. You also need to create interest in your product.

There are plenty of ways to attract customers online, but one of the most effective ways is influencer marketing.

Before launching your brand, send out free samples of your product to influencers aligned with your niche and ask them (nicely!) to give you a review or quick shout-out. Feature their reviews on your website as social proof. This way, you’ll be able to promote your product to their followers, without spending a cent.

Scale and Measure Results

Lastly, don’t forget to scale and measure the results. Use Google Analytics to check traffic of your online store pre and post-launch.

This is the time to assess all your efforts so you can see which areas still need improvement. By checking on your data, you’ll have a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t.

If all goes well, you can then start thinking of ways to scale your dropshipping business correctly. By capitalizing on your best tactics, you’ll be able to grow your online business quickly.

Conclusion

According to this report, retail e-commerce has already grown to a 220 billion dollar market, and it continues to grow at nearly 17% every year. It’s easy to see how you can get a massive slice of the pie just by exploring opportunities in dropshipping.

This post should give you a general idea on how you should start your dropshipping business. Now that you see the light, it’s up to you to take action, take notes from this post, and get a slice of this billion-dollar market.

Fast forward just a few years, and you see a complete change. These days, more people want to shop over the internet than in store, and because of this, it’s crucial that your customer service is up to scratch.

Here are six ways you can improve.

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1. Make Website Navigation Simple

With a business based online, you need to take great care when it comes to the look and design of your website. After all, if it’s difficult for your customers to use, then they’ll give up and visit a different one.

To make navigation easy for your customers, you should create a list of categories for them to browse. You should also add a search bar for when they want to find a specific item.

2. Provide Multiple Payment Options

Online shoppers abandon their carts a lot more than those in brick and mortar stores. While this is sometimes due to distraction, other times it’s because the checkout is too complicated.

Ensure you make this process easy by providing multiple payment options, such as PayPal, Google Wallet, and even Bitcoin. This way, customers needn’t hunt for their card details.

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3. Offer A Quick Delivery

The retail world is all about instant gratification.

Unfortunately, when you order online, some customers have to wait weeks or even longer before they get their goods. This can lead to frustration that may put them off online shopping altogether.

To prevent this, you should offer a quick delivery option for your customers. If you can do this for free, then that’s even better.

4. Be Clear With Returns

Buying online is daunting for many, as you’re never really sure what you’ve paid for until it arrives at your home.

To give potential customers peace of mind, you should write clear and detailed returns policies, which you display somewhere obvious on your site. With this information, shoppers have no reason not to buy from you, because they can return purchases if needed.

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5. Seasonally Scale Your Team

From Valentine’s Day to the Christmas season, the ecommerce calendar is full of holidays, and therefore, opportunities to make extra sales. Before you hit a busy period, it’s crucial that you have the staff on hand to deal with the extra work coming your way. If your customers feel a dip in service throughout this time, they may switch to a different business.

6. Ask Customers For Feedback

Considering customer service is all about your customers, it makes sense to ask for their advice and suggestions on how you can improve.

With that in mind, you must ensure that you send a follow-up email after every purchase asking customers to fill out a questionnaire or write a review. If you’re struggling for responses, you can offer incentives, like a discount code.

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Brilliant customer service is crucial for keeping your ecommerce business up and running.

Hopefully, with the advice above, you have some idea on how to improve yours.

If you are looking to buy an eCommerce store, there are standard business solutions that must be included before signing off on the purchase and the solutions may vary depending on a business owner.

These features may be added in a readymade e-commerce store or require customer tailoring if you are reprogramming the web store. Regardless, when buying an online store for sale, make sure you counter check the following business features:

Content Management

A content management system is a framework that controls how content is created, modified and saved/published on a website. Readymade CMS can be bought at the enterprise level or installed through open source sharing networks.

Website themes usually come with preinstalled content management systems like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. With a CMS in place, a company can easily update content on the go.

eCommerce stores that require large-scale business solutions, however, can build a custom content management framework. When buying an eCommerce store, make sure you are aware different kinds of content management systems available to you so you can assess whether it meets your needs.

Payment Gateway

When setting up an eCommerce store, you must include different payment options for your customers. Typically, you want to add global payment options like MasterCard, Visa, PayPal, and others.

The eCommerce website you are looking to purchase should offer these payment solutions as well as the 2Checkout solutions that enable the business to transact in multiple currencies without necessarily linking directly to a bank account.

Security

Ecommerce website protection from hackers and other malicious attacks is a top priority for any entrepreneur. If your site does not guarantee user security, then you will lose customer trust and loyalty.

Before purchasing an eCommerce store, make sure to inspect the site for installed firewalls, HTTPS certificates, and other hacker-safe solutions.

Email

Does the e-commerce store on sale have any existing email lists? Have they installed third-party mail services like Getresponse or Aweber? Emails are vital for any online business. Collecting customer emails means you can resell products to them, keep in touch and build customer loyalty which is crucial to your brand awareness.

It is also helpful to acquire a business in a certain locale to get a particular segment of customers. For example, if you are selling products that you think would do well in the Los Angeles area, then you should look into Los Angeles businesses for sale. If you acquire one of these eCommerce stores, then you will be able to effectively target an existing customer base in Los Angeles.

