Juggling family and work while maintaining relationships with friends, your significant other, and any other of those that you love is one of the most challenging balancing acts of the modern world.
Is it any wonder then that a record number of moms and dads are looking to launch a successful home-based business?
Among these home based businesses, online stores (or e-Commerce, for those in the know), are some of the most popular.
But how does one go about actually making money with one of these home based businesses? Can it actually work?
The Trends
Let’s start with the trends.
There has been a shift towards e-commerce in consumer spending that will continue to increase as more people shop online instead of traditional brick and mortar stores.
To keep up with the trends, many businesses are turning towards designing and running e-commerce sites. Starting an e-commerce business requires you to make numerous decisions such as how to fulfill orders to choosing a reliable and robust hosting provider. It requires a lot of hard work with many steps that need to come together to make sure your customer experience is a good one. Your homepage is very important but so are your product pages, your category pages, your checkout process, and more.
WooCommerce is a powerful, customizable, and well-supported shopping cart plugin for WordPress that can turn your website into an e-commerce business quickly and easily. It is used successfully by hundreds of thousands of businesses and brands. Hosting made for Woocommerce can make your site fast and secure right out of the box.
Get Them to Your Store
Once your site is launched, the only way to be successful with your e-commerce business is to attract clients to your site and get them to make a purchase. Design your online store to be attractive, easy-to-navigate, and professional.
Remember you only have about 3 seconds after a visitor lands on your website to engage them and keep them on your site long enough for them to make a purchase. One way to get traffic to your new store is to target influencers and get their attention with actionable tactics like:
- Asking family and friends to share your store
- Posting your store on Reddit
- Reach out to the press and bloggers
- Engage pro-actively on Twitter
- Send free samples of your product to Instagram influencers
- Write a blog post featuring influential people and send it to them
Providing helpful and relevant information for your website visitors will keep them on your site longer. For instance, if your target market is entrepreneurs who want to learn more about online marketing, including tips and tricks on your blog or offering a free download to help them in their business will go a long way. It can keep them on your site long enough to see what you are selling and make a purchase.
Social Media
Being active on social media is time-consuming (and can definitely put strain on your relationship), but is very important for brand awareness and social sharing.
Rather than devoting the time you don’t have to create a presence on all social media platforms, carefully select the ones that are most beneficial to your business. For instance, creating a Facebook page will allow you to grow a customer base, post compelling and engaging images, announce specials, and provide incentives for followers to share your content.
Make sure the content you post is visually-appealing and engaging to attract people to your page. You want to post regularly, preferably on a daily basis, is possible. Ask your followers questions and respond to their questions in a timely manner to keep them engaged on your page.
Include a Blog
Did you know that including a blog on your site helps generate traffic? Many business owners focus solely on building an email list, dealing with inventory, and trying to convert customers, that they often neglect the importance of helping customers find their site on the web.
How does blogging drive traffic to your site? It improves SEO, gives you the venue to share stories and helpful information, and increases the chances of engagement on your site.
Build an Email List
Building a list for your e-commerce site will help your business grow by staying top-of-mind with potential customers and retaining current customers by making them repeat customers. Your goal is to get your website visitors to stay in contact with your business. How can you build your email list?
- Strategically place opt-in forms on your website in your header navigation, on your sidebar, or in your footer. You want to be sure that no matter what page a visitor is on your website, they will see your form.
- Offer an incentive for someone to sign up such as a free download, a sample of your product, or a discount offer.
- Include a newsletter checkbox during the checkout process for upcoming sales, discounts, or other specials.
Your number one priority is to get more people to buy more often from your e-commerce site. While you are focusing on getting new customers, don’t forget about your existing customer base. Keep in contact with them through email marketing to turn them into repeat customers.
Make sure your website is easy-to-navigate, visually-appealing, and secure so that your customers feel safe giving you their personal information, especially their credit card number. Offer promotions during certain times, especially the holidays.
Make sure your site is mobile responsive so that the user experience is smooth on any device.