In order to survive in the competitive digital market of today, your online store must constantly improve. More consumers than ever are shopping online thanks to the eCommerce boom, and your rivals are doing the same.
Finding areas of your company, from site design to operations, that either draw in more clients or save you more time and money is the key. You’ll gradually have a more efficient and successful company.
Here are five strategies to level up your online store, regardless of whether you run an established eCommerce firm or are a freelancer just getting started.
1. Don’t just make it mobile-friendly; make it mobile-first
This may seem obvious, but since mobile now represents over 70% of all eCommerce traffic, we couldn’t leave it off the list! Your website should be mobile-ready, planned, and created with a smartphone in mind, from search to checkout.
No matter how your customers access your items (for example, via a desktop, smartphone, or tablet from any manufacturer), their experience will be seamless thanks to responsive web design. And this will make their purchase simple for them.
What does a “mobile-first” design for online sellers actually entail? A quick checklist was created by BrowserStack, which includes the following but is not limited to:
- The website should load quickly.
- Correctly optimize pictures to quicken website loading.
- Navigation must be spaced appropriately to allow users to click where they want without unintentionally pressing an unwanted button. Layout and design must be scaled for the small screen.
- Reduce the number of steps necessary to accomplish a transaction.
- The action buttons, such as Buy, Call, and Sign Up, must be simple to find.
- You should incorporate swiping, scrolling, and tapping into your touchscreen user involvement designs.
2. Convertible UX Design
You must mix your visual image with simple functionality and a direct call to action for your customers when it comes to the design of your online business. If your brand identity isn’t yet fully developed, you can get advice from other business owners and creative professionals on how to create a standout brand.
If you’ve already created your visual identity, the following step is to make it visible throughout your online store so that the customer can easily identify it.
- takes an interest in your story
- has faith in your company
- and uses your website with ease.
By combining UX and conversion design concepts, you should position your online store for growth. But how? You might work with a freelance web developer or designer. Or, if you’re feeling ambitious and creative, build and manage your design materials using a variety of online tools.
3. Hands-off Customer Service
Customer satisfaction is another factor that determines how successful your online store is.
Every time a customer uses your service, your reputation is put at risk. Additionally, client service is crucial even before the transaction! Customers may switch to a rival if they can’t promptly find the answer to their question.
Most likely, you lack the funding necessary to continuously watch over your online customer service. Automated methods can help in this situation.
Online customer service providers frequently use a help ticket system, wherein when a consumer submits a ticket, a real person must respond. Your responsibility is to give the support desk as much information as you can and the solutions to frequently asked questions so that, ideally, they can respond right away.
A typical element of some of these online help desks is live chat. Live chat is an effective tool for e-commerce enterprises to help uncertain clients complete their shopping carts. By enabling customers to ask questions and get answers to their issues, this feature can lower cart abandonment rates and boost conversion. Popular options include Help Scout, Zendesk, and Groove, which provide tier-based monthly fees based on the level of assistance you need.
4. Hands-off Tax Compliance
Growing your company is fantastic, but it also comes with more challenging tax compliance challenges, particularly as more and more nations are imposing internet taxes on online purchases. You can be responsible for gathering and remitting tax in new locations, whether it be US sales tax, VAT, or GST.
If so, you must be aware of the local tax rates in other states and other nations. You must keep track of how much you have sold in each country since some have tax thresholds; in other nations, B2B sales are exempt from taxation, therefore you must determine whether customers are tax-registered firms.
Additionally, you need to gather two pieces of information proving the location of your customer and deliver tax-compliant receipts. Even while it may sound laborious and unpleasant, there is tax compliance software like Quaderno that will automate a large portion of the procedure for you.
The tax calculation and collection procedure integrate easily into the checkout process on your website thanks to easy integrations with payment processors like Stripe and plugins like WooCommerce (plus a configurable API).
5. Optimize SEO Regularly
Making sure your website ranks in search engines so that customers can find you is a crucial component of creating the greatest online business you can. This entails adhering to tried-and-true Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, which call for some content creation and technical upkeep.
To ensure your online store is at the top of its game, perform the following SEO duties consistently or at regular intervals:
- Examine the most popular keywords’ search volumes and ranking challenges. Use these words as anchor text for backlinks and include them in the copy on landing pages, blog posts (titles, headlines, and body), and meta descriptions.
- Examine the sources of the features and backlinks that your rivals are using. Check to see if there are any prospects for linking to your content or products.
- Keep an eye out for technical SEO mistakes like broken URLs.
- Whenever it works for your schedule, set up a regular SEO clean-up: weekly, bimonthly, monthly, etc. A well-functioning website will raise your domain authority and register favourably with search engines.
To assist with these tasks and a plethora of others, many business owners and designers turn to tools like Moz or Ahrefs with the goal of improving their search engine rankings and attracting more visitors.
For more such tips, updates and learning resources, stay tuned to Insitebuild Blog.
