Alexa, the IMDB for website states that there are over 1 billion websites hosted on the World Wide Web. And all are competing every minute to capture the most traffic. Given the cut-throat competition, maintaining a simple website and following the necessary protocols alone aren’t enough. Being an online store owner, you need to strive for excellence and incorporate innovative tactics that will set you ahead of the rest.
In this post, we would discuss all the possible strategies you can employ to increase traffic towards your website and also increase your fan following
Weigh your competitor
It is said that, keep your friends close and enemies closer. This statement applies to online stores as well. If you just started your online store or is already a well-established online store owner, you should track and analyze your competitors’ progress. If your e-commerce store enjoys majority market share, you should still track the progress and proceeding of your fellow competitors because you never know when they might overtake you. Hence, it is better to remain vigilant and always put the right foot forward.
In case you are trailing behind a web store leader, analyzing is a great way to set you goals and adopt aggressive strategies to increase your market share. There are a number of ways you can track the progress of your competitors.
– Google Analytics
– Twitter Analytics
– Facebook page statistics
These 3 are the most used tools to analyze various data pertaining to your competitors. You can evaluate your competitor’s traffic, recent posts and even judge the response and feedback generated by the customer community.
What is the trend?
The trend is and always will be to please your customers. While your customers arrive at your e-commerce store, you need to make sure that you do not compromise with the user experience. Some of the best practices to ensure just that are as follows:
– Looks does matter – Since your childhood you were told not to judge a book by its cover. But when it comes to determining the success of your online store, you shouldn’t abide by this thumb rule. You should ensure that the online store looks appealing and is user-friendly. It should be clean, simple and clutter free. After all, a first impression is the last impression.
– Letting the word out – If you want to be a successful e-commerce website owner, you should also know how to market your online store. Given the widespread acceptance of various social media, you should start marketing your e-commerce website on various such platforms. This would aid to get the limelight in no time and also aid you in your business objective. You can also ensure your users to subscribe to your website via email so that they receive periodic updates regarding various discounts and offer provided by your online store. In return, you can provide them with some discounts or online goodies.
– Search Engine Friendly – To be at par with your e-commerce competitors, you should also make your store SEO friendly. You should research on the search queries of online shoppers and modify your website accordingly. Creating a detailed and elaborate blog would also aid you in your endeavor.
– Mobile friendly – Performance and device compatibility are two parameters of your e-commerce store that decides whether you are taking extra efforts to ease and enhance the user experience of your audience. According to statistics, the percentage of mobile shoppers has doubled within a few years, thus the need for a responsive and fast web page is the need of the hour.
What will provide competitive advantage
In the previous section, we mentioned what are the basic strategies that should be adopted to create a decent online store. But if you want to stand out and go ahead of your e-commerce competitors, you must think out of the box. If you follow the age old orthodox marketing strategies, you would definitely do fine, but you would not be able to step ahead and provide something different that the existing market has to offer. So considering that you are ready to take the road less trodden, and bring forth a definite competitive edge, here are some ways that would help you ensure just that.
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Tablets are passé, wearable gadgets are in – 2014 witnessed the launch of a number of wearable gadgets like the Google Glass, iWatch and a number of Android watches. So it won’t take long for these gadgets to capture the majority market share, so the best bet would be to aim for the future. Make sure that your online store application is compatible with these gadgets as well thus making accessing your e-commerce store, much more pleasant.
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Tweet and shop – Everyone loves spontaneity, that is the why people love communicating through Twitter and checking updates through their Twitter feeds. This brought forward the idea of shopping via social platforms. Using the Tweet and shop feature, users can directly shop from Twitter after viewing a promotion, without even visiting the site.
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Proving unparallel customer service – Customer service always goes and long way, as it lingers with the customer for a very long time. You need to ensure that apart from the quality of the product delivered by you, the after sales service too should be top-notch. You can integrate online chat feature on your website so that you can resolve their queries on the go and dodge the gargantuan task of emailing for assistance and patiently waiting for the response.
Thus with the advancement of technology and needs of the customer, the competition between various online stores would only get tougher. So you need to inculcate smart strategies that would help amass a lot of fans following as well as increase revenue. You should never stick to orthodox e-commerce strategies and innovate whenever possible to propel your e-commerce store light years ahead of others.
