Today, every business owner wants to take his business online and target a large number of audiences altogether. According to a rough estimate, around 12-24 million eCommerce stores are selling products on the internet around the globe. All the online retail stores are selling products in different niches. Now, if you are planning to launch a new eCommerce store in this incredibly competitive market, then making your own presence in this tight market is very hard.
The eCommerce market has so much competition that small stores are merely making $1000 US annually. Thus, if you want to flourish your eCommerce business in this market situation, then you have to stand out in the crowd. You have to create a marketing strategy and product distribution plan which has to be innovative and creative at the same time.
And, to cut the competitive edge out, you have to enrich your technology features and strategies. Yep, technology is the best weapon to survive in the eCommerce market and to grow consistently. For instance, you can beat your competitors in shipping time by using the advance technology tools to swiftly deliver your orders. Now, when you are delivering products at a faster speed, then as compared to other online stores – you will obviously attract more customers.
But, it is easier said than done, the process of fostering the customer’s loyalty while making a stand out remark isn’t a piece of cake. However, if you have a well-researched and analyzed plan of action, then you can easily make your position in the market.
5 Strategies to Stand Out Your eCommerce Startup
For startup owners, the key ingredient to becoming successful is to be different. If you are following a path of uniqueness, then success isn’t far away from you. But, how to stand out in the eCommerce market when there is so much variation already present. Simple, you have to use the latest technologies and map out a solid action plan. To start your online business, you can build your plan of action around these 5 strategies for the beginning.
Strategy 1. Sell New & Improved Goods
The dynamic strategy that you should follow is to offer new and innovative products to your customers. It’s a pretty simple phenomenon, if you are selling the same products as the other popular stores which are running a business for years already, then how will you find your customer base. Now, if you thinking that you will cut down costs and give competition, then you are naïve. That’s because the price can be easily reduced by your competitors plus you are a startup and you can’t afford to lose any money at low prices.
But, if you stop being a copycat for a moment and keep a keen eye on the emerging technologies and market trends, then you can hit the nerve of customers with your new and better products. Moreover, you can add the twist of your innovation and develop something entirely unique or make improvements in the existing products.
For example, the outbreak of COVID-19 has increased the demand for online grocery shopping as people are avoiding going out of their homes. Now, if in this situation, by using the latest technologies, you can deliver essential goods at the doorsteps of your customers within 2 hours, then this will automatically make you unique. In this case, both technology and strategy have been used together.
You need to always remember that your products help in creating the buzz. When you are the only eCommerce in the market that is offering delivery within two hours, then why will people shop from anywhere else as everyone wants quick delivery. But, here, you can’t sit back once you have stricken the nerve of the market trends because your competitors can easily follow your footsteps. Thus, you need to constantly work on finding new and better ways to stand out from your products. There’s no break time in the eCommerce business.
Strategy 2. Create a High Tech Shop
In a traditional store, you work hard on making your shop look presentable and appealing for the eyes of customers. This same principle applies in the eCommerce stores too, but the only difference is that your shop is a website here. So, you need to work on creating a user friendly and engaging website of your store. To create a highly professional and user-friendly eCommerce website, you can hire the professional eCommerce development services that can offer you the best outcome.
It is recorded that a customer hardly spends five seconds on a website and if he or she didn’t find desired information within those five minutes, then the customer immediately leaves your website. So, you have to work on the design and presentation of your eCommerce website before targeting your customers. According to the leading eCommerce development services, a good eCommerce website must have –
- Keep the layout and theme of the website simple. Don’t over-complicate the website design as most of your visitors only have basic knowledge of the internet.
- Follow the perspective of viewers. You need to think like a viewer while designing your online store.
- Use colors very carefully on your site. With the right color psychology, you can easily capture the attention of viewers as different colors have a separate meaning.
- To increase conversions, you have to use high-quality images and graphics on your website as plain text isn’t sufficient anymore.
- Don’t spend days in creating the long product descriptions – just craft short and informative product descriptions that can be easily scanned by viewers and it would be sufficient.
- Your website should look professional because buyers are going to entrust you with their confidential information like credit card details, email, passwords, etc.,
- Importantly, the website should be easy to access so that a new viewer can smoothly find his way to your store and shop without any hassle.
- Include customer reviews, testimonials or video feedback so that new buyers can read the satisfaction of the previous customers.
