Make a Success of E-Commerce
E-commerce can be a daunting concept if you have never delved into offering online purchasing options before. Even if it is something that you have been doing for many years there is always room for improvement; complacency sets in very easily and it can be a while before you realise that you've slipped behind the competition and your e-commerce site is no longer the top choice in your market.
Being successful in e-commerce is a case of raising awareness and brand building to put your product or service in the public eye, and more importantly in the eyeline of your core audience. One of the first things to do when launching an e-commerce website or marketing campaign is to identify your target market, in both a broad and vertical sense. Say your product is aimed primarily at people with an interest in DIY – you may assume that your customers will be mostly married men and while that is a large proportion of your demographic it is also important to consider other potential markets. Women are also interested in DIY, as are single men and possibly more rurally located people than urban dwellers. All these target audiences will have different behaviours, so by profiling each one and understanding where they spend time online, how they shop and research and how they purchase you can start to see which online channels to use for each type of market.
At the same time as identifying who you are marketing to it is vital to set out exactly what you want to achieve from marketing activities. You can use past campaigns to inform your targets, but they must be both realistic and measureable; there is no way of knowing when you have reached your goals if you are not measuring visitor levels, conversion rates, social media followers or whatever you have decided on as a metric.
Parua are very experienced at guiding people through this process. We know what the best metrics and goals are for certain business types and we are always happy to work with our customers to achieve what is possible while striving for a better than expected outcome to your campaigns. Our profiling experience and inside-out knowledge of social media marketing means we can advise on the best channels and approaches to use for each of your vertical target demographics as well as how to use social media and other online channels to reach a broader section of your audience.
We can help you build on these basic activities and create plans for attracting customers on a continual basis as well as one-off campaigns for seasonal activity spikes in your sector, or for new product launches. We can also create a conversion plan for your site, which will help to turn visitors into customers and improve the rate at which this happens. We use our knowledge combined with statistics from your e-commerce site to identify where improvements can be made. This can involve testing different layouts and running user tests on new ideas which may help turn browsers into buyers.
Customer retention and encouraging repeat sales is a very important activity as a returning customer can be cheaply contacted via email and offered special prices or incentives to buy again. When you consider it may have cost you £5 to obtain a first sale from a new customer then you have a chance to increase your turnover without also increasing your advertising spend by turning that one-off sale into a repeat customer.
This is where those intial steps come back in to play; now that marketing campaigns have been established and run it is time to assess the outcomes of those activities. We will report back on the measurement of everything that was identified as an area for growth and suggest ways to further improve on your new-found success.
So you see, e-commerce does not have to be confusing or costly if you work with the right people. We are excited to hear from you about how we can help grow your business.
