Making up your mind to switch from your traditional business to electronic commerce or ecommerce is a great leap towards success. Starting with an ecommerce business While some of your business operations and processes may remain the same, there are a few things to keep in mind when making this huge transition. One of the major motivations for almost every business to take this leap is the much lower expenses involved in running an ecommerce business. Creating an ecommerce business calls for hard work and demands many important decisions that must be taken at the right time.
The ecommerce industry is booming for a few decades. Online shopping, which was once a luxurious virtue, has now become a necessity. Especially after the corona wave, the demand for online shopping has shot to the skies. Although businesses have been using or witching to ecommerce for quite a long time, even today, many entrepreneurs drastically fail in successfully converting their businesses into ecommerce. In this blog, we shall discuss the ways and tips by which any business, irrespective of their niche, can convert into ecommerce.
Steps to convert your business to ecommerce
Draft a strategic business plan
The decisions to be taken when shifting from a physical store to an ecommerce store are quite important. It is something to be worked on with all your hearts and efforts. Make sure to draft a strategic business plan as soon as you plan to establish your online presence. Plan out each step in the conversion process; right from taking orders to delivering them that ensures a seamless customer experience.
Create a website
When you shift from your traditional store to an ecommerce store, your website shall become the face of your brand for the customers. Just like you design your physical store with the utmost precision, you need to design your ecommerce store with all the love and care it deserves. No, you do not have to learn to code and be an expert; check out the Builderfly Ecommerce Platform that lets you create an ecommerce store for free, without you being tech-savvy.
Market your presence
Just as you invested your time and efforts in marketing your physical store during its inception, you need to do the same for your ecommerce store – with some added benefits. Marketing an ecommerce store is way easier and efficient as compared to the traditional methods. Moreover, you get the world as your audience when marketed right! Check out the various marketing options and find the one that perfectly fits your shoes.
Merge both your selling channels
You might have thought to shut down your physical store when we talked about conversion. Well, we have good news; you can run your physical store along with your ecommerce store seamlessly. In fact, your revenue can be multiplied several times while enjoying the best of both the worlds. We all know that both, physical stores and ecommerce stores have their sets of benefits. So, if you are getting your chance to have them all, why not?
Primary ways to attract customers and boost conversion rates
Make Contacts
The first and foremost step to attract customers and boost conversion rates is to make contacts. This might sound similar to the primitive mode of marketing products or businesses from door to door. Well, it is exactly what we talk about, make connections to earn conversions. When you are starting with the ecommerce business, it is ideal to follow the traditional marketing method along with the newly-formed technological methods of digital marketing. Start from your surroundings, including your friends, families, and near ones. Once you have a saturated contact base, you can move onto blogging and other social networking platforms to find a wider set of audiences who might be interested in purchasing your products or services. Whatever the source of traffic is, your goal is to feature your products to the right audience in your business niche, at the right time.
Remarkable Delivery
Once you have spread the word and your potential customers are inspecting your ecommerce store, as an online seller, it becomes your duty to provide them easy access to your products or services. Unlike in traditional retail businesses where the store owners are only responsible for product availability, in ecommerce businesses, the sellers are additionally responsible for the transportation of the products to the customers. Once you have successfully grabbed your potential customers’ attention, the shipping methods and services play a crucial role in deciding the number of purchases done on the website. The product delivery is so important that it can potentially make or break your ecommerce business. If the shipping and delivery of the products are not planned strategically, the profit margins of your business could completely disappear. The key factors inclusive in a remarkable delivery process is what you charge and how speedily shall you deliver the products. The right knowledge and implementation of tactics to gain a competitive advantage in establishing remarkable delivery can greatly impact the ecommerce market.
Seamless Customer Service
One of the easiest ways to lose a customer is to not cater to their queries or thirst for more information regarding your products or services. For instance, if a customer faces any issue in simply placing an order or needs more details of a particular product, and they do not get any immediate support, they’ll naturally get frustrated and find a better place to invest their money. Your customers must be easily able to find you when they need you. If you complicate the process of contacting you, remember that there are thousands of your competitors out there waiting to grab the opportunity. In addition to providing seamless customer service, you will be building a loyal customer base for the long run.
Conclusion
Once you have set everything in place, it is time to kick start your ecommerce business. You can explore the wide options available to sell your products and services creatively. We define ecommerce in three simple words – easy, edifying, and efficient.
