Your ecommerce software provides you with the basic framework for an online shop and saves you a great deal of development work. However, even when your shop is up and running, there are a multitude of factors to take into consideration in order to truly prosper online. Today we want to take you through seven tips to kick off your path to success.
Whether in the planning stage or already up and running, you should keep these points in mind at all times in order to reach success online:
Make online shopping as comfortable as possible for your customers! Stay away from congested design, long blocks of text and a complicated checkout process – these have all been proven to be sales killers.
Take care of your product presentation and descriptions. This makes your online shop more trustworthy, entices interest in your product, reduces the number of returns and offers emotional appeal in your shop.
Turnover via mobile devices has been growing for years. Be sure your shop is optimised for mobile and offers usability that is intuitive and straightforward.
Customers are accustomed to fast shipping and convenient payment options – your payment and logistics processes must always work perfectly.
Work continuously with SEO, SEA and social media. Set goals and KPIs for your shop and check them regularly.
1. Make your online shop as comfortable as possible
Welcome to the harsh reality of eCommerce: When an online shop lacks structure or has a complicated checkout process, the customer goes straight to the search engine and purchases the product from somebody who, frankly, does it better. More often than not, the online giant Amazon already offers an equivalent in its product range. That’s why the usability of your shop could make or break your business. When a customer comes to your shop, it’s essential they are met with intuitive usability and a clear structure. Fortunately, Shopware 5 already provides you with a basic shop structure in the standard that is user-friendly and includes a simplified checkout process. Our latest software generation - Shopware 6 - improves upon this usability to offer a system that is prepared to connect with any conceivable channel that will emerge over the coming years
2. Product presentation is everything
When you go shopping in a stationary store, odds are you prefer a tidy and clearly arranged shop. Stationary retail invests a great deal of money into product presentation and staging so that customers are emotionally drawn into the best ecommerce shopping experiences. These rules also apply in eCommerce.
Online shops whose product presentation is clearly and emotionally designed are particularly successful. With the right call-to-actions in place, they achieve high conversions. Make use of this principle and let your products live through expressive images combined with contextual placement. Get inspired by other online shops who do a particularly beautiful job with their product presentation here.
In Shopware 6, the new Shopping Experiences feature places inspirational shopping at the centre of the online retail experience. Shopping Experiences allow for virtually any content page of the online shop to be customised, and that applies to all sales channels.
3. Mobile optimisation is a must
With steady revenue growth rates from mobile commerce, it’s imperative that content in your online shop is optimised for mobile devices. Text lengths and image sizes play a particularly important role here: text that is too long trigger a scroll process; images that are too large lead to long loading times, which can cause higher jump rates. When using Shopware as the basis for your shop, you automatically have a responsive basis to work with. You can even play out specific content for different devices using our Shopping Worlds feature.
4. Build consumer confidence
Customers are often very sceptical of new online shops. To establish your shop on a long-term basis, it’s important you prove to your customers you are trustworthy. One of the most effective ways to build consumer confidence is through content marketing.
Reach out to your customers and engage them by offering valuable content in your blog. "Content is king, but relevance is queen" means that only relevant content counts. Keep your customers informed via a regular newsletter and prove your competence in your field.
In addition, certifications such as the Trusted Shop seal or popular shipping and payment methods play a major role. In the Shopware Community Store, you can find numerous plugins that allow you to easily integrate the shipping and payment methods most relevant to your customer’s needs.
5. Lever for online success: SEA and SEO
When creating content for blog posts or landing pages, you should always include relevant keywords. Don't always use the same words religiously – it’s recommended you use suitable synonyms from time to time. The more content you produce on your blog, the better the likelihood of placing higher in the organic search engine ranking. You can also achieve short-term success with paid ads. But note: In order to make AdWords as effective as possible, make sure that your URL contains your offer. You should also consider making a dedicated landing page that matches the offer made in your ad.
In the best case, visitors to your shop want to buy multiple products. With remarketing, you can place targeted ads for users who have already visited your shop and provided their email address. Remarketing helps you keep the traffic of returning visitors high. But don't be too pushy – too much advertising leads to annoyed users.
6. Customer service: payment and logistics
An online shop is only as good as the provider's underlying logistics processes. Due to online retailers like Amazon or Zalando, customers are particularly spoiled when it comes to customer service and returns management. Test your logistics and returns management and constantly optimise your processes. Offer shipment tracking – your customers want to know when they can expect their package to arrive. If possible, send your products via parcel services that have a nationwide network, whether for returns or parcel stations.
7. Social media marketing for online shops
Meet your customers where they are on social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Fill each channel with life by sharing your blog posts, drawing attention to your campaigns and entertaining your target group. Be careful when selecting social media channels and check whether your target groups are active on these channels. An online shop selling printers probably won’t need to invest resources in caring after a Snapchat account. Note that users do not want to be bombarded by blunt advertisements, so here once again valuable content plays a crucial role.
Curious to learn more?
To learn more about how Shopware can serve your online business, you can reach us M-F by calling +44 (0) 203 095 2445 (UK 8am – 4pm GMT) / 00 800 746 7626 0 (worldwide 9am – 5pm CET) or writing an email any time to info@shopware.com. We are look forward to speaking with you about your project!