Strategy 3. Develop Your Voice
Your startup eCommerce store might not be able to compete on pricing, shipping or unique product listing, but you can get recognized in the market by developing your own voice. Branding is one of the important mantras of success nowadays. Your business can be copied by anyone, but no one can copy or follow your branding techniques.
To develop your brand, you have to access a few factors internally and ask a couple of questions from yourself –
- Do you sell anything handmade?
- Do you follow the environment-friendly approach?
- How is your product better than your competitors?
- How your brand personality is unique or quirky?
- Can you bring freshness to the market through your products?
- Can you create a personalized shopping experience for your every customer?
Once you evaluate your brand carefully, then you will find how your store is different than any other online store. When you develop your brand around your website’s unique features, then you will be able to create a unique brand of your business. This brand will be only yours and no one can copy that. Using your unique brand, you can approach your customers and create your fixed position in the market.
Related: Key Reasons Why Strong Branding is Important for eCommerce Web Design
Strategy 4. Socially Engage Your Website
When you have created a new website, then you need to give a little push to your visitors so that they can shop from your portal. Moreover, if you are finding that people are coming to your site, but they aren’t making any purchase, then you have to help them in making the decision by using different social engaging techniques. There are plenty of different ways to make your website engaging and some of the examples are –
Endorsements – When people see that your products are endorsed by famous personalities or celebrities, then this will highlight the image of your brand. Brand endorsement should be relevant to your products. For instance, if you are selling sports products, then hiring a famous sports personality to endorse your website would be a great idea.
Reviews – The customer reviews has a great place in social engagement – both bad and good reviews are equally important. Good customer reviews offer insight to future customers, thus you should publish real customer reviews on your website.
Share your Experience – Apart from the comprehensive customer reviews, it is recommended to share the full experience of the customers. Encourage your customers to send pictures of themselves using or trying your product, if possible. The pictures leave a long-lasting impact on the future customer’s mind.
Add Like Button – You should introduce a like or favorite on your site so that customers can rate your products. The customer rating helps in displaying the total number of likes that show your new customers how popular and trendy are your products.
Social Media Marketing – Today, if you don’t have a social media presence, then you can’t grow your business. You should make your presence known on all the leading social media platforms as they help you to connect directly with your customers directly and get their real feedback.
Strategy 5. Make Mobile Friendly Store
In 2020, approximately 3.5 billion mobile users are present. Now, if you want these 3.5 billion people to shop from your store, then you have to create mobile-friendly stores. Yep, the layout of your desktop website won’t be comfortable for the people who are viewing your website on the small smartphone screen. Thus, you have to keep the comfort of the smartphone users in your mind as well.
As per the survey conducted by Google, 72% of people want to browse mobile-friendly websites. There’s no rocket science in making your eCommerce store mobile-friendly. By making a few minor changes, you can mobile-ready your website.
Optimism Site Navigation – On the small screen, it is difficult to navigate all the products on the website. Thus, you need to create an easy to search navigation system for mobile users so that they can easily browse all the products and instantly place an order from their smartphones.
Simple Order Placement – You need to provide a simple checkout process to the mobile users where they can effortlessly enter their credit card details using their mobile and order from your website.
Fast Site – The internal processor and memory of the smartphones is less than the computer, thus you need to make your online store super light for the mobile users. If your website won’t open up promptly on the mobile devices, then users won’t bother to waste their time on your site.
Create a Responsive Website – You should work on making a responsive site because if your site won’t function quickly, then it’s a big-time bummer for the user.
Related: Why Mobile Apps are a Treasure for Your eStore?
Benefits of Following Stand Out Strategy
If you are trying to think out of the box strategies to grow your new eCommerce business, then you are welcoming plenty of different benefits in your business structure including –
- You can surpass the geographic boundaries and make customers all around the globe.
- By branding your retail store, you will get new customers with improved search engine visibility.
- Increase the revenue of your business by eliminating unnecessary costs.
- With the perfect strategy, you can establish a better communication channel with your customers and get their direct feedback.
- Your stand out policies will keep you ahead of your competitors always.
- You can develop a new niche market for your website easily.
Master Strategy – Be Trendy and Techie
There’s no doubt that the eCommerce market is swapped with the competition and only two things can help you in floating your business in this situation – the latest technologies and market trends. If you keep on using the latest technologies on your website and making marketing strategies based on the prevailing market trends, then nothing can stop your business from flourishing. So, just make your business strategies revolve around the high-end technology and prevailing market trend and you are good to become a new eCommerce market leader.