Ask any retail expert and they will tell you that online is the place to be. Old-school bricks and mortar shops still have their place, but the explosive growth and market expansion is all happening on the internet. Outfits like Alibaba, Shopify and Wish have led the way, but there are countless other niche stores, smaller operations and of course online presences for traditional retailers. The reality is that online increases the size of the shopper base exponentially while at the same time lowering costs – you need fewer staff, cheaper premises and you don’t need to hold such large amounts of stock. It is a retailer’s dream. But in an already competitive market, how do you end up with clients? Here are a few tips and ideas that you might want to consider.
Drive traffic smartly
A site with no traffic is never going to manage any sales, so make sure that you know what you are doing in terms of acquiring traffic. Either through paid search or organic search, or both, you want to ensure that when people look for items that you stock, that you are positioned at the top of the Google results page. This is something that can be achieved through a national SEO campaign, something strategic that is run and managed for you by an agency that specialises in this type of work. You could look to hire your own internal expert to take care of this important process, but the reality is that when starting out it might be too expensive to hire a fulltime SEO expert.
Know your market
You are doomed to fail if you think that just because you have a potential base the size of the world’s population that you are going to get rich. The truth is that there are a lot of companies out there who are a lot more established than you are and who have a significantly greater budget for advertising and acquisition. So, you need to be very good at what you do, and you need to have something that sets you apart from the rest. Do one thing and do it well. Don’t try to be the next Alibaba, rather set yourself up to cater for a niche audience. Be the best place to buy socks, or be a lip-gloss specialist, or a kitchenware site. Whatever it is, know the market and the product and don’t try to be all things to all people.
Make payment easy
Paying for online purchases is the biggest failure point for transactions, so make sure that once you have landed a client that you are able to finish the deal. Credit card payments from as many types of card are essential. Being able to accept online wallets and payment systems like PayPal, is also important. If you are able to process Crypto-currencies even better. In short, the easier it is to pay, without login details and passwords and other verifications, the more likely you are going to be to have successful transactions.
