Starting an online store is definitely a good decision for any business owner. In this digital age, it is the need of the hour for every business to have an online presence. And when it comes to eCommerce having an online store is of greater importance since today majorly customers prefer to buy products within the four walls of their homes, scrolling down products and adding them to their cart. In fact today many eCommerce platforms have arrived making it easier for businesses to start selling online in just simple steps.
But having an online store up and running is just a small milestone that you must have achieved in your online business journey.
Let’s understand this with a story,
John owns a business in his locality that attracts visitors from far and wide. People love his products, so he decides to open an online store to drive more people to buy from him. After creating and launching his store, however, he doesn’t see many sales.
What’s John missing? Promoting his online store! Without marketing your online store, people will not be able to find your store. You need to promote your store online, so more people discover your product, get encouraged to buy more, and shop regularly.
So the first step to success is promoting your online store. Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways how you can create awareness & promote your online store.
First of all, check whether your website is fully complete right from the designing part to the content as well as the product uploading. As your website is the heart of your online marketing efforts. All the marketing efforts which you are going to conduct are finally going to end up with visitors landing on your online store website.
So your website should be easily approachable, clutter-free, and not to forget the overall look and feel of the store that instantly impresses the visitor with highly qualified product images used.
However, this point is usually overlooked but it is the most important thing to consider that you must make your customer's shopping experience delightful. Customers should be able to easily navigate their way to the right product for which they are finding for.
Your website is the gateway to creating that first impression that will initiate a purchase decision and in case if it fails to impress then customers would slide away within seconds and would never return back.
Having a social media account for your online store is a must and it is the highly anticipated promotional strategy that is followed by almost every other online business owner. For this, you need to create an account for your online store across all relatable social media platforms.
Obviously not every platform must be suitable for your business, you need to be visible on those platforms where your target audience is active the most as it is said that “ Visibility is the Key to Success” – the more you are visible the more you get business.
You need to have a uniform communication across social media accounts and should maintain a consistent activity with your postings. Your post must contain a mix of image and video posts with attractive and interactive content to develop engagement with your followers.
Today social media is not just limited to only communication and interaction platforms but is also a great source to know what your customers are talking about, what are their needs, and accordingly, you can come up with a product that suits their requirements. Even you can analyze your competitors and their presence online and then plan your strategies to stand ahead of them.
Another great way to promote your online store is with a Blog. By publishing frequent high-quality content, you can help more people find your shop through search engines.
Writing blogs for your online store also gives you the power and a source to talk more about your products, their benefits as well as why you started your online store, and what your brand stands for. You can write content that helps answer questions to potential buyers.
Blogs give you the opportunity to showcase your expertise through product guides, tutorials, and product comparison post that features your and your competitor's products. Blogging is a fantastic affordable and scalable promotional strategy that any new online store owner must opt for. The most ideal suggestion would be that you can publish one or two blogs per week. The more consistent you are, the better the results will be.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, or how easy it is for search engines to find your site when someone is looking for a store like yours. The easier it is for the search engine to find your website, the more chances are for you to show up on the search results page.
To ensure you optimize your site for SEO certain things you must keep in mind that your website must contain the language that your customers might use naturally while searching for any product or service. Pay attention to On-Page activities that you are going to perform throughout your website. To help you with this VistaShopee provides an inbuilt SEO tool such as Header, Title Tags, Meta Description, Meta keywords, and Alt text which you can add to every page.
Meta tags are important as well. Title tags, which are like headlines for a search engine, help the search engine figure out what each page is about. Each page of your website should have its own unique title tag. Meta descriptions are short summaries of each page. When your site shows up on a search engine results page, users will see your title tag and meta description before anything else.
Indians are very price-conscious and have a high need for bargaining. They are constantly on the lookout for any exciting deals or offers and when they come across to your online store offering a special discount or coupon they would instantly get excited to buy your product.
Running discounts with promo codes encourages customers to try out the product for the first time as the cost risk factor is low. Try to spread these promotional deals on social media or run a special contest like spin the wheel or QnA type of games to generate engagement and drive more users to visit your store and take the advantage of your discounts or coupons.
To help you generate more sales online VistaShopee lets you set interesting offer prices and discounts with promo codes to induce online visitors to make product purchases. And guess what? Offer Banners on your website work best to flaunt big deals that instantly click with the visitor to convert.
Micro-influencers or content creators are those individuals whose followers are larger than a normal person but smaller than a celebrity. They hold the power to easily influence people's decision-making behavior.
Finding the perfect social influencer can boost your website visits and can improve your brand awareness. Sending free samples of your products to such influencers will allow them to know and appreciate your product. Not only this certain effective strategies like influencers guest blogging for your website, and promoting products on their platform can simply help to develop the much needed trust and credibility among new customers
Get yourself involved in webinars and discussions to let everyone know about your new online store. Participate in exhibitions and leverage your expertise to get the word out about your business.
Set banners and standees to showcase what your new store has in for everyone and also keep your website link handy to share with everyone so that they can visit your store and explore.
Building just a website will not be enough for you to generate sales. Promotion is the key to the success of any online store. You'll need to use different digital marketing techniques and a long-term marketing plan to stand out from the competitors and gain market share in the eCommerce world.
After all, the ultimate purpose of promoting your online business is to reach your potential customers, Convince customers about your products and services, Build trust and entice customers to buy. The more effort you put into marketing your products, the more likely it is that customers will decide to buy from you. Customers can't buy what they can't see.