7 secrets of successful e-Commerce projects
There is hardly any retail business that hasn’t thought about going online to increase the number of customers. According to Statista, the number of digital shoppers worldwide is increasing year by year. They are expected to move beyond 2.5 billion people a year, and by 2020 with deals that will exceed 3.8 billion US dollars by 2020.
However, it’s usually not enough just to create a website that will allow you to order goods online. To build a long-lasting and prosperous online business, you should take a lot of details into consideration. Marketing approach to online sales evolve with the time. In addition to time-tested techniques, we discover new ones that turn out to be even more effective.
We are going to share some secrets of successful e-commerce services, so that you could carefully build your winning strategy in 2017.
#1. How to choose the right name
Well, maybe you have your brand name and a memorable URL already. In case you are in search for suitable variants, let me just share a few tips that famous e-commerce brands didn’t neglect.
- Try to find the balance between complexity and simplicity. Make sure that words are easy to pronounce and not too long to type. However, do your best to distinguish.
- Choose “.com” domain. According to research from Registrar Stats, ‘’.com” domain extension firmly holds the leading position among the others. Despite the difficulties you may face when registering this domain, it’s more familiar and is easier to remember. Also, take into account that your service covers only one region. Therefore, it is advisable to use relevant domains.
- Go beyond the ordinary vocabulary. Some of the most popular brands invented their names. They may compound words, like Microsoft and YouTube did, or invent them completely from scratch, like Odeo or Uber.
There are many domain name generators that make the task easier. Here are a few of the best:
#2. Think of your Home page effectiveness
What you need to do first of all is to capture the attention of website visitors right from the home page. So you have to work out all the details, namely the following things.
- Let your users know about you. Don’t make users spend precious minutes in search for the information about your company. It’s about trust, seeing your site for the first time, visitors immediately want to know what you are suggesting and what they need your service for. Otherwise, they close the tab.
- Use the right language. If your service aims at wide auditory, try to avoid specialized terms that only narrow specialists can get. And vise versa, specific products for specific purposes require term-full but clear words.
- What makes you different? Take your time and think about your competitive advantage over other similar services. What will be your beneficial offer? This can a discount system, bonuses, referral program or simply an outstanding product.
- Optimize! Make sure your site is responsive and user-friendly on each device.
- Don’t forget about the call to action. Such a simple thing can just be missed: a call-to-action button with persuasive appeal. AliExpress is good at it.
#3. Add photos that speak louder than words
Ecommerce sites require high-quality illustrations more than any other sites. An image alone can persuade visitors to turn into customers. Here are a few tips how to select photographs that will add value to your website.
- Background. To make sure that the image is focused on the product itself, choose light background colors.
- Large-sized photos. This trick helps capture user’s attention and make them look at the image.
- Zooming and different view angles. The main disadvantage of ecommerce websites is that customers can't touch a product and see its details. You can help them see the product in detail by adding extra photos from different angles. Zooming feature lets them examine the products more carefully and encourage them to buy. Just take a look at Victoria’s Secret website.
You can either use self-made pictures or stock images (just make sure you don’t use ‘smiley faces’). Among the variety of specialized sites with blue-chip collections, let me recommend a few.
- Unsplash, a free source of urban and nature landscapes.
Canva lets its users not only download images but also create personalized designs with drag and drop elements.
- Stockvault - stock photos, textures and graphics.
- Pixabay - has more 100 thousand free images, illustrations and vector graphics for
- New Old Stock. Here you can find vintage black-and-white photos gathered from public archives and have no copyright restrictions.
#4. Site navigation matters
If you don’t want your potential customers leave your website once they opened the home page, ensure smooth and intuitive navigation through the pages. Just to help you, we have collected a few tips that will be useful.
- New arrivals. Make a separate visible block that features new products on the site. Let’s take a look how H&M has implemented the feature.
- Recommendations. Utilizing Big Data achievements, you can make advanced suggestions for your customers based on their recently viewed products. A simpler way is to show the list of recently viewed goods.
- Drop-downs. This kind of menu can simplify the navigation through your site a lot. However, make sure you keep a logical sequence of the site elements. Amazon is a great example of a site with a well-though drop-down menu.
#5. Invent the unique offer
The only way to stand out of competitors is to have a unique selling point that will attract users. Here are a few examples to stimulate your imagination:
- Women’s lingerie shop Brayola helps to choose the right bra using the smart engine on the site. Women’s favorites provided by them are analyzed and the system suggests suitable models.
- Warby Parker gives an opportunity to try the glasses on. They send several of them and client sends back those that didn’t fit.
#6. Use web push notifications as a retargeting tool
Retargeting is often the most important part of ecommerce platform marketing as it helps potential customers discover your offers even after they’ve left your site. Unlike retargeting emails, which can suffer from spam filters, push notifications draw their attention easily.
72% of millennials react positively on retargeting, which makes this form of marketing effective and favourable to ecommerce business. Retargeting is based upon the idea that users who have already expressed interest to your service, receive notifications that remind them of a purchase they wanted to make. Chances are, they come back to your website and transact.
There are lots of ready-made solutions and tools that can help you add and adjust push notification functionality to your website. While choosing among all these services pay attention to iZooto web push notification platform. Just, take a look how Jabong and Koovs have seen amazing results after implementing it. You can check out the case study of Koovs here.
#7. Don’t forget about the e-commerce strategy
All the above-mentioned companies have developed their own strategy that was steadily leading them to success. It’s rather a good idea to follow the proven tactics. However, don’t forget that your service is unique and your customers deserve the best.
To sum up, remember that satisfied customers are the best marketers. To make your auditory happy, start with studying their preferences and buying habits. Therefore, it’s a good idea to research before creating a website and A/B testing when you are ready to launch it.
All the companies that are mentioned above can serve good role models for any new ecommerce business. However, beware of the blind imitation. It will never lead to success. The better option is to develop your own voice through the messages you deliver and approaches you apply.