Hosting

Hosting business solutions is essential to an e-commerce web store platform and functional requirements. When buying a business for sale, you’ll find that the web stores have host subscriptions in place.

You can choose to either renew the hosting package or move to another hosting company.

Custom E-commerce solutions

If you need to reprogram a web store and tweak it to your desired functional requirement then once you purchase the web store, you can hire the services of a programmer to make the necessary adjustments.

As you do your research and analysis of businesses for sale, also include this checklist as it will help you avoid unnecessary hassles after making the purchase.

In fact, statistics show only two percent of first time visitors to your site will make a purchase. Retargeting enables you to tempt that other 98 percent to return to your site to give you a second opportunity to convert them into customers.

But you have to be careful. There’s a fine line between being helpful and being obnoxious. Consider these retargeting best practices to help you avoid falling into the latter category.

What Is Retargeting?

When a shopper visits your site, you can have it deposit a small snippet of code into their browser to enable your retargeting effort to track them around the web. You can then have ads displayed for the products they looked at on other websites as they continue to browse.

Ever spent a fair amount of time researching a product on the ‘net, then noticed you started seeing ads for the product nearly everywhere you went? You were being retargeted. It can be a good thing.

But it can also be annoying, unless you—

Employ Frequency Caps

Limit the number of times a shopper is exposed to your ads. Overexposure can creep them out, alienate them and cause them to ignore your ads completely.

A good retargeting provider can advise you in this regard, but anything over 20 times in a single month is too much.

Deploy Burn Codes

In some instances, the shopper will come back and make the purchase, then continue to be served ads. This is a waste of your marketing spend and irritating to the buyer.

If you place a snippet of code on your thank you page (the one that appears after a purchase is made), buyers will be untagged and your ads for that product will stop following them around.

The cool part about this is if there were other products they considered but didn’t purchase; they’ll still see ads for those.

Message Tailoring

Retargeting codes can be set to trigger different ads based upon how deeply a shopper went into the purchasing funnel before bouncing out of your site. With this knowledge, you can specifically craft the copy of the ad to reflect the situation.

Let’s say you’re running ebooks online stores. If they placed a book in a shopping cart, but didn’t download it, you can target them with ads reminding them the book is waiting in the shopping cart. If they only read the synopsis of the book and moved on, you can target them with an ad inviting them back to read more—and so on.

Use a Specific Call To Action

In keeping with the thought above, your retargeted ad’s call to action should reflect their positioning in the purchasing funnel when they departed.

For the book abandoned in the shopping cart, you can say something like; “Download XYZ within the next 15 minutes and you’ll get ABC as a free gift.”

For the reader of the synopsis you can say, “Come back within the next 15 minutes and you can read the first chapter of XYZ for free.” Whatever the offer, make it simple, specific and relevant.

Retargeting Works

Shoppers leave sites without purchasing for a wide variety of reasons. It isn’t always a sign they were uninterested in the product. People simply get distracted sometimes.

Retargeting enables you to remind them they enjoyed the book but forgot to make the purchase. It can also be used to make purchasing the book a more enticing prospect.

Whichever way you go, these retargeting best practices will help you garner their attention again—without getting on their nerves in the process.

There are so many moving parts involved in entrepreneurship and it can be challenging to stay on top of everything. This is especially true when it comes to getting a consistent flow of traffic to the store.

If you’ve found yourself in a space where you’re unsure of how to effectively get traffic, consider these four tips.

1. Post To Social Media

Platforms like Instagram and Facebook are excellent because any company can reach their target audience with strategy and consistency.

Both platforms have sales programs where you can purchase ads. Measure the effectiveness of each ad and improve as you continue. Once you master the ad strategies, you can really automate the marketing efforts.

2. Build A Responsive Email List

In order to build a responsive email list, it’s important to offer something of value. In the digital space, a person’s email address is sacred. When a person gives up their personal email address, it’s equivalent to getting a direct line to a person.

In exchange for such a great gift, it’s wise to offer an incentive. Whether it’s an informative eBook or a great list of resources within the industry niche, make sure it’s an incentive that your future clients would struggle to turn down.

3. Create a Blog on the e-Commerce Site

Start a blog on your e-Commerce site. If HTML and website changes aren’t your strong areas, it’s a good idea to hire a web developer to create a section on the site for a blog. With this blog, create consistent posts that offer value to potential readers.

In order to gain traffic, use eCommerce search engine optimization methods. Keywords and tags are important parts of a good search engine strategy. Once you have a good flow of traffic with this method, it’ll serve you as a passive stream of marketing. Plus, as more people find the content valuable and read it, Google will increase the page rankings.

The goal should always be to land on the first page of Google.

4. Use Brand Ambassadors

Brand ambassadors are the amazing people who will advocate for your product. For a great brand ambassador program, find a mix of popular YouTube personalities and everyday people who are passionate about your products or services. This will help you cover a larger and well-rounded base.

