4 Secrets to Starting a Profitable Ecommerce Store

October 28, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

You’ve been dreaming of starting your own business for a while now, and you have finally decided to take the plunge. Of course, you want to create an eCommerce store – but what are some secrets that will help ensure profitability? In this blog post, we’ll go through four steps that can give you a head start on being successful online!

Photo by Greta Hoffman from Pexels

1 Find the Perfect Products to Sell

The first step to starting a profitable eCommerce store is finding the perfect products to sell. Next, you must take time to research which items will be famous online – if they are not, it may make your business less successful overall! Look for trends in user searches and other factors on Google Trends or Amazon Best Seller lists. Then, once you’ve found some good product ideas, narrow down the search even further by looking at things like profitability, popularity with niche audiences (if applicable), customer reviews, estimated monthly sales volume, etc. Try searching through My Business Venture reviews catalog of thousands of products as well; keep an eye out for any potential quality issues before adding them into your store.

2 Build a High-Quality Interactive Website

Once you have the perfect product list, it’s time to build a high-quality interactive website. Don’t just drive traffic to your site – make sure that visitors can find what they need quickly and easily! We recommend using WordPress as an eCommerce platform for this reason; its functionality has helped our customers’ websites grow into successful online stores. The ideal shopping experience should come with easy navigation, ease of purchase, attractive web design (especially if selling fashion or other visually appealing apparel, lots of quality images, social media integration, etc. The more effortless the purchasing process is for users, the higher your chances of making sales! Quality is always more important than quantity when it comes to website content. High-quality content will help you achieve your business goals, while low-quality content will only hurt your website’s reputation and SEO ranking, so make sure you utilize reliable content writing companies like this service. This will give you an enormous advantage against your competitors in the long run.

3 Use Google Ads to Promote Your Site

Once you have your website built, it’s time to drive traffic to it. One of the best ways to do this is by using Google Ads. Not only are they an excellent way for new customers and browsers to find your site – but since Google ads appear above or near search results in an informational format rather than just having advertisements pop up randomly on pages, they’re much more effective at converting viewers into buyers! That being said, keep in mind that there isn’t one single factor that can increase conversions; you’ll need a potent combination of factors such as high-quality images, copywriting with keywords specific to user searches, informative product descriptions/insights about each item available, competitive pricing (with good deals), social media integration & increased brand awareness, etc.

4 Invest in Facebook Ads

In today’s digital age, social media is a massive part of marketing your business. This means that it can help you drive traffic to your site and increase conversions! One of the best platforms for this purpose is Facebook Ads. They’re more effective than traditional ads because they allow you to target specific demographics based on their interests, likes, etc., which makes them much more likely to see your ad and click through it! Make sure that when using Facebook ads, keep an eye out for strategies such as A/B testing – where different images or copywriting are tested with diverse audiences to get better results from each one. With these four secrets combined, starting a profitable eCommerce store should be more accessible than ever before!

If you implement these four secrets to starting a profitable eCommerce store, it should be much easier for your business to take off!

What Does The Future of Ecommerce Look Like?

September 21, 2021 by Guest Post Leave a Comment

2020 was an unprecedented year for all businesses, especially retail. As more businesses shifted to online channels, the future of eCommerce looks brighter than ever. Each year, we see more and more eCommerce businesses emerge, allowing entrepreneurs the opportunity to finally sell their products without having to set up a physical retail location while providing them with benefits such as a remote workforce.

In this article, we’ll discuss where eCommerce is heading and what you can expect in the future.

Voice Assistance

With Alexa, Cortana, and Google Home taking over the world by providing consumers with convenience, you can expect to see changes to the way people shop online. Voice shopping is already popular among those with Alexa and Amazon accounts. As soon as you realize you’ve run out of something, you can ask Alexa to purchase it for you without having to lift a finger.

Voice shopping will continue to become more popular as more people adopt this technology into their homes. Instead of only allowing consumers to purchase from large marketplaces like Amazon, eCommerce stores can integrate voice assistance with their stores to provide customers with better options and even more convenience.

Omnichannel Commerce

Many shoppers use multiple channels during their shopping process. For example, let’s say someone is looking for comfortable workout shoes. They would likely start with a Google search and end up on a few different websites, from the brand’s Facebook pages to their eCommerce websites. With voice assistants and smartphones being used daily, omnichannel shopping will become more prevalent. eCommerce businesses need to optimize their websites and social media pages so they can sell their products where they can reach their customers, including Facebook and Instagram.

