How To Cut Through The Noise And Make Your eCommerce Store Shine
When I first started out in business I was a gung-ho university student with the Midas touch. I was 18 and built massively ‘outwardly’ successful businesses around event promotion, design, printing, and the web. But every year I’d look back and think, wow, I knew virtually nothing last year. With a million lessons learned and as my business acumen grew, so did real financial success, but it was a long time before I’d put enough of the dots together to build &Mine and be able to positively influence others.
No matter where you are on the eCommerce pathway, you’ll need to invest a reasonable amount of time. Like most things in life, if you already have experience with customers, products, distribution, strategy and you know the ‘what makes things sell’ magic dust that businesspeople absorb from years of trial and error (you’ve failed enough to know); you guys are going to have a leg up when it comes to navigating the dos and don’ts.
However, if you don’t have business insight in spades, but were born this side of the 1990s, you’re probably pretty damn good on the ol’ internet. So the fresh digital natives, your first challenge is to ‘get’ what the commercially savvy already know. For everyone else thinking, well “I’m a housewife (etc) and don’t fit into those categories”, no stress regarding success, you may just have to chip away at it a little longer.
From experience with clients, it’s far easier to teach an old dog new tricks. Especially if you are open to digital and, after investing some time or rupee, see value in spending half a day on Instagram because it is generating sales. So anyone 35 plus, remember – stay patient and keep trying to answer questions like – what would the youngsters do on Twittagram? And youngsters, if you do know how to get the word out there on Snapchat but want a real business so you can stop working at Woolworths, time to figure out what a USP is.
While I don’t have a silver bullet, I do have constraints which cannot be overlooked. These I’ve put into my Top 10 below and, please keep in mind, I’m pitching this at the moderately knowledgeable. If you need to know more, try Google or your network and if you’re out of your depth (Like when you start to Google symptoms, stop, seriously, go see a Doctor) please seek professional help or hire smart people.
1. Don’t shoot for the stars and think you’ll land on the moon
Define what success is for you and go for that goal first. Be true to this, know the profit per month which means this is a business not a hobby. For traditional traders, set the eCommerce channel to do a low percentage of your bricks and mortar stores in the first year. And know if you set the bar too high, your investment costs and time will, on average, be relative.
2. Know your product
Sell something you are passionate about, it will make every day easier. There will be a ton of people selling similar products online and offline so understanding every detail about your space and competitors means you aren’t leaving out something obvious which is inhibiting sales. Remember, people used to drive down the road if they thought there was a better offer, now they can click through 20 sites in the same time.
3. Know your customer
Who are you selling to? Develop personas on your customers, segment them in re-targeting EDM databases, provide unique campaigns for unique groups. If you can’t influence your core customer base online, find someone or people who will.
4. KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid!)
A cliché I know, but with mobile first design philosophies leading strategy if you can’t simplify your site to be as clean as possible on a mobile you’ll lose more people because of bad user experience. Build your desktop site like your mobile site. Keep you eCommerce store design Simple. Add complexity to the site (eg. you may also like this or reviews) with navigation and page hierarchy, not by trying to stuff in everything on one screenshot.
5. Multi-Channel Campaigns – DIY – Get your hands dirty or pay for it
Instagram, Search, Apps, Facebook, TVC, Maildrops – whichever platforms you run for marketing, you need to understand what makes them tick. On-trend characteristics of platforms and their demographics vary massively, but there is a ton of convergence happening across media and we see the strongest results when a multi-channel and consistent approach is rolled out.
6. You’ll Pay for Reach and Influencers
Your product isn’t going to go viral because you post a funny cat meme on Facebook. For retailers, the old joke is the store which puts an A-frame out the front saying “Now open” and expecting people to walk in. So unless you accidentally stumble off a cliff with a go-pro strapped to you and land in pool of Jello full of bikini models and say something hilarious (somehow also sneaking in your company URL for the worldwide news story of course), reaching a lot of people isn’t easy or cheap.
There are always cost effective opportunities still out there. For example, if you are quick to leverage Instagram with a killer visual strategy today but know with advertising starting on the platform it will soon be monetized like Facebook – you’ll pay for reach. Good opportunities are arising through crowdsourced influencer networks. Hunt and find your own cost effective social ambassadors.
7. Buy Purchasers, Not Visitors
While you do need to pay for reach or get on the right wave with a social platform in its ‘popular but pre-revenue stage’, I don’t care which platforms or platform you choose. I do care that you figure out how to track from the click a customer makes on Facebook, or Instagram, eBay, or Google Shopping, or Radio (yes you can track radio – you need a unique URL or phone number) and what it costs to purchase a new customer.
If you know what it is costing you to grow your customer bases, you can calculate what it will mean in sales to grow your business.
8. Iterate in Market
Try the lean canvas model if you are a startup or drill into your seasoned sales and campaign data to have clear indicators around your eChannel growth. You can do all the forecasting in the world but digital moves fast and if you are not highly responsive in the market, you’ll be out.
9. USP
Do you have one? If not you’ll need something in terms of brand territory or geographic territory in your space or you are just another “Me-Too” company and everything will be hard.
10. Stay Platform Agnostic
You’ll notice I didn’t say you need a specific channel eg. Instagram page or a blog or an SEO team etc. While we see multi-channel marketing as ideal, which platforms you should choose and that work is up to you and your team. Same thing goes for the technology you use.
Finally a word on the outliers. Yes, we all hear about those eCommerce stores that have had overnight success. Just remember that it was 1000s if not more people trying to get an eCommerce store up and dominating in a category and a handful of out-of-this-world success stories that came of it. Probability says that sometimes you do just need to be in the right place at the right time with the right product. But if you don’t want to end up in the bucket of high failure rates, follow those 10 points above and, most of all, enjoy the challenges ahead.
