On the
Internet, it really doesn't matter if you are physically located one km away of
live in the other side of the world. It always boils down to the product
itself. Your customers will be able to find and quickly buy something they are
keen on but cannot purchase close to their geographical location. But as quick
as they can find you, they can also visit other websites doing the same
business and buy there instead. That's way you need to dominate your
"niche" market.
With such
a big audience there is much bigger prospective clients for "niche"
products, products which are unique and compete in its superior quality, design
and functionality than you can possible have by serving your local market.It's
always easier trying to be "Vintage Port Wine" online retail leader
than trying to make a dent on the "All Type of Wines" market. There's
is just too much competition, both online and offline. What the benefit for any
person on buying a simple table red wine online and wait for it to arrive if he
can just buy it on his local super-market on the way home?
The good
news is that starting a full online business requires much less investment than
a traditional one. You will be able to successfully launch it with a few
hundred Euros or Dollars instead of several thousands.
Bet Big on Branding
Your
product's perceived value to the customer is very attached to the quality of
the branding and image of your website. This also holds truth for the entire
company. People will consider a lousy online shop just as reflection of a lousy
business. Having a good company name and a matching Internet domain (like
vintageport.com) is the first step of many others. Starting your online
business by focusing on online shopping cart software instead of your core
business is very likely a mistake, especially considering the many turn-key
solutions available, like ours. This will set you free of heavily invest in
server hardware, expensive technicians and web-design boutiques to take your
business out of the ground.
A store
template fully matching your corporate image and colours, with a well-thought
logo will provide a more remember able and consistent experience to your
clients, which will help you convert into sales later. Choosing a Plus plan on
Vender grants you access to fully edit your template code, including HTML / CSS
/ JavaScript. Once again, the most important asset in your online store is the
products, and the bigger selling point on them is its images. They should
transmit as much as possible information to your clients and be crispy and
clear. To have decent images you won't need to have a last-generation camera,
any 150 Euro range camera will do, if you take care about setting proper product
background scenery, avoid light reflection and shades in our items and have
proper contrast between your online shop background and your product's images
background. White background product images against white background online
shops works best.
Be Real & Loyal
An online
store brings disadvantages to the brick-and-mortar ones. You can never know how
"real" a shop is. You cannot just feel it as you do when you enter
one of your neighborhood shops.
This is way you should try, as much as
possible, to share facts, opinions, testimonials, images of your team, building
and a brief history of you company with your online customers. This will help
your customers feel more related to you and assured they are dealing with an
authentic company and not some teenager shipping boxes from his bedroom. Be
loyal to your customers by sending them promotional coupons, reward them with a
small gift on each item purchased and confirm after every sale they are happy
with your products. This will rise up your customer loyalty and turn each of
your customer into a fan.
Quality Service, Always
Not
everybody purchases on the Internet; those who do are used to a superior
quality of service. They'll make your life easier by buying from you without a
printed product catalog, discard shop assistants and provide you their credit
card details so you can process their orders more easily and faster. Treat them
accordingly. This is modern times and there are dozens of international
shipping carriers, so, do not make them wait two weeks for their items. Three
days is more than enough. If possible include shipping costs on the total price
and provide several payment methods. Email them answers to their questions
within one day.
A great
part of business is lost due to the merchants' unresponsiveness. Have a sales
phone number posted in your website. People will want to contact you directly,
with inquiries, complains or more sales. It will also build more confidence in
them about you. A person who is adventurous enough to grant you their credit
card details and buy products they have never seen or touched should be
gratified with a great quality. From all your clients they will be those more
likely to tell all their friends about how great it was to buy from you, saying
things like "can you guys imagine I bought a 2003 Vintage Port from a
website and got it delivered next day even with a cork-opened included".
That will mean more new customers and sales for you.
Surprise
your online customers one day, they will surprise you next day.
Spreading the Word
The first
question our customers raise to us is "how do I get my store to show up in
Google". Seems a trivial question but it is not. Being indexed by Google
normally takes 1-3 weeks. Ranking high on Google can take a lifetime, depending
on how specialized your online store content (product description texts,
categories, etc) is. There are a set of things you should do to bring traffic
to your website and ultimately rank better on Google:
- Content
Content
is the most important factor for any search engine like Google, this
dictates how well your website will be ranked and against what searched
keywords it will be listed. An "Wedding Favors" online store should
have content not only about "Wedding Favors" but also about how to
create your own wedding favors, history on wedding favors; so that anyone
searching the internet on "how to create home-made favors" will be
pointed by Google to the "Wedding Favors" online store.
