Ecommerce Tips and Tricks Part 1 (Actionable!)
Starting a business is an awesome experience.
You learn a lot, you grow a lot, and hopefully you sell a lot.
But what are the most important steps to building, launching and growing your store?
Hey what’s up world, I’m Jessica Guzik with Oberlo, and today we’re going to look
at 10 steps you can take right now to optimize your store for immediate sales and long-term
growth.
Did you miss Part I?
Click the link to check that out.
Already seen part I?
Then let’s get to it.
[#11: Be specific with your product categories.]
As your store grows and you offer more and more products, you’ll want to be super specific
with your product categories.
This will let your customers easily find what they’re looking for.
Product categories like ‘Women’ and ‘Children’ don't really help your shoppers quickly find
what they’re looking for.
Look at how Amazon organizes their product categories.
It’s uber precise.
The easier you make it for a customer to find exactly what they’re looking for, the more
likely they’ll buy from your store.
[#12: Create a loyalty program]
New customers are awesome, don’t get me wrong.
But it costs up to 10 times more to acquire a new customer than to make a repeat buyer
out of an existing customer.
In addition, returning customers spend about 67% more than new customers.
That means it’s more affordable and rewarding to keep the customers you already have.
There are several great ways to reward loyal customers.
Consider sending them a discount on their birthday, offering them a small gift with
their third purchase, or running a special contest just for them.
All of these perks reward repeat customers, and over the long-term, the more customers
you can keep, the more money your business will save and make.
[#13: Create unique content.]
If you’re a dropshipping entrepreneur, odds are you need to find a way to stand out among
your competitors.
The easiest way to do this is by creating unique content.
Pumping out blog posts each week is a great way to build an audience and educate visitors
while keeping your website looking fresh and up to date.
You can always find topics for your content.
If you’re in the yoga niche, you could post about your 10 favorite yoga poses on YouTube.
If you’re in the pet niche, review some of the best pet apps out there.
Bottom line: Unique content can go a long way to increasing your stores visibility,
a key factor in boosting sales.
content will increase visibility and increase sales.
[#14: Offer free shipping.]
It’s important to test free versus paid shipping.
But when you have a new store, it’s a good idea to go ahead and offer free shipping to
incentivize sales.
Especially if people don’t know your store yet, free shipping is a little nudge in the
right direction.
If you dropship with Oberlo Supply, most suppliers offer free shipping and ePacket Delivery,
which is a low-cost express shipping service.
[#15: Create product videos]
Product videos can help boost conversions and increase sales for your store.
You can add product videos to your product page to show different angles or demonstrate
how to use it.
You can also use product videos as a marketing tool on Facebook or Instagram.
Creating video content can be time consuming, but it’ll give your brand a competitive
advantage.
[#16: Create ads from day one.]
Ads on Instagram and Facebook bring in traffic that converts into customers.
Now, for the first couple of weeks, you’re going to be in experimentation mode.
Use ads to figure out which products your audience likes the most by switching the products
in the ad and seeing which gets the most clicks.
As well, test multiple price points and make sure your product price is sustainable given
the cost of advertising.
Keep adjusting the dials until you find your winning ad formula.
And then, turn on your ads in full force.
[17: Learn to recover abandoned carts.]
Test out different abandoned cart apps and email formats.
The abandoned cart rate, on average, falls somewhere between 60-80%.
So it’s normal for customers to abandon their carts.
But you should do everything you can to get those customers back.
If you have the customer’s email address, send a follow up and nudge them to complete
the purchase.
But don’t stop there!
Consider sending at least two more follow-up emails.
In each of those emails, offer an additional discount to sweeten the sale and convert the
customer.
[#18: Talk to your customers and get to know their needs.]
Building relationships with customers is time consuming but super important.
A simple thing you can do to get better insights is email your customers individually.
Ask them how they’re enjoying the product they purchased, if there are any other products
they wish your store had, if there’s any type of blog content they’d like to read.
You might even throw in a VIP discount code as a thank you for their feedback.
Not everyone will reply, but the feedback you do get will be huge for understanding
your customers.
[#19: Start building links.]
To reduce ad spend while increasing revenue, it’s important to build external backlinks.
Backlinks are links on other websites that take people to your online store.
You build backlinks by promoting your products on relevant and popular blogs or websites.
You can also reach out and offer to write guest posts on these same blogs.
The more sources you have driving traffic to your website, the less you’ll spend on
ads.
And once you’ve gotten clicks to your website, you can retarget visitors with your best selling
products.
[#20: Think of ways to put your customer on a pedestal.]
If you treat your customers right, they’ll keep coming back.
Stay in touch with them.
Show them that you appreciate them.
Try hosting a ‘Customer Appreciation Event’ where you give them first access to new products
or an additional discount.
Sending thank you notes letting them know how much you appreciate their business will
also go a long way.
Brainstorm things you can do for your customers that’ll make them happy, and your customers
will likely return the favor by buying from your store again.
That’s it for today!
What do you think--were these steps new to you?
Helpful?
Let us know what you think by dropping a comment below.
I personally read to every comment, so I’d love to get your feedback.
When you’re ready for even more eCommerce tips and tricks, look for Part III of our
ecommerce tips series
Thanks so much for watching, I’ll see you next week.
In the meantime: Happy dropshipping!