How to have a successful online store in 2020?
Did you know that currently the Internet is an effective sales channel, providing the opportunity to have a higher sales volume than in previous years.
Companies wishing to have a presence on the Internet cannot be satisfied with a corporate website, which only provides information. Nowadays, e-commerce has become one of the most important business channels for those who know how to take advantage of its possibilities.
Consumers are accustomed to shopping online and payment procedures are becoming more diverse and secure, thanks to products such as Pay Pal, for example. This brings the consumer much closer to the online shopping experience, creating greater trust.
Online stores or ecommerce basically consist of the development of market actions, sales, portfolio management, customer service. In general, it is any event of information exchange or commerce that is developed and carried out through the Internet.
That is why it is important to know the main characteristics of ecommerce and which are the main tools for a successful online store. In addition, we will give you 11 tips to have an effective online store or ecommerce.
How are online stores or ecommerce born?
E-commerce began in 1920, in the United States, when catalog sales appeared for the first time. This distribution system implied a great revolution in sales, since, through illustrative photos of the products, it was possible to buy without first seeing them.
However, it was not until 1970 that the first digital catalogs appeared with a very limited service. It was not until 10 years later that catalog commerce was modernized, with the help of television and "telesales". This gave catalog sales a greater realism of the products, thus highlighting their most important attributes and characteristics.
In 1989, with the creation of the World Wide Web (www), the transmission of information between computers completely changed the way products were sold. By the end of the 1990s, exclusive online sales sites such as eBay and Amazon, today the largest in the industry, had already been created.
Ecommerce worldwide
According to a study conducted by the agency We Are Social in collaboration with Hootsuite, eCommerce usage in 2017 reached 22% of the world's population. More than half of the users who shop online do so through mobile devices such as cell phones or tablets.
The development of the e-commerce during 2017 maintained steady growth. South America leads annual online commerce growth with 30%, followed by Africa and Asia with 20% annual growth, North America with 15% and Europe with 10%.
Ecommerce in Costa Rica
Costa Rica is one of the countries where online stores, or ecommerce, have grown significantly, streamlining sales processes in general.
However, according to Kantar Worldpanel, only 12% of consumers in Costa Rica buy online, a very low figure considering that Internet access in the Central American country is 88%, double the average access in Central America, which is around 47%.
However, Costa Rica became the country with the highest level of online sales in the region.
Hand in hand with email marketing
Email Marketing is a direct marketing technique that consists of sending a commercial message directly, using email as a channel. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a customer or potential customer can be considered as email marketing.
It typically involves using email to send advertisements, solicit business, or solicit sales or donations, and is primarily geared towards building loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.
It must be taken into account that an online store is not going to be known by itself, so there are several methods to increase visits among which we can find content generation, SEO and email marketing campaigns.
Why use email marketing?
The main benefit of email marketing is that it is very cost effective as a low cost tool. The key to successful email marketing for ecommerce is that with one click the customer can be redirected to the page, where they can finalize the purchase of a product. This button is known as a CTA or Call to Action.
According to the studies carried out, CTAs should be located in strategic places, such as at the end of an email or directly on a specific product that you want to highlight.
Another important fact is that CTAs must be very visible in the email. But we must be careful. Although it must stand out, we can't make it out of sync with the rest of the email.
Remarketing is elementary
In most cases, potential customers visit the website and include products in the shopping cart. However, they end up leaving the site without completing the purchase. This happens to approximately 75% of people who place a product in the shopping cart, which is why remarketing becomes more relevant.
Remarketing consists of sending an email addressed to those people who almost finished the purchase, with the purpose of encouraging them to buy the products that were of interest to them. This method can recover up to 25% of the possible buyers, generating an increase in sales from the ecommerce.
It is important to consider that email marketing has advantages over other advertising media, such as web ads, banners, ads embedded in videos and other types of intrusive advertising.
According to Global Webs Index, these advantages can also work against us, since they are advertising that can be annoying for users. Many have indicated that:
- There is too much irrelevant advertising
- Advertisements can take up a lot of space on the navigation screen
- Advertisements can be intrusive.
Therefore, too much advertising at inopportune and unwanted times can cause us to lose sales. The best recommendation is not to bore the subscriber and not to fill his inbox with absurd amounts of daily emails.
The most advisable thing to do is to determine an effective number of mailings, so as not to appear as a company that sends spam. The content of the email should also be selected in a more accurate way.
A channel for building trust and brand image
In addition to being a sales channel, email marketing is also a excellent channel for building trust and brand loyalty. Through emails we try to keep in touch with our subscribers, clarifying their doubts and following up on our services, in order to get the maximum benefit from the tool.
Email marketing accounts for approximately 23% of sales, making it a high-impact medium, so building trust with your customers is of utmost importance.
We can say then that email marketing is an excellent communication channel to offer quality and interesting content to our users, it is an effective tool to convert those users into leads and those sales prospects into customers.
11 tips for effective ecommerce
SEO. Any business that develops on the Internet must be in the battle of SEO, as search engine optimization is known, in order to generate traffic and good positioning.
- Intuitive navigation. It is of utmost importance that there are no obstacles between the arrival of the customer to the website and the completion of the purchase. On the Internet, patience does not exist, so everything has to be fluid, fast and effective.
- Images.Creating an online store is very fast, but getting sales can take longer, so excellent quality images that sell will help build trust with the customer.
- Suggestions count. It is important to make our customers' comments known without fear of making negative comments known; on the contrary, they can be used in favor and highlight positive aspects of the brand or service.
- Value goes beyond price. Branding is an important element that gives strength to what you sell and creates more security when buying online.
- Be clear about expenses. In online purchases, it is essential that all additional costs to the price of the product are visible to the customer, so we make sure that the customer will not have an unexpected increase in the amount at the end of the purchase.
- Quality seals. More and more customers are deciding to make purchases through virtual stores with this type of quality markings, which are intended to overcome the resistance to leave the data and therefore achieve a greater number of sales.
- Delivery times. The customer must know exactly when the product will arrive. This information must be explicit and we must ensure that the delivery date is met.
- Return policy.This is one of the most frequent reasons for complaints in an online store. Make the return flexible to help overcome the resistance to purchase and get more sales and additionally avoid bad comments on the page.
- Capture leads. Your page may be generating a lot of traffic, but if you don't get a name and email of the visitor to keep in touch, it won't do any good. When it comes to getting leads, contests or Facebook applications are very important, actions that facilitate the collection of user data.
- Increased interest. By generating a high level of interest among the community we generate buzz marketing or word of mouth marketing, which consists of getting them to always talk about our brand, our products. The interest generates conversation around the products or services of our online store.
We can therefore be sure that online stores or ecommerce allow us to increase the scope of our sales, especially for small businesses.
On the Internet there are no limits, anyone with Internet access has the possibility to find the online store from anywhere in the world. For that reason, the platform of an online store must provide the consumer with everything necessary to complete the purchase.
Undoubtedly, entering the world of ecommerce is very beneficial and can be the most important tool for our business, as long as we have an effective ecommerce.
You still don't have an online store or ecommerce and you think it's what your company needs? In Media Marketing we can give you all the help you need to start selling like never before through your online store. We have a specialized work team that will make your online store yield the results you always aspired.
English