While eCommerce brands already know the benefits of using social media to market their brands, they might not be using the recently added commerce component that can facilitate shopping on each platform. Rather than asking a customer to leave their scrolling behind to purchase something on a website, shoppers can shop from an Instagram post without leaving the platform, making shopping much more convenient, which increases sales.

Enhanced Customer Experience

Customer experience is everything in the retail world. Without providing customers with a great experience, you’ll likely lose out on a sale and even future sales. eCommerce businesses have a great opportunity to provide an enhanced customer experience with Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI can be used to recommend products based on the customer’s shopping, browsing behavior, and past purchases, while AR allows customers to view how a product would look in real life before deciding to make a purchase.

While many businesses can opt to use both AR and AI, you might be better off prioritizing one over the other. For example, if you sell weight-loss medication and services, you might choose to prioritize AI so you can learn about your audience while providing them with a personalized experience on your website. In this case, AI could help you in the form of a quiz that not only captures important information you need to know about potential customers but gives them valuable information based on their answers.

More Payment Options

Designing an eCommerce website with a great user experience means the good experience should begin with a shopper’s first click to the website and end with their purchase. With multiple payment options, you can get more purchases and provide convenience for shoppers.

Without multiple payment options, you may be losing out on valuable customers. For example, your eCommerce store should always allow people to pay with a card. What you may not know is more people are opting to use digital wallets like Google Pay along with PayPal to make checking out quicker.

Dynamic Pricing

eCommerce stores need to price their products correctly, but pricing them dynamically means you can sell products at the right price to boost sales and make a profit. Dynamic pricing software allows business owners the tools to learn about market prices, demand, and production values in real-time, which can help them update their pricing.

Mobile Commerce

Mobile commerce is increasingly popular as fewer people hop on desktops and laptops to shop, do research, and communicate with their friends. Fewer people than ever use laptops and desktops at home when they’re away from their jobs because their mobile devices can do everything a laptop can do.

Abandoned cart rates are high for eCommerce sites that aren’t responsive or mobile-friendly, so it’s important to make sure you work with a developer that can make the mobile shopping experience convenient.

Better Data Collection and Analysis

Online brands need to collect data on their customers to learn about them and find ways to get them through the sales funnel. Collecting data can help eCommerce businesses better target their customers and retain them. Data will only continue to grow eCommerce sales in the future because marketers will be able to make more strategic decisions using real data instead of guesses.

B2B eCommerce

B2B businesses are finally undergoing the necessary digital transformation they need to stay relevant. B2B businesses will continue to think about their online presence and ways to understand their buyers. They will even begin taking relationships and purchasing online. For example, a business that sells products to a retailer may create an eCommerce portal for customers that allows them to purchase their inventory online instead of through email or a salesperson.

As more and more B2B companies move online, they’ll also begin building an online brand narrative with content marketing, customer engagement, and more.

The Future of eCommerce

As technology advances, eCommerce companies will have to determine which advancements will help their businesses grow. While there are a lot of emerging trends in this industry, you’ll need to prioritize them based on the needs of your customers. For example, if your customers are asking for a better way to check out, you’ll need to allow them multiple payment methods instead of jumping right into AR.

Depending on the size of your organization, you won’t have time to capitalize on every future trend, so make sure you determine which ones are right for your business based on the industry and your goals. For example, B2B businesses that sell refrigerators to retailers likely won’t have as much success selling products on an Instagram post as they would enhancing their customer experience.

As always, make sure you listen to your customers. If you’re not sure what they need from you, send them a survey so you can make their shopping experience better and use that information to grow your business.

Matt Casadona

Matt Casadona has a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with a concentration in Marketing and a minor in Psychology. Matt is passionate about marketing and business strategy and enjoys San Diego life, traveling, and music.

A Guide On How to Keep Shipping and Order Fulfilment for Your Ecommerce Business Well-Organised

September 12, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Ecommerce is businesses using the internet to connect with customers and sell their products or services online. Ecommerce is practiced by everyone from smaller businesses to independent freelancers, and larger size corporations.

Thanks to the internet, you don’t have to set up a bricks and mortar store to sell your products these days. So, whether you dream of running a small bakery, selling ceramics, fashionable clothes, you can do this yourself by establishing an ecommerce store online.

