With great sales comes great competition.
eCommerce startups face competition not only from other online retailers, but from brick-and-mortar stores pivoting to include online sales in their revenue streams. However, eCommerce is edging out in store retail sales and taking up more growth share in the market.
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If you’re new to running an eCommerce business or even simply interested in exploring options to scale your business, choosing the right site or platform to host your shop is an important first step in your eCommerce marketing strategy.
There are many platform options available for eCommerce startups, and choosing the best site for your business comes down to your specific requirements and budget restrictions.
Here are some questions to consider if you’re not sure where to start:
Don’t be afraid to spend quite a bit of time determining which eCommerce platform is best for small businesses and fits into your eCommerce marketing plan. This is an important decision that impacts your budget, your eCommerce advertising capabilities, and even overall branding.
Our suggestion is to seek out reviews and in-depth eCommerce platform comparisons before you commit to one.
Shopify is one of the easier platforms to get started on because it’s very beginner friendly and offers a lot of support resources for its users. You’ll find plenty of Shopify alternatives, but in the wide world of eCommerce, we have been able to write many Shopify success stories thanks to the functionality of the platform. There are also tons of examples of eye-catching Shopify stores to pull inspiration from that prove this is one of the best eCommerce platforms for small businesses.
To get the most out of your Shopify experience, you’ll want to explore what the App Store has to offer—and it’s a lot! Because there are so many options available, the App Store can seem overwhelming. With the right research, patience, and experimenting, you will be able to build a Shopify store that’s optimized for your business.
If you’re new to the eCommerce game and exploring where you can sell, you might have been interested to learn about the introduction of Facebook Shops in May of 2020.
Facebook Shops is different from Marketplace or traditional online-only eCommerce because it is aimed at small brick-and-mortar businesses looking to bring their services online. Shops is fully integrated in the Facebook user experience, meaning that if someone is browsing their Facebook feed and ends up on a business’ Shop page, they will be able to browse, communicate, and buy without ever leaving the social media platform.
If you’re already using social media advertising, this is another social media marketing tool to consider.
What does the new Facebook Shops mean for your eCommerce business launch? Well, for one thing you will have a new opportunity to connect with customers. Shops will be integrated into Facebook and Instagram to reach customers where they’re at.
You might be worried that Facebook Shops is just another thing to have to monitor on top of your business’ website. Luckily, Facebook Shops can be set up automatically with a number of third-party platforms so you can reach more customers without any extra hassle.
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How are you getting your online store in front of the right audiences?
Marketing can eat up time and money, especially when you just can’t seem to find your correct audience. Make sure you're setting the right foundation to build target audiences that generate sales instead of wasting clicks.
Facebook for Business is an incredibly powerful tool for customizing audiences, especially for eCommerce. Not only do you get access to millions of users on Facebook and Instagram, you can also take advantage of the many Facebook integrations with popular platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce.
When building your custom audiences, you’ll want to focus your attention on six types of audiences:
Window shoppers
Cart abandoners
Recent purchasers
Category/infrequent purchasers
Loyal customers
High lifetime value customersWe get it. Starting a new business is daunting, especially in the competitive eCommerce space. You’re probably worried about failure. Our advice: don’t be.
Failure turns into learning, which can be translated into success. Let’s take a look at some eCommerce successes and what they can teach you about your own business.
Your eCommerce store should present your brand and products with an intent to sell. A gorgeous website doesn’t mean much if it can’t convert sales. Sleek widgets, great copy, and beautiful pictures are great tools, but if your call to action is buried, what is motivating the window shopper to become a buyer? On the flip side, your side should not seem so functional that your branding is lost—this, too, can turn off new browsers.
Does your website homepage support your conversion goals, or does it just take up space? Remember that as a rule of thumb, your homepage will be the first thing your customer sees when they enter your site. This page serves as a sort of lobby for shoppers visiting your storefront, providing all the information that a shopper needs to find what they are looking for.
A good homepage urges shoppers to move past that page to view what your store has to offer. Check out this homepage from Penny Lane Sink Co that’s optimized to get the customer to keep browsing.
This homepage features a clear logo, a shopping bag, free shipping offer, and a clear call to action that isn’t buried down the page. The free shipping and drain choice motivates shoppers to start looking because they know that down the line they won’t have to worry about high shipping rates.
While your homepage is the lobby that most of your web traffic will pass through, landing pages serve a different purpose.
Landing pages are created specifically for marketing campaigns to convert visitors. An effective landing page is focused on a particular traffic stream, targeted to audiences who you have determined are most likely to care about your offer.
A good landing page removes the distractions of your website and narrows the viewer’s focus to a page tailored for their audience group. This could mean they are entering the landing page based on their level of brand awareness, demographics, interests, behavior, and even location.
Other than being a backlink behemoth, Canva has an impressive catalog of landing pages, as well. Canva landing pages optimize for user intent. Check out the example of a landing page created for people looking to create a greeting card online.
This landing page invites visitors to start designing custom cards, shows you a glimpse of what to expect in their design creator, and keeps clutter down to a minimum so the user isn’t distracted or overwhelmed.
Notice that when we talk about building landing pages, we're aiming for a good landing page, not a “perfect” landing page. Truth be told, a perfect landing page does not exist. It’s easy to fall down a rabbit hole of landing page testing to optimize for conversions, but don’t get caught in that trap.
The majority of landing page testing comes from initial gains after the first round of improvements. After that point, it’s probably best to move on from landing page testing.
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