- Back links
A back
link is any normal link, from any third website pointing back to your website.
Google keeps track on the back links pointing to you. You ranking will depend
on how many back links you have and how important they are (as more important
the site pointing to you the better for you). To get your first back links you
can manually submit your site to website directories, like Yahoo Directory.
Later, and more importantly, you should have related websites, with similar
content to your online store, linking to you. e.g. the "Wedding
Favor" online store could benefit from a "Wedding Dresses"
website's back link. You can also propose link exchange deals by also back linking
to the "Wedding Dresses" website.
- Online Advertising
Buying
advertising is the typical way of getting traffic to your site, with the
difference that in the Internet you are very sure the ads you buy hit the right
type of person and what percentage of your investment on advertisement is
converted into sales. The leader in targeted advertising is Google Ad Words,
displaying ads accordingly the keywords people are searching. For example, if a
person searches for "Sweet Chocolate Bars" on Google it is very
likely you'll see ads to companies in the chocolate industry. That is because
these companies have bid on keyword sentences like "chocolate bar" so
that people searching for them will also be tempted to buy some of their
Chocolate Bars. You should firstly identify the keywords more related to your
business and then bid on those you predict to have a better conversion rate on
sales. If you company sells Cereal Bars you are better off betting on the "cereal
chocolate bar" than on the more general "chocolate bar" keyword
sentence. In the latter you'll be competing against all chocolate bar industry.
Also, I bet people searching for "cereal chocolate bars" are more
likely to buy you a cereal bar than those search for "chocolate
bars".
- Traditional Advertising
If you
own a brick-and-mortar business you should think about our online store as an
extension of your existing business. A 24/7 store front permanently running,
converting web-surfers to your clients. Print your store URL in all you
business cards and company merchandise and every time you invest in traditional
advertising do not forget to mention your website.
Last but
not least, efforts on spreading the word about your online store will firstly
translate in more people visiting your website but that does not imply any
sale. You should ultimately focus primarily converting visitors to clients and
not only traffic.
Lower Prices, Stock out and Launch your Products
As said
before, the cost on running an online business is substantially lower than the
traditional ones, so one good way to increase your profit and get new customers
is to reflect those lower costs in your products' price. It is also a very
smart and effective marketing approach, in comparison with buying ads. This way
you are avoiding spending money on people who check your ads but do ultimately
do not convert to buyers. By lowering prices as a marketing strategy you're
only "spending" money when a sale takes place. In short, you are
focusing in investing on customer’s not general public.
On your
brick-and-mortar store you are most of the times confined to your local,
regional or national market, sometimes saturated with competitors in the same
market (like selling Premium Champagne in France or flowers in Holland) and
selling out big stocks can be hard. This fact holds no truth in the online
market and your online store can be a good way of stocking out your inventory
in lower prices and this way getting more new customers who wouldn't buy with
the original prices. Your online customers are the best customers and one way
to appeal to them and make them feel more special is to launch new products
firstly/only at your online store. Like a new line of products in a higher
segment or a limited edition. In return they'll spread the love and share the
word among their peers.
- Continuous Improvement
How do
you estimate how much sales your store will have this week? Here is a question
for you: how much time have you spent working on your store? There is tight
relation between the continuous effort from a merchant and the performance of
his store. Online stores which are constantly updated, with new products and
new articles tend to sell more. Customers will feel when someone is taking good
care of a store or just leaving it to abandonment. Having a Twitter or Face
book feed displaying your last messages on this social networks is a great way
to build trust on your costumers.
- Build, Wait, Monitor and Improve
Patience
is also necessary in this business. Even if there's cases of over-night success
most of the cases things start slowly and keep improving along the time.
Amazon, the biggest online book retailer, took several years before even
reaching profitability, and the same happen with most successful business in
the Internet.
Focus in
building a smart online store, in line with your business image, upload your
first products and make your first attempt in online marketing. Then analyze
the results you achieve, in terms of visitors, customer and sales conversion
and improve this cycle by buying a premium template or hiring a professional
web-designer to build it, improve your products description and quality of your
images by e.g. buying a "light box" and select more effective keyword
and better target the audience of you marketing campaigns. By iterating this
cycle your online business will grow steadily representing very week a bigger
and bigger share of your entire business revenue.
All good
things take time. But at Izzonet we give to an easier way of displaying
your product through your own online store specially created for you. So at
your own comfort zone you get to sell your product at cheaper cost even with a
30 days trial.