However, running a successful ecommerce store online is certainly not easy, there’s lots of planning and organisation to help online business survive. There are customers to keep satisfied, orders to fulfil, stock to constantly replenish, deliveries that must arrive with customers on time, customer support matters to deal with. What’s more, keeping customers pleased with your service and products will make sure your ecommerce store regularly receives good online customer reviews.

Making Sure You Always Have Enough Stock to Meet Customer Demand for Orders is Key to Organising Your Ecommerce Store

One vital part of running an ecommerce store online is making sure you don’t run out and have enough stock in. Customers may quickly become disinterested in your online store and start choosing to go elsewhere on the internet and buy products from competitors should you hardly ever have enough of your products online in stock.

The order fulfilment process is a crucial part of operating an ecommerce store and involves keeping track on the inventory of products, sorting, and packing products, and shipping online orders.

What are Some Good Ways You Can Manage Your Ecommerce Store’s Stock?

Order fulfilment can either be done in-house with an ecommerce company, or through a third-party logistics provider. Zendbox is a reliable third-party ecommerce fulfilment service with access to top technologies such as artificial intelligence to help businesses with managing ecommerce fulfilments and the packing and shipping of products bought online. Alternatively, you could take on the order fulfilment yourself, which will require setting up a robust process.

The Most Efficient Way to Ship Your Ecommerce Products

You may decide to ship products to customers through setting up an in-house shipping service for your ecommerce store like Amazon has done, but this requires a lot of resources and infrastructure so may not be do-able for smaller ecommerce stores.

Another effective way to ship can be to use ecommerce fulfilment companies or third-party courier companies. Choosing a good third-party courier will mean you can deliver across the globe as well as domestically and making note of the tracking number will allow you to track the package on its journey to customers.

Offering local pick-up for deliveries can be another way to deliver to customers. You can decide your local pick-up spot based on factors such as post codes, or customer data in the local area.

How to Advertise and Market Your Ecommerce Business Most Effectively Online

Making sure you optimise sales through developing a strong digital marketing strategy is vital to an ecommerce store’s success. Create content across online social media channels which is creative and engaging. Analyse your online engagement so you know where your consumers mainly visit online and hence the best platforms to market across.

Are you a Direct-to-Consumer ecommerce business? If so, it is highly recommendable for you to take advantage of marketing through platforms like Instagram, Pinterest Etsy, Facebook Marketplace.

Conclusion: Stay Organised

Ensuring you remain organised and aware of times and dates of orders, inventories, and shipments is key to running an ecommerce business. If this is too much to do alone or in-house, you should seek the services of an ecommerce fulfilment company.

The 4 Best Tips For Packaging For Your E-commerce Store

September 6, 2021 by Contributed Post Leave a Comment

Your product that you package and sell to your customers is not your only product. The entire customer experience is your product. Every part of the process needs to be curated to delight your customers. There is a lot of competition and buyers are expecting more from their shopping experience.

Part of that means having good packaging for your products. It’s a big reason why Apple was so successful. Their packaging was as exciting as the iPhones to many people.

From branding your business to the cost of packaging, there are many reasons to take it seriously. In this article, we will cover what you need to know about packaging for your e-commerce business.

1 – Factor in the cost

Part of the cost of shipping is in the weight and size of the package. Make sure that the cost is factored into your pricing. You will be undercharging your customers if you don’t have this factored into the price when you look for quotes for Florida courier companies.

Find a balance between using the most lightweight material and something strong enough to protect the product contained. The lighter the packaging material the less it will cost. However, if the material is simply cheap and flimsy you will get a lot of returns due to damage.

2 – Branding

Your packaging creates an impression on the person receiving it when it is done right. The logo should look crisp and clean with the colors being consistent with all of your other branding. It helps to have consistent colors for instant recognizability.

Besides just the opportunity to create a recognizable brand, the package should delight. Unboxing videos on Youtube are very popular because people love to experience something for the first time. An enticing package adds to the thrill of opening it up.

It may seem like just a box, but the right packaging will lead to more orders. When your product is good and the packaging creates excitement you have a winning combination for future sales.

3 – Minimize returns

Many returns come from damaged goods from the shipping process. Often it is the fault of the courier who has not handled the box well. It is also due to poor packaging. You should look into packaging that is both lightweight and resilient to keep the product from getting damaged.

