They make it look so easy, don’t they? Amazon, E-bay, and thousands of other e-commerce websites that seem to make money without any effort.
Well, it’s not true. They go to a great deal of effort and have entire teams of people whose sole jobs are to increase their sales and visibility. In the same way that Coca-Cola spends billions of dollars each year to stay on top, these e-commerce giants work hard every day to succeed.
Here are 5 ways that you can grow your e-commerce business that are relatively painless and won’t require an entire team:
- Go from e-commerce to M-commerce – Mobile-ready is so 2015. M-commerce sites are mobile sites built from the ground up to make shopping easy from any size device. The images are displayed large enough to really see and the checkout process tends to be smoother. There are hundreds of templates and other resources already made. In essence, rather than seeing the mobile site as an extension of your website, it becomes its own entity. With well over 90% of sales starting on mobile devices, making shopping mobility easier is essential.[su_spacer size=”50″]
- Automate birthdays and seasonal discounts – Special discounts are popular. The easiest way to make sure that they go out is to simply use the information at hand and create a discount program. Can’t find someone’s birthday? Go to their Facebook profile. If you are having the information automatically entered, the easiest way to get this information is to ask for it as people enter orders and visit your site. Then simply automate that into an email campaign that offers them discounts and promotions. [su_spacer size=”50″]
- Use long-form content to promote your products – Long-form content is articles and guides that are 3,000 to 8,000 words long. These are designed to be guides that can be applied more generally than just your own products. For example, if you sell 3D printers, “A Guide to Buying a Great 3D Printer” will get a lot of visits from people who are ready to buy. The point is just that: the only people who will read even part way through a document like that are people who are very ready to purchase products like yours. [su_spacer size=”50″]
- Conquer new territories – Localizing your website and conquering new countries with your products is a great way to expand your market. If the market is saturated where you are, look for places in the world where it’s not. The internet makes it easy to place your products in a new country and global shipping means that you can deliver your products anywhere. The most that this requires is an understanding of the tax laws and true localization of your website. There are lots of experts who can help. [su_spacer size=”50″]
- Live by the 80/20 Rule in Profits – Spend 80% of your time promoting the top 20% of your products. Everything else is almost a public service. Consider, for example, a bookstore. In a bookstore, less than 20% of the books generate 80% if the sales and revenues. You need to have everything else there to fill the shelves and meet people’s’ needs, but it’s those core items that are your profit centers and they deserve your attention.
There are lots of other ways to grow your e-commerce business, but if you start with any one of these 5 ideas and you’ll find your business growing quite nicely.
