Everything You Need to Know About eCommerce Stores

If you want to sell your products online, you should consider setting up an eCommerce store. It is not easy to set up an eCommerce online store, but with the right guidance, you can turn your business into a success. Here are some things you need to know about your eCommerce store.

1. What Is An eCommerce Store?

An eCommerce store is also known as an online eCommerce store. These are businesses that trade or sell goods or services online. Examples of these stores include Amazon and Etsy craft sites. eCommerce sites rely on customers or clients to log into a website or app and buy products or services directly from these online platforms. Products or services are then delivered to a customer either in person or to their email addresses, depending on the products they ordered. 

Since the entire eCommerce process is done online, it is normally a convenient and quicker way to do shopping. People won’t have to leave the comfort of their homes to learn new skills or to shop for products. It can all be done with the click of a button. eCommerce stores have risen in the past few years, especially after the 2020 pandemic. People preferred doing their shopping from home to keep safe during this time and even after the pandemic began to slow down in countries, online shopping and eCommerce stores remained popular. It just makes more sense to purchase products online within a few minutes, than to make trips to a store or multiple stores to look for items.

2. What is eCommerce marketing?

Advertising and marketing are needed to get your products out there. An eCommerce store is no different from any other store when it comes to marketing. eCommerce marketing is a powerful tool that ensures businesses receive good advertising and sales. Since online shopping is done online, it will make sense to have advertising done online too. Social media marketing is one of the biggest ways to attract advertising for eCommerce stores. It doesn’t however end there. It is common to see billboards that direct the audience to go online to purchase items and TV ads that do the same. 

3. How to create an eCommerce store

• Planning is everything: Opening an eCommerce store can be overwhelming but preparation is key. The pandemic taught us that life is unpredictable and creating a business plan will help you to deal with unforeseen issues that may arise. A marketing campaign or marketing strategy comes in handy here. What marketing or promotional strategy are you going to use? Will you need help? Is your aim to introduce new products or find new leads? You should keep track of social media trends and influencers that you can use throughout the year to help to advertise your products.
• Prioritise your goals: Create the objectives that you want to accomplish by prioritising your goals. Prioritise short-term goals first, such as selling a particular number of products or hitting a sales target for a month, and then long-term goals such as expanding your eCommerce store to other countries.
• Budget well: Now that you know what your goals are, it’s time to set up your budget. Creating a budget will help you to save if you require extra funding for your marketing. It will also help you to keep track of your expenses and make your accounting easier. You don’t want to budget less or run out of funds so it may be helpful to get the advice of experts.
• Find your target market: Your audience is essential to making your business successful. You need to target the right market for your advertising to turn them into successful leads. Advertising is important here. Utilise social media marketing, as well as print advertising. You can even promote your business on the local radio station.
• How to market and advertise an eCommerce store?: eCommerce marketing uses a range of strategies to increase brand awareness and convert leads into sales (convince someone likely to be interested in the product to purchase the product online). These strategies change often as the digital age is continuously evolving. It is therefore important to keep up with the latest marketing trends and to never stop learning.Visuals are also important when it comes to marketing an eCommerce store. Your customer’s first impression of your brand is the visuals. It needs to be colourful and attractive to people, and also mobile-friendly as most people will prefer buying items from their phone for convenience.Although things change, marketing consistency is also important. Sounds confusing? What we mean is that while taking on new trends or incorporating new digital tools is essential for marketing your business, your marketing methods need to be consistent with your brand image. For example, your brand voice and tone should be the same across all of your marketing channels. If you are representing a family-friendly brand, your copy and tone throughout your social media channels should be family-friendly, and you should avoid negative ads or anything that will ruin your reputation.
• Email marketing: Email marketing is the oldest form of digital marketing. It has evolved to more than just spamming random people’s email addresses. Today email automation is used to target specific customers that previously purchased from you and to market products that are more likely to be interested in buying.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO): SEO is a powerful tool that uses paid ads and search engines to help your business to gain customers. It involves the use of clever keywords and content optimisation to bring in traffic to your website. The content you use can include your blogs and social media channels.
• Referrals and testimonials: Word of mouth is still an excellent way to get leads. The more positive things people say about your business, the more likely they are to bring in more customers to your website. Your reputation matters here as customers will put up reviews after buying your products or using your services. Ensure your Google review or website testimonials are up to date with good customer reviews.