With each of these tips, it’s best to be proactive yet give them time. Some tips will take more time than others. Brand ambassadors will probably send immediate traffic. Search engine optimization tends to take a few months to start making an impact. As long as you’re consistent with your efforts, you’ll be able to see a consistent flow of traffic.

Those in the online marketing industry aim at least half of their efforts at bringing traffic to ecommerce product catalogs.

Product quality, functionality, the aesthetics of the website, and good advertising are some of the requirements for bringing users to an online store.

But often people’s marketing strategies do not include the publication of valuable content, at least outside of product descriptions. Neglecting content is a very serious mistake for at least three reasons:

• without quality content, the website will have a hard time ranking well in the search engines
• visitors will bounce in and out of your ecommerce site quickly without focusing on researching more insights, which could lead them to purchasing
• specific content related to the available products might be why users enter the site and end up buying something

Enriching an ecommerce site with good content is essential to increasing traffic that can turn into sales. But what are the most effective and stimulating content strategies for an online store?

Relevant Keywords

The first rule is to add highly relevant keywords to the site’s content, which should be relevant to the company and its products.

For example, if you sell children clothing, then you will create content with keywords such as “children’s clothing”, “kids clothes,” or even “baby clothing trends 2017-2018.” Any content you create for your online store should always include the most relevant keywords.

Video

Adding videos to your product pages can really help to increase engagement with users. Once they have watched a video, they can post their comments, share stories, or ask questions.

You can use videos to compare your products with those of your competitors. You can also use videos for showcasing your products or even taking advantage of search engines. Google and YouTube will index an optimized video (meaning one with your keywords included).

SEO optimization will ensure you have extra visibility in front of shoppers looking to learn more about your products.

Images

Images are one of the most important aspects of a successful ecommerce endeavor. Like videos, properly optimized images can help you get more search engine visitors. Of course, high-quality product pictures can help potential customers decide to complete an online purchase.

But you can also use other graphics. For example, an infographic about a product comparison can help you market your online store.

Product Guides

People do not buy a product; they buy the experience surrounding it. So great content is just what deepens a product’s opportunities for use. It should educate people about the use of a product’s functional features and especially the situations in which people can use it.

For example, if you sell ties, it might be interesting to have an infographic with all the possible knots for a tie. You could explain how to create a papillon, present the most typical fabrics and designs, or illustrate the best shirt and jacket pairings.

Success Stories

What did customers do with your products? What were the benefits for the people who used them?

Don’t tell your shoppers how to use your products: show them. Telling short, incisive, and special stories is a great way to convey the idea that the product has value and that people appreciate it.

Whoever is reading the content immediately connects the product to a positive experience. This association increases the interest around the product, which people will no longer perceive as an object. Instead, they will see it as an opportunity to turn the purchase into a pleasant situation.

Case Studies

Once again, the use of the product is our main theme. But in this case, the subject is a special occasion or a particular problem people need to solve. Here, we’re talking about a specific context in which something needs to happen.

In essence, rather than starting directly from the product features, you create a case study that explains its benefits in a specific circumstance. The product then becomes the tool to solve the problems that the situation presents.

For example, if you are selling ski equipment, you can propose a case study that describes the use of a specific product for a difficult path in a ski resort. Then offer the skis that best suit this situation.

Related Products

People almost never use a product out of context. Usually, it is linked to other ones with similar features.

To increase the interest and value of your ecommerce items, you can talk about related products in contexts where they make the most sense.

Questions and Answers

Prepare content in which you summarize the main questions your customers are asking, as well as your answer. Doing so is a nice way to attract attention.

You will be successful with this strategy because you are writing about the issues potential buyers are hoping someone will clarify. Once again, you can use a lot of keywords that will help increase traffic and visitors in the specifically ecommerce area of ​​the site.

Emails

Collecting emails and sending messages to your current customers is an effective way to increase returning visitors and improve sales.

Keep in mind that these emails do not have to be merely promotional. You can also use them to offer valuable content, such as the latest blog posts, case studies, or success stories.

Email marketing really helps to keep your users engaged. So remember to ask your new customers to subscribe to your mailing list once they register with your site when they make their online purchase.

User Generated Content

Finally, here’s some great news: you don’t have to create all your content! There are lots of methods for getting users to help you with some of the hard work.

For example, you can ask for reviews and feedback. There are many ways to do so, depending on the platform you are using for your ecommerce store. You can also reward your customers once they have completed a certain number of reviews.

Keep in mind that this kind of content will not always positive, but it will always be helpful for your audience.

Over time, you might find benefits from user-generated content. User-generated content will help you to improve your ecommerce products by revealing your low-performing items and helping you to test new ones.

Final Words

An ecommerce site is not an online magazine. So it typically does not have much content other than product tabs.

However, your site does not need to have so little content on it. First off, you can create a blog that you link to your online store. In your blog, you can publish almost any kind of content. If you implement your content strategy well, you can even become a benchmark in your industry.

You can also decide to create specific sections on your site where you provide general technical information about your ecommerce items.

Now, it’s up to you.

Are you running an ecommerce website?

What’s your experience with it?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below. Thanks!