Having an e-business is very popular today. It’s convenient, you get to promote your products in a more interactive way. That is why there are over 47,000 online stores, which comprise 4.7% of the million biggest sites on the Internet. But having an e-commerce business is also rather different from how we see people usually do their business.
For starters, the ways you develop your business and methods you apply to sales and advertising are rather different. As your business is only presented by a website on the Internet, you also have to put a lot of effort into increasing conversion and traffic.
Sounds too confusing and overwhelming? Let’s take a look at top 3 quick wins to boost your e-business.
#1: Personalize
Personalization is the #1 trend in online marketing. Reportedly, 74% of online customers get annoyed with the content that doesn’t meet their expectations, interests and is irrelevant.
As the days of the “spray and pray” marketing are done and personalization approach has taken over, you also need to make it a priority for your business. If you want to quickly boost your online business with personalization, a real-time personalization approach is what you might be interested in.
Real-time personalization approach involves the following:
- Tracking online behavior to understand needs and preferences of your audience: find out what your audience is interested in with the help of the online tools like Google Analytics or Kissmetrics.
- Responding in real time: this is why you should in customer support service. Responding to your customers in real life will boost positive reviews and make your clients feel appreciated and valued.
- Measuring and analyzing: online surveys can help you efficiently and quickly analyze the needs of your customers. You can use online tools like SurveyMonkey or Google Forms to quickly create comprehensive surveys.
Using real-time personalization approach will help you build a trusting relationship with your customers and quickly grow your business with a number of loyal followers.
#2: Offer a quick way to resolve issues
We’ve already talked about the importance of investing in customer support. But there are multiple ways how you can actually connect customer support representatives with your customers. You can choose one of the following:
- Consulting them by phone: this way requires hiring more than 10 people and investing in a specific type of equipment. But if you’re running an online fashion shop or sell multiple kinds of items, investing in customer support consultations by phone is a must for you.
- Customer support pop-up window: this type of connecting with customer support is used by many online businesses like professional writing services for online consultation. It allows them to communicate with the customers in the form of online chat and help them resolve issues quicker.
You can also create f FAQ page on your website, where you can place frequently asked questions to help your customer support service resolve any problems quickly.
#3: Don’t underestimate social media and email marketing
Social media is the realm where doing business will instantly pay off. Only on Facebook with 1.86 billion active users, there are thousands of pages where online business owners promote their products.
That is why, when doing an e-business, do not concentrate only on creating a single website. Be more interactive: you can use Facebook, Instagram or Twitter to tell the world about new products that will change people’s lives or communicate with your customers directly via Viber or Telegram.
Social media rules the marketing world but it doesn’t mean that email marketing is no longer essential. Email marketing is still an effective tool for business, as it:
- Has distinct advantages like being a more targeted way of communication and an effective means to drive sales.
- Creates a sense of belonging to a special community, as the subscribed customers receive frequent letters about the discounts that are available only to them.
For 41% of the companies, email marketing is still a leading method of communication with their customers, and there’s no need to abandon it just yet. You can also make email marketing more personalized by addressing each customer by name and offering them things from the list of items they were interested in.
You can learn about it while preparing statistics, and analyzing surveys and online customer behavior.
Conclusion
For many people, running an online business seems like an overwhelming thing to do. However, due to the abundance of online tools, it has become easier.
People nowadays prefer to buy things online, so make it as simple as possible for them. Hopefully, these tips will help you on your way to building a successful e-business.
Guest article written by: Tom Jager is professional blogger. He works at A-writer. He has degree in Law and English literature. Tom has written numerous articles/online journals. You can reach him at G+ or Facebook.