CIOInsider India Magazine

By Johnson, content writer
 

The online shopping trend in Asia alone shows that total eCommerce retail sales reached more than two trillion US dollars in revenue in September 2022. This implies that the eCommerce industry offers a lucrative opportunity to earn extra income.
Since there are many successful eCommerce businesses today, there are plenty of resources, tips, and tools you can utilize and learn from. Continue reading as we compile six helpful eCommerce tips for beginners in this article.

1. Create a Customer-Centric Online Store
The first point to consider before you start selling online is to understand the potential customers’ needs. Large-scale businesses also use this eCommerce marketing strategy, so it’s important to develop a customer-centric approach at the beginning of your business.
Before launching a new product, conduct market research by listening to your customers’ needs. Then, implement the responses to improve the customer journey. You can also integrate relevant technologies like chatbots, virtual assistants, or product customization tools to enhance the shopping experience.
When designing a customer-centric business, remember that you don’t need to satisfy the entire market. Decide on a business niche so that you can focus on offering the best services to customers that match your eCommerce vision or identity.

2. Design a Mobile-Friendly Website
62.06% of internet sessions are accessed through mobile devices, so there’s a significant chance that your customers are browsing from their phones. This statistic shows how crucial it is for any online shop to have a mobile-ready interface.
A mobile-friendly website has a responsive layout that can rescale itself according to the screen sizes of various devices. That means your eCommerce website can maintain optimal performance without experiencing issues on both mobile and desktop platforms.
As a result, a mobile-friendly eCommerce site can also help to elevate the customer shopping experience.
Fortunately, there are a lot of resources and tools to help you create a responsive website. Many videos and blog posts even provide a website design tutorial to guide complete beginners. Once you get the website live, make sure to check if it renders properly using site responsiveness tools.

3. Apply Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
One of the most crucial eCommerce tips to apply is making use of SEO. It is among the best free digital marketing efforts with the main purpose of making your website appear on the first page of search engine results pages (SERPs). If maintained consistently, it can help increase organic traffic, raise brand awareness, and boost online sales or conversions.
There are on-page and off-page SEO practices. On-page optimization refers to the efforts you put directly into your site – including internal linking, targeting potential keywords, and creating a navigable website structure.
On the other hand, off-page SEO refers to the actions you do to improve a site's rank on search engines outside the web pages. This includes building quality backlinks and enhancing synchronization with social media marketing.
For most new businesses, SEO efforts often do not show instant effects. Any SEO strategy needs consistent upkeep in many different aspects. Make sure to approach it based on some SEO best practices, and don’t be discouraged if you experience trials and errors at the beginning.

4. Secure Your eCommerce Business
The majority of eCommerce sites store customer data. At the very least, online stores will ask for payment details and the customer’s shipping address. Therefore, website security should be a top priority when building an eCommerce store.
Collecting other people’s data carries a larger risk for cyber attacks like data theft or viruses. Therefore, to prevent serious damage that can hurt your brand’s reputation and customers’ trust, ensure to choose a secure website hosting plan that provides the following:
● SSL certificates
● Regular data backups
● Automatic software updates
● Network firewalls

5. Make Use of Social Media Platforms
Business social media pages can enhance your internet commerce marketing in many ways. For example, you can communicate directly with the target audience, share testimonials, display an online catalog, and implement an influencer marketing strategy.
Through social media, online store owners can experiment with engaging visual content. If combined with a good story-telling approach, your brand can be relatable to potential buyers. The benefit of this is that you can also achieve indirect conversational marketing.
Furthermore, social media enables your eCommerce brand to market events and campaigns more easily. Curate creative and unique promotional activities to attract customers and make your business stand out.
For example, if larger-scale online stores offer free shipping methods, you can provide exclusive privileges for customers who make a certain amount of transactions.

6. Schedule Your Activities

Though not as time-consuming as building a brick-and-mortar shop, there are still a lot of initial tasks in building an online store. Before implementing the eCommerce tips stated above, create a clear schedule you can follow. List the tasks to complete, then arrange them in a realistic time frame to prevent any oversights.
Aside from your schedule as a small business owner, we also recommend creating a content plan for your business website and social media. Doing so can help you stay consistent in reaching the goals of your business’ content marketing strategy.
It’s also crucial to decide on your store’s long-term and short-term goals, as this will help you evaluate the progress of your eCommerce journey. Use relevant scheduling tools for efficiency and a seamless organization of project and product launch timelines.
Conclusion
Building an online store is easier and more cost-effective than building a physical store. However, it might not be as simple as it seems.
There are many aspects to consider, from building a responsive and secure website to launching online marketing campaigns.
To help you out, we’ve listed six eCommerce tips for a successful online store:
1. Create a customer-centric online store
2. Design a mobile-friendly website
3. Apply SEO
4. Secure your eCommerce business
5. Make use of social media platforms
6. Schedule your activities

We hope this article helps kickstart your online business journey. Good luck!