8 Steps to Make Your Ecommerce Website Successful Right from the Start

rohit@suntecindia.com eCommerce Store Management July 10, 2014
eCommerce website success

Let your eCommerce website come out all guns blazing from the very start to increase sales.

To flourish and abound in untapped markets, you must hit bull’s eye with your eCommerce website from the very start. Here are 8 things you must take care of to make your online business successful right from the word go.

If you wish to start an online business or you have recently started one then now is the right time to step up your efforts. Customers are gradually opening up to the idea of shopping everything online and are embracing it as a part of their daily lives. But be warned, online businesses are flourishing in droves and cropping up exponentially. If you wish to stand out, you will have to hit the bull’s eye right from the word go. But fret not, because you’re in luck. Below we have shortlisted the 8 ingredients of online success from the very beginning.

  1. Invest in quality UI/UX
  2. The quality of your website will define whether or not customers will return on it, and whether it will take off in the first place. Initial success of a website depends largely on the first impression you create, and a beautiful, clean interface will go a long way in ensuring that you nail it. High-quality pictures and detailed product descriptions add tremendously in ensuring that customers love every bit of your website. It should be very easy for customers to find what they’re looking forward and get to any product they want in not more than two taps/clicks. An exceptional user interface and use experience should always be your top priority at all times.

  3. Invest in mobile
  4. Mobile is the future. It is already half the present, and it is completely the future. The sooner you realize this, the better it is for your business. No matter how much time and money it takes, get a responsive website or a dedicated mobile site built for your eCommerce website. And make sure you do this right from the word go, and not as value addition a couple of years later, because your website won’t last that long without a healthy mobile presence.

  5. Define a clear target group
  6. Before you embark on any entrepreneurial journey, it is imperative that you clearly define your target group. That is elemental to deciding all your business plans, content strategy, marketing and promotion strategy, and everything. The same applies to eCommerce websites as well. Find out who are most likely to visit your website and buy from you, and then go all out for them.

  7. Create high quality content
  8. Content marketing is the most foolproof, long-term and organic way to establish authority over your business domain, gain positive word-of-mouth popularity over the web, and rank higher on search engines. Invest in creating engaging, informative and interesting original content that people will like to share on social media websites.

  9. Engage customers on social media
  10. Establish a good social media presence from the very start. There are two major benefits of this. Firstly, it makes your business appear like a “big brand”. Google is famously preferential towards big brands, or at least brands that appear as big brands through social authority. Secondly, you can engage customers there, initiate conversations, attend to their feedback and complaints in real time, and gain valuable insights from the whole experience. It’s like a free of cost basic CRM (customer relationship management) platform for your business.

  11. Make the experience personal
  12. There are many technologies available that let you create personal experience for individuals based on their personal preferences. If you have that kind of budget, then invest in applications that can track their movements to fabricate a highly personalized experience. That will make you unbeatable. If you can’t do that, then you can still invest in a smaller CRM suite like Zoho and ContactMe that will still work just fine.

  13. Be extravagant on loyalty rewards
  14. Loyalty rewards, subscription benefits, and one-off discounts are the most aggressively effective business expansion methods. Make complete use of them. The more extravagant you are on your customers, the more they will reciprocate the same heartily.

  15. Tie up with the best logistics
  16. If you can under-commit and over-deliver, then you will truly be supreme right from the start. Tie up with the best logistic company that can deliver your goods securely in a timeframe that surprises both you and your customer. That extra investment will easy take care of itself many times over.

After all, what could be better than tapping an entire customer base and reaping the profits of your efforts? Do you have more ideas in mind about what could make your online business tick right from the beginning? We’d love to hear you in the comments below.

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