If you´re looking at starting or are going to be running an online store, be it to sell your own products, re-sell a particular line of clothing or anything at all, there are certain things that can give you the edge above other stores and get you selling more than ever. Running a successful online store can progress into huge things and make you a lot of money if done correctly. Take a look at these 5 tips one starting and running an online store.
Make sure your delivery times deliver
One of the most important thing is that the level of service that you give is high. Making sure that everything that is purchased within the time indicated to client when they made the purchase. Having a delayed delivery time can impact terribly on the credibility of your store, all it takes is a couple of clients to make complaints online about the poor service and it could dissuade many future clients from purchasing from your store. You can avoid this from happening by employing online reputation management combined with stepping up the level of service to avoid bad reviews in the future.
Make sure you have enough product
Something which affects thousands of online stores is when they run out of stock, running out of stock can have bigger implications than you believe. With a store being online, it is very likely that thousands of other online stores are selling the same or similar types of products. If you ever run out of a particular item this could mean that people head to a different place that does have it, and then use that as their default store for buying products of that type, keep your stock in check!
Website functionality
Keep your website nice to look at, easy to use and error free. A poor looking website will often dissuade clients from buying. Websites that are difficult to navigate can often cause huge problems in ecommerce as people grow tired of how the website works and decide to shop elsewhere, keep it simple. Errors in ecommerce can cause an online store to lose a great amount of money, if you have errors then people will get frustrated or feel unsafe and leave to shop in another store, get a good provider for your website and keep it error free
Payment methods
The more payment methods the better. Everyone is different and if they always pay online using a certain payment method that you don´t have they won´t purchase. Get as many payment methods as you can.
Advertising
A fantastic way to put you above the rest of the online stores is to do some advertising. Take a look a retargeting advertising which redirects the user back to the site and is usually a commission based business model, meaning if the retargeting advert didn´t convert, you don´t pay anything. Look at getting your brand out there
Running an online store requires hard work and the ability to see from the client’s point of view. We have all done online shopping before, remember the things that annoyed you on other sites and make sure that you don´t have anything like it on yours!