Research has shown that there could be as many as 24,000,000 online stores in operation right now. Cutting through the noise and achieving market domination has probably never been harder.
… Or has it?
The thing with eCommerce is that some stores succeed — and many fail. The trick is to find what works so that you’re able to a) attract the right customers in the first place and b) convert your customers into loyal ones who stick around.
Much of this has to do with the way you brand your store, as well as how you do the things that other stores aren’t doing or simply don’t want to do.
In this article, we’ll show you the 5 key things your online store needs in order to gain a market advantage.
1. A USP
A Unique Selling Point (USP) is what ensures your online store stands out from all the other faceless online stores. It can be the major difference maker that turns you into a brand that customers remember, and that they’re willing to return to over and over again.
Your USP should represent:
- your strengths
- what you do better than the competition
- your values
- what you’re offering (do not exaggerate)
- what your customers want from you (it’s of little use if your UPS doesn’t resonate with your target audience)
In essence, whenever a customer asks you “What do you do better than a competitor?” you should be able to fall back on your USP to provide an answer.
Also read: The Catchiest 7 Shopify Themes For Your Ecommerce Store
Here are some examples of what an online store’s USP might look like:
- Inclusivity: Perhaps your store targets customers who otherwise feel left out.
- Affordability: It might be that you offer products that are just as high-quality as your competitors but are cheaper to buy.
- Social conscience: Maybe you donate a portion of all sales to sustainable causes and other charities.
- Durability: You could be the online store that sells goods that could potentially last a lifetime.
Or, you could go down the route taken by coffee brand DeathWish, who targets a specific personality by claiming that their coffee is full of attitude, brashness — and is, in fact, the strongest coffee you’ll ever taste.
Also read: How To Use Social Proof To Increase Customer Loyalty in Shopify Store
2. Outstanding customer service
Over 65% of customers expect businesses to offer better customer support than ever before. The good news about this statistic is that clearly there is a gap in the market for better customer service.
If you can give your customers what they want in terms of support — such as a faster response time and updates about their delivery — you can start to dominate the market. Excellent customer support boosts loyalty and gives you a better reputation — a research has shown customer support is one of the core reasons people stick with a brand.
Also read: Top 3 Ways To Drive Traffic To Your Shopify Store
You can start by offering faster response time to their questions, alongside faster resolution, since 89% of customers say these are two of their most common gripes. To quicken things up, you could install chatbots that are “always on” and are able to answer your customer queries 24/7. Whenever a customer has a query that is too complex for the chatbot, make sure the bot redirects them to a human agent.
Other things you can do to provide better customer support include:
- train your customer support team
- be available and reachable on all your channels
- add an in-depth FAQ page to your website
- actively reach out to your customers and ask for feedback
On this latter point (feedback), you could follow Amazon’s example. Not only does Amazon provide exceptional multi-channel customer support, they also created 6 customer service tenets that are designed to make the customer experience so good that customer support is only needed when extremely necessary.
So, use customer feedback to provide an outstanding customer experience and eliminate as many of the most common gripes as possible.
Also read: 8 Best Side Hustle Ideas to Make More Money Online
3. Strong digital marketing campaigns
Digital marketing gives your online store more reach, allowing you to target customers wherever they are on various channels. You can create digital marketing campaigns to:
- raise brand awareness
- build long-term relationships with your customers
- boost sales
- increase revenue
There are many different types of digital marketing campaigns that an online store can run and we highly recommend working with digital marketing consultants if your budget stretches far enough.
You need to amend your marketing campaigns for the different stages of your sales funnel — meaning you’ll personalize your campaigns so that you target the right customers with the right marketing messages at the right time.
Also read: Best WordPress Plugins For Ecommerce Store
Here are some types of digital marketing you can explore:
SEO: Search engine optimization is the best way to increase your organic reach. It improves your visibility on Google, helps you target different user intents, and — when done right — can even get you to the top of Google’s search results for your niche.
As an online store, you’ll need to focus on keyword research, as well as optimizing your product pages so that they stand out in the SERPs. You’ll also need to take care of technical SEO — such as internal linking and making sure your images load. Here’s a guide to help you get started with eCommerce SEO.
Pay-per-click: Pay-per-click ads drive more traffic and allow you to reach customers with a budget you can afford. You only pay whenever someone clicks on your ad and the results are easy to track and measure using Google Ads (to work out the ROI, you will divide the number of clicks by how much you spent on your ads overall). Additionally, you can use PPC to direct traffic straight to your product pages.
PPC can be used throughout your funnel at all the different stages, which means you will need to create different PPC ad campaigns that target different intents — some customers will be in a buying mood, and others will be browsing. You can create ads that raise brand awareness and encourage people to join your newsletter, as well as ads that focus on selling.
