The e-commerce industry is expected to continue its rapid growth in 2020 and now is a good time as any to get your foot in the door and ride the trend. When done right, an e-commerce website has the potential to bring in positive results and steady growth for new entrepreneurs. Set up your online store for success with these critical tips.
1. Take your time building your site
E-commerce websites require extensive planning and preparation - from identifying what type of products to sell and your brand’s target market to planning the content and the digital marketing campaign to promote it. You only get one chance to launch your site and you have to make sure you do it right. Don’t hit publish until everything - content marketing, SEO, advertising, included - is ready.
2. Always think of the user
E-commerce sites should be, first and foremost, user-focused. Every design element on your website should be chosen with the user in mind. Your visuals should overcome one of the biggest limitations of an online store - the inability of the customer to touch and feel a product in person. Use engaging and high quality images. Include action shots or images that show the product being used.
Navigation is another important aspect that makes an e-commerce site successful. Your customer shouldn’t have to go through several clicks to complete a purchase. Strikingly’s Simple Store was designed to make it easy for users to transact with your website. The integrated payment gateway apps ensures that your store can support online payments.
3. Test everything before you launch
Strikingly’s e-commerce website templates simplify the website development process for e-commerce websites by providing you with everything that you need to set up your site. After adding in your content and your inventory, it’s still important to run thorough testing on the site to make sure that all the links are working and the images are loading well. Think like a typical website visitor or ask someone else to go through the site and give you feedback on the design and user interface.
4. Incorporate social
With customers striving to make informed decisions about their online purchases, adding a social element to your e-commerce website is essential. Product reviews and testimonials as well as social follow buttons can all help you encourage conversions.
Stay on top of your social media campaigns. Use your website as a central directory for all your social media pages and invite your audience to follow your networks. Add a social stream feature on your Strikingly website so your page is updated whenever you post something on your social media pages.
5. Make sure your website is mobile friendly
Strikingly makes it easy for you to reach target audiences using mobile devices through screen adaptive website templates. When you add your content on your site, Strikingly’s site templates are already set to make your text and visuals render well on different screen sizes. You don’t need to write extra code for this but you might want to follow the recommended image sizes and file size limits for videos to ensure that your pages will load well.
6. Don’t forget about SEO
As the ecommerce industry becomes even more popular as a lucrative venture for entrepreneurs, you will find your site competing with several others in this space. It’s important for you to stay on top of your SEO game to make sure that your brand and business remains visible and accessible to your target market. Strikingly has integrated tools for on-page SEO such as an easy way to edit your page meta descriptions but you will have to work on the off-page factors such as building quality links to your site. Your digital marketing campaign should include a sound SEO strategy for attracting organic traffic to your website.
