Now that you realize Selling Online is the next step in your businesses evolution, the next thing that you really need to dig into is finding the right ecommerce platform for you.
Stay Above Your Competition
Have you been considering selling online? Are you an existing business owner who needs to expand online? Or do you have the next big thing (or even just your next big thing) that you think is perfect to launch via online retail? In this series of blog posts we’re going to dig in and examine some of the key pillars of success that I’ve seen time and time again helping hundreds of thousands of business owners sell online.
Michael wanted to buy a $1000 laptop from Best Buy for Mother’s Day. Only he couldn’t. While the product page bragged of “free shipping,” Best Buy was not willing to ship the item. At all. Losing the customer’s trust can be the biggest killer of sales, so it is important to do everything to make the consumer checkout experience run smoothly. This can be done by simply choosing the right shopping cart software and following these best practices for decreasing shopping cart abandonment.
Recently, a friend of mine invited me to take a look at the website for the business that they work for. The site, while not an ecommerce site per se, does give customers the option to make appointments and order services online. As such, there are multiple calls to action on the site. That’s the good news.
The bad news? Aside from the fact that the background of the site is black and the call to action (CTA) buttons are glaringly bone white, the buttons themselves don’t really inspire much action.
How can you, as an ecommerce storeowner avoid this same problem and improve the messages that your call to action buttons are actually sending? Just as importantly, how can you clearly communicate these messages to a wide range of site visitors?
Let’s face it, no one likes criticism, even constructive criticism intended to help us. Ecommerce store owners are no exception to this rule, and it can often seem like online criticism is the hardest to ignore and combat. You can’t talk to the disgruntled customer in person, after all, and they are free to post negative comments and reviews about your business and products online at will.
Just how important are customer-generated reviews? According to a recent survey conducted by Minacs Marketing Solutions, 52% of consumers said that positive reviews make them more likely to choose one business over another.