Also read: How to Leverage the Power of Social Reviews to Boost Online Sales
Social media marketing: It’s highly likely that your customers use social media. This means you can execute social campaigns across platforms like Facebook and Instagram to raise awareness of your brand, products, and deals, as well as engage your customers and build sustainable relationships.
Email marketing: When you have an email list, all your customers are in one place for easy access. You can segment your list based on customer behavior, such as past purchases, and target them with offers and interesting content.
Emails you can send include welcome emails, thank you emails (for whenever a customer makes a purchase), cart abandonment emails, and promotional emails.
Also read: 10 Top Email Marketing Agencies In The UK
Your emails should include CTAs and images alongside to-the-point copy that engages the end user. You should also include links to your social profiles in order to drive more traffic — just like Perch & Parrow did with one of their cart abandonment emails:
4. Personalized experiences
Personalization in eCommerce means using data about individual customers and customer segments to target them with tailored content. This can include product recommendations, personalized greetings, and local content.
According to Mckinsey, 71% of customers now expect personalization — and many get frustrated when they can’t see it. Personalization boosts conversions because customers are seeing more relevant offers. It also boosts customer retention in the long run, with 44% of customers suggesting they will become loyal to a brand that personalized their shopping experience.
Also read: How Different Marketing Channels Affect Online Purchase Decisions? Check Yourself!
Here are a few ways you can improve the personalization of your online store:
- Segment your customers. You can create segments based on past purchases, new customers, existing customers, returning customers who have not yet made a purchase, on-site searches, product page visits, and more. Use customer segmentation tools to help.
- Personalize your product recommendations using segmentation tools. Test your campaigns that are based on past purchase history and browsing history.
- Display recently viewed items so that customers are reminded of things they’re interested in. This is a helpful feature that jogs a customer’s memory and helps them remember an item they forgot all about. Here’s how Amazon does it:
Also read: How to Leverage the Power of Social Reviews to Boost Online Sales
- Use dynamic content blocks, such as banner ads, that are based on a customer’s previous shopping habits. These let you tailor your content and ads to specific customers without disrupting their browsing (they’re not too invasive!).
Another smart idea is to personalize your email marketing campaigns. For example, you could retarget all customers who have abandoned their carts with personalized emails that are designed to bring them back to the checkout.
It’s also really important that you clearly state exactly how you intend to extract customer data and how you intend to use it. This is very important in today’s world where customers are more conscious than ever of how businesses use their data.
Also read: New Store Visits Metric Added Under ETC (Estimated Total Conversions) in Adwords
5. Efficient order fulfillment
Order fulfillment is the process of getting a customer’s order delivered to them within a reasonable timeframe. It’s extremely important that you get this right in the competitive world of eCommerce, with late deliveries leading to high customer churn.
It’s not just late deliveries that can be your undoing — customers complain about inaccurate deliveries as well as shoddy customer service.
If you can nail your order fulfillment, you can build more trust with your customers — which can go a long way to securing repeat purchases.
Also read: Start Your Own Ecommerce Business
Here are some tips to help you make your order fulfillment more efficient:
Work with the right shipper: Speak with other online businesses to find out which shipping companies they work with and do extensive research before making a commitment. The idea is to find one that is able to access your customer base easily, which means location is key. For example, if most of your customers are based in the US midwest, you’ll want to pick shipping companies based in this area or ones that at least have easy access with good rates.
Work with a 3PL: A 3PL covers a lot of bases in your logistics operations, such as distributing, storing, and transporting your goods. They can save you a lot of time, help you to keep costs down by taking over a number of logistical operations, and remove a few major headaches (such as operating from their own warehouse and hiring their own logistics staff) — enabling you to focus on the core aspects of your online store.
Also read: Inbound Marketing For Ecommerce: The Definitive Guide
Improve your inventory management: Better inventory management will go a long way to ensuring smoother order fulfillment. It will help to prevent an overstock and an understock by allowing you to accurately gauge customer demand for your products — therefore saving you money — while boosting customer satisfaction. You can invest in inventory management software to automate your processes. Also, it’s important to carry out a regular inventory audit.
Conclusion
An online store doesn’t only need to attract customers to survive, it also needs to work at building their trust so that they turn into loyal customers.
Use the tips in this article to attract customers via strong and creative digital marketing campaigns, before giving them what they want in terms of personalization, on-time deliveries, and outstanding customer service.
With customers saying that one of the main reasons they shop online is to save time, it’s extremely important that you make the online shopping experience as easy as possible for them. This also means managing your inventory so that you’ve always got what they’re looking for.
If you can deliver value and consistency on marketing channels and platforms better than your competitors, you can dominate your market.
