Major marketplaces, like eBay and Amazon, normally have restrictive seller policies. These e-commerce platforms downplay any merchant’s branding in order for their overall image to remain homogenous.
For merchants with their own online stores, they play a whole different game. They have full control over the experiences of their customers. Whether it’s featuring a store sale or rearranging product placement, sellers can use their website to directly connect with their customers, encourage purchases, and address any pre- or post-sale queries.
With the many possibilities one can do, online store owners may not know where to start when building their shop.
To start attracting buyers and retaining loyal customers, here are some useful tips for creating a successful online store.
Engaging Website Design
It doesn’t matter if you offer the best product ever in your niche and have the best customer support service on top of that – if your store’s online website design is lousy and poorly-made, the presence of your online business is bound to fail. Studies have shown that 93% of buyers consider visual appearance to be the most important element when making a purchase.
To build a profitable online store, you can hire a web designer or you can do it yourself. You can also just get a ready-made template and customize it according to your preferences.
Design elements should enthrall visitors, such as avoiding distraction with minimal text and using full-width images, like what this website Stillfriday.com have done to their main page.
Create an Interesting, SEO-driven Blog
If you want your site to become successful, it has to generate more store traffic. One effective solution for this is by running a blog. Blog posts that contain useful information for consumers coupled with SEO keywords can potentially rank high in search engine results. Blog articles that rank well and entice people to check out your site are your sure-fire ticket to people visiting your shop’s product pages and completing orders.
Blog posts have the ability to build buyer trust, especially when they provide some value to the reader, such as offering expert advice on how to use a product or an insightful niche-related topic.
To learn more tips that can help make your new online business more successful, click here.
Team Up with other Brands
For many buyers, it is normal for them to feel uneasy when paying with their hard-earned money to avail goods or services from a company they don’t know much about. Establish your reputation by showing which other companies are also working with you. There is no need to go all out and partner with big-scale brands like Apple or Coca-Cola, but even small companies will be enough and can already add a degree of trustworthiness to your brand.
The more companies you team up with, the better.
On your homepage, highlight partner companies to instantly showcase your reputation to your site audience. If you have several partners, better showcase them all. The more partners you have, the more buyer trust you will build.
This website shows the benefits when you team up and network with the best companies that offer quality products and services in line with your niche/industry.