The box should be filled with material that keeps the product from being jostled during shipping. Sensitive electronic devices need to be stable so the internal parts don’t get loose.

Too many returns will eat into your profit margins. Spending extra on the packaging is a good way to reduce that.

4 – Protect the environment

Consumers are tired of packaging that can’t be recycled. Be sure to use a material that is post-consumer and mostly recycled items. Then, it needs to be recyclable. Single material types are best since they are easy to recycle.

Or, use materials made from organic material so it doesn’t use any petroleum-based ingredients.

How To Market Your eCommerce Food Business

January 11, 2021 by Linda Davis Leave a Comment

Photo by Alexandru-Bogdan Ghita on Unsplash

Are you wondering how to market your eCommerce business? You are in the right place! Here you will find interesting pieces of advice and learn that it would not be hard to market your business. You need a good strategy and people who will love your ideas.

The Best 10 Tips How To Market Your Business

1. Start A Blog

If you want that wider population to hear about you and your business, you could try to write a blog. Topics about food and cooking are popular, so there would be an achievement. You could give people many bits of advice and make video tutorials. Remember to write interesting topics and put photos of meals. Also, be communicative with your readers, wind out what they like so your business could grow.

2. Design Your Brand

You could try to make your own brand name. That way, people would hear from you. There are many websites and apps where you could try to design a brand. Just stay original. Also, you could choose if you want a logo or just a tagline. When people notice your logo, they might be more interested in you and your work.

3. Use Social Media For Promoting

These days everything is on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and other famous social media. You should take advantage of that and promote your business through it. Try to post pictures of your dishes on Facebook and put links that lead to your blog and other accounts. Also, be open to conversation with your followers and answer their questions.

4. Have Your Own Ideas

If you are starting a business, you must not steal ideas from other people. Find out about people’s interests and what they love. Search and explore which topics could be interesting to your followers and write about them. When you put photos of dishes, use your own photos, so people would know what to expect from a recipe. You could look at what is popular with your competitors but do not use their ideas.

5. Target Your Audience

If you want to be successful, you need an audience to complete that. So, you need to know who your audience is. You want to target cooking bloggers, chefs, and anybody else who is interested in cooking. Also, you need to know that many of your audience would be cooking beginners, so put up a lot of pieces of advice on your business plan.

6. Use Hashtags

If you want other sites, people, and companies to see you and your cooking posts, use hashtags. So, when somebody is searching for fish recipes, you need to put hashtags and mention the keywords in it. That way, your site would pop up first at their search engine. Do not forget to write everything important on your recipe or site so that people would come back for more advice.

7. Start Sharing Giveaways

This is one of the best ways if you want people to hear about you. You could organize giveaways for your followers. That could be a cooking book, your favorite spices, kitchen devices, and many more. Try to organize them regularly so that people would stay active at your site. So, when people see your giveaways, they would share them and many more people would see them.

8. Be Prepare For Bad Comments

You should know that there would be people that would not love your content and your work. No matter how hard you try, somebody would dislike your page. You need to stay positive and focused on your work. Do not try to go in a fight through your page with them. That is not professional, and people would not like the drama on the cooking site.

9. Ask Your Readers For Reviews

If you want to get in contact with your readers, you could ask them for help. Try to ask them to review your site and work. That way, more people would hear from you. On the other hand, you would know what your readers love about your site and what they dislike. Listen to their bits of advice and try to fulfill their wishes. Listen to the remarks as well to know what you need to change.

10. Set Your Goals And Budget

Think of what you want from this experience. What you hope for and what you want to achieve. Do not let anything stop you from your goals. Give your best, and do not give up. Think about your budget. Make a plan for everything you need to start a business, so you would know how much money you need to set aside.

Conclusion

Here you could read many interesting pieces of advice on how to market your food business. You should use social media for promoting your business and hashtags so that people could find you easily. Try to write interesting content, search for what people are interested in. One of the most important things is communication. So do not forget to answer your followers and their questions. Be prepared for haters, but do not forget why you started your business. Stay true to yourself and enjoy your work.

Author Bio

Linda is a blogger, and she knows much about blogging and business. She wants to start her own company, so that is why she knows so much about starting a business. She Writes for KitchenToast, so you could visit that site and find more interesting tips there.