Use inventory management tools such as an automated inventory management system that works directly with eCommerce store websites. These tools help each store to monitor stock levels. There are also eCommerce marketing automation tools that can help to track and reward your customers, email campaign tools to help you to generate more sales, and order management automation tools to handle your online store operations. Automation tools help to make your job faster and easier. The software can also correctly mark orders and track deliveries to ensure that mistakes are eliminated. It saves your business time and money.

• Sell on marketplaces easily and quickly with automation software. Automation software can help you to track your listings and prices on multiple platforms.
• There are tools available to help you automatically load bulk products on multiple platforms. 
• There are also tools to help you with your pricing strategies to ensure that you are getting the best money for your products. 
• Target specific customers for a specific marketplace by researching marketplaces across platforms.
• Be active and engaging with your customers throughout all of your platforms. 
• Consult an expert for advice on eCommerce marketing and what e-commerce marketing tools will suit your particular business goals.

If you aren’t already using Cloud-based EDI solutions, you should consider investing in them. These solutions can help you to connect with your customers and suppliers and improve your business activities. Apart from its simplicity, Cloud-based EDI solutions are widespread throughout e-commerce industries and work across systems across the world. It comes with a range of benefits to help your business to give your eCommerce store a much-needed boost in the digital world. Not to mention, it is an affordable way to ensure your business keeps up to date with software solutions.

You need to choose an international market. Don’t forget that international selling is more than just choosing the best market out there. There are factors to consider to ensure your business targets, customers, in that particular market. If you don’t target customers, your business will fail. There are some factors you should consider, including:

• The languages spoken at the markets you want to attract. 
• The culture of the country. 
• Consumer culture. 
• Licencing. 
• Shipping costs. 
• Political issues that could affect your sales
• Taxes. 

Address these factors, do your research and consult experts and you’ll be prepared to start selling to international markets. 

• Social media marketing: Social media marketing helps you to promote your online eCommerce store by connecting your business to your audience. You can build your popularity by posting on social media networks related to your business. Popular platforms used for eCommerce advertising include Instagram and TikTok, or a Facebook Business page.
• Content marketing: Content helps you to target the right audience and sell your products. Content marketing tools are essential and make your content marketing a lot easier. Content marketing includes working on your product pages and adding relevant keywords to target your consumer. These include page titles, headers, and even text on images.
• Email Marketing: Email marketing gives your sales a bump. Email can be used to bring a customer back to their abandoned shopping cart or to let them know when a new product they will be interested in launches.

1. Build your brand awareness

Some ways to build your brand awareness include:

• Post regularly on social media
• Create a search engine optimisation (SEO) strategy 
• Use a brand awareness campaign 
• Use paid ads

2. Build email lists and use email marketing

The secret of email marketing is to get people to sign up for your email newsletters. Try offering your customers a discount or free shipping if they sign up for your email newsletters. Don’t forget to personalise it to suit your target market.

3 Improve your conversion rate by A/B testing

Find out what works for your customers by trying out different marketing strategies. A/B testing is an analytical tool to help you out here.

e-Commerce automation tools are the business solutions to improve your sales and boost your business reputation. Terracor Business Solutions helps your business by finding eCommerce solutions that work best for your company. We have a range of automation tools to help you to simplify your day-to-day work processes. The result? Less time is used up on processes that take up too much of your resources. You can also save money as automation can help your staff to improve their marketing abilities so you wouldn’t have to hire more staff to help out. Let’s not forget Terracor Business Solutions have some of the best testimonials of excellent result rates for eCommerce businesses.

• Software integration services: We provide you with integration services to automate your invoicing and administrative process. You can connect your CRM directly to your accounting software to easily track revenue earned from sales conversations. Our Automation tools will help to reduce the risk of human error and keep your data up-to-date.
• E-commerce implementation and platforms for your business: We provide a platform where individuals can your business can communicate effectively with clients.
• Business consulting: Our business consulting services can help you to stay ahead of our ever-changing digital world. We will offer you advice to help you adapt to market dynamics regardless of what your company is going through.

For help with your eCommerce store or to find out more info on starting an eCommerce store, contact the Terracor Business Solutions team today!