E-commerce businesses are booming in the current market, with more and more brick-and-mortar businesses choosing to go online to compete with big brands dominating retail and other sectors. The global pandemic intensified this shift, which will likely never return to pre-pandemic levels. However, this means that e-commerce stores are constantly growing and needing to prepare for the latest evolutions in business and technology that can affect their ability to compete and grow in the future. Today, we discuss how to prepare for e-commerce business growth.
This guide details how entrepreneurs can prepare their companies for digital growth through elements such as marketing and technology to ensure they continue to increase their sales regardless of changes in the market.
Invest in digital marketing campaigns
One of the major elements in preparing for e-commerce business growth is knowing how to attract more customers and leads to your business in order to boost sales. The best technique through which to do this is by investing in your digital marketing campaigns.
These include factors such as SEO, strategic marketing, content marketing, PPC, and social media in order to expose your brand to as many people as possible and reach your target audience when they’re looking for businesses that sell products or deliver services like yours. Check out the image below to the myriad of tactics for digital marketing and some key elements necessary within each of these areas.
While it’s possible to handle all these digital tactics yourself, as well as monitor and tweak performance to optimize your return, trying to do everything means you’ll have no time left to manage your business. Plus, the world of digital marketing changes frequently and what worked last year may totally bomb this year, damaging your reputation and actually hurting your chances of getting more visitors. So, not only will you have to create content, SEO-optimize it, do digital advertising, post and engage on social media AND run your business, you’ll have to spend hours every week staying up-to-date with changing techniques. Instead, it is best to employ a professional service to help you improve your marketing tools for modern markets.
Small businesses with defined geographic marketing may benefit from local marketing tactics, which are best left to local marketing agencies.
Prepare for the mobile revolution
One of the fastest-growing elements of e-commerce is its foundations in mobile technology, with a vast number of people now shopping using mobile websites when they are out and about. This means that it is of vital importance that every business not only ensures their website looks great on mobile but takes into consideration that mobile users are often looking for different information, such as an address, menu, or phone number, than their peers who are tethered to a cord. If mobile users can’t find what they want without scrolling around, you’ll likely lose them to a competitor.
Some of the best ways to appear at your best on mobile are to make sure your website is compatible with mobile technology; its graphics should be fast loading and clear, its web pages should load quickly (within 5 seconds) and it should be easy to navigate on touch screens, with large landing page buttons. This will ensure that customers stay engaged with your webpage and that they are able to carry on through to the check-out process.
It is also important to ensure that your webpage is compatible with a large number of popular payment methods, including ones for mobile technology such as Apple Pay, as this will make it more likely that customers will be able to check out easily and buy products from your website.
Predict the impact of future digital tech
However, an important part of mobile technology is predicting the impact of future technology on aspects such as marketing, sales, and e-commerce. For instance, technological evolutions such as virtual reality innovations may revolutionize the way companies promote their products, enabling customers to experience the use of the products on a virtual platform before they buy the items.
Other technologies, such as voice assistants, may also influence the way customers buy and search for products, and businesses must ensure that they are fully optimized for voice interactions, with keywords such as questions and slang. Not only this, but evolutions such as 5G, and the speed that it brings once this technology gains adoptors. Increased speed of internet searches in 5G means that websites must be able to run fast-streaming videos and experienced-based tech onto their websites rather than just being able to handle more basic content.
Use the latest technology and software
It is also important for e-commerce business growth that you consider some of the most important technology software and services available currently that can help you to control your e-commerce site successfully. This includes apps such as social media managers and email managers, which help integrate additional marketing options, such as sending out newsletters to vast amounts of customers, scheduling your posts and reply to comments on different social media channels on one platform, and communicating easily with customers.
Using assistive technologies helps avoid time-consuming activities, which may damage the success of your business in the future and ensures your website is constantly active, meaning that customers will be more likely to invest in your products due to a reassuring high response level.
Then, when thinking of the future of your e-commerce business, it is always important to prepare your company for growth with the right pre-planning, budgeting, and the creation of targets and goals. However, unlike physical companies, which should do the same, digital companies also have the advantage of multiple tech devices and systems which they are able to take advantage of, as well as access to some of the best free marketing platforms for businesses, which include social media and blogging, as well as website design and creation.
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Hausman and Associates, the publisher of MKT Maven, is a full-service marketing agency operating at the intersection of marketing and digital media. Check out our full range of services.
