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Dreaming to own your own online store? What’s stopping you? Turn your dream into reality by starting your own online store which can drive sales for you. So, even if you already have an online business or trying to setup a new one, this article will help you to understand how an online store business can be run successfully. The people or the sellers who have their own online store play a different game. The best part about them is that they have a total control over their customers’ experiences. Be it highlighting a store sale or rearranging the product placement, these people can use their websites to connect directly with their potential clients and encourage the purchases.
However, to gain this kind of freedom it is important that store owners must know what is important. Online store owners may face the difficulty of not knowing where to begin with making their online shop. What firstly can be done is to focus on driving targeted traffic exclusively which is likely to make a purchase. Creating a store may be easy, but what is difficult here is to tackle with the competition because not everyone has big budgets to spend on purchasing digital ad space. Now that each one of us with online stores want to gain the traffic and conversions, so this guide is surely going to help.
Mentioned below are some of the ways that will help you in setting up an online store and drive traffic:
1. Web design that is Engaging
Yes, it definitely matters to have the best products possible in your niche. And, what is more important than that is the best customer service. But, nothing would work, if your store’s web design is bad. The poor web design can harm your business presence online and not only that our sales and traffic too. So, what is important here is to make an online store that is profitable. It can be done by either learning to code yourself or paying to a good web designer. Apart from this, there is also an idea to have a WordPress sites, which comes with ready-made template and the options to customize as per your needs. Honestly, there are a thousands of great e-commerce templates which are on the web provided by different sites. Here you can find different templates, which have intuitive layouts and clean designs. You should have a website design that has elements to captivate visitors.
Some of the actionable tips which you can apply for an engaging web design are:
- Get the store designed by a professional; or
- Design it by yourself if you know how to code; or
- Designing with template of ecommerce store
- The design must be captivate to get visitors’ attention
- Gain clients by showing full-width images and minimal text
2. Paid advertising
Organic is one way, but when we want to drive traffic and sales, it is best to go for paid advertising. Get the targeted traffic quickly and the best part is that most of the paid advertising channels allow to pay per click. You will be surprised to know that you can start with a budget as low as $10. The one thing that you need to keep in mind is that each advertising platform is different. So, always understand first that what does what. The channels which you are going to choose for paid advertising and you should choose must have essential tools to allow you to reach potential buyers.
Some of the paid advertising platforms are
- Facebook advertising: It is recommended for store owners who have an idea of their ideal customers. What their customers like and what they want to buy.
- Instagram advertising: Food, fashion, makeup, skincare, fitness or any other verticals with strong visuals. Instagram is best for you if you have high-quality and enticing product photos.
- Pinterest marketing: This is best for businesses with food, fashion, artwork, home decor, designs and other verticals. This platform also needs visuals to shine and it is particularly great, if you are selling to female audiences.
- Google Ads: This platform is recommended for local businesses, trending products, and products/services with high search volume.
3. Fewer Choices
You must have known people who have too many businesses such as commodities, fashion, and what not? But, honestly having too many businesses concept is simply unthinkable. Yes, offering diverse products is one of the great ways to increase sales but it isn’t necessary every time, especially if you are new to online business. Too many products may confuse people and you too while promoting them. In many cases it mostly happens that a wide variety of choices can lead to indecision.
So, coming on to the people who have wide range of products, for the, the option is to segregate the pages. It is always advisable to structure your site or product pages, so that the visitors get few choices as possible. They are able to eliminate the products which aren’t of their interest. So, arrange your products into increasingly narrow categories, or you can also put an option to filter out. Be it anyway, always remember more the choices, more the possibility that customer will bounce away.
4. Leverage SEO
We may have included this point at the last, but it is not the least. Every effort that you make may go in vain if you haven’t done the proper SEO of your online store. Increase e-commerce traffic by adding the content into your overall marketing plan. The role that SEO plays is very important in helping drive traffic to your site. Focus on the basics initially and get started in the right direction.
Take time to do some of the SEO tricks mentioned below:
- Include external links directing to relevant experts
- Create internal links so that Google can index your entire site
- Optimize website to perform well
- Create a sitemap and submit it to major search engines
- Include keyword descriptions on all product images
- Write detailed meta descriptions
- Add keywords related to your online store in blog content
- Build links directing to content from high-quality websites
Final words
Having an online store is a great idea. But, what is important is to keep on getting the traffic. Hopefully, these pointers may help you.
