The usefulness and benefits of an Eshop became particularly evident after the outbreak of the coronavirus. But let’s start from the beginning, it’s 2019 and the economy is thriving. Unemployment rates are at their lowest levels for an extended period, and online sales are growing exponentially.
Then suddenly, everything changes. Half of the world’s population enters lockdown within just a month. People are staying and working from home. Worldwide mobility decreases by 70-90%, and expectations for future economic conditions are minimal.
The Utility and Benefits of an Eshop
It’s true that some of the most successful companies are born during turbulent times. So, if you’re considering expanding your business online, now might be the right moment to do so. Not only because e-commerce orders are increasing, but also because entrepreneurs like you are driving their businesses forward with new ideas, products, approaches, and enthusiasm, harnessing all the benefits of an Eshop.
The entire e-commerce sector has been growing tremendously in recent years. The global lockdown also helped boost online sales.
How to Enhance Your Business’s E-commerce Website
One way to expand your business online and fully capitalize on the benefits of an Eshop during challenging times is by outsourcing as many functions as possible to external partners. This will allow you to focus on business growth and ensure a steady supply chain while someone else handles the “dirty” work.
The development of e-commerce businesses has also led to a continuously growing demand for someone who could assist online stores in focusing on their core activities rather than time-consuming daily operations. Services assigned to external partners allowed business owners to dedicate more time to improving their products or services.
If you too want to concentrate on improving your product or business by finding an external partner to manage your digital presence, then join the Visual Pro team and witness the evolution of your business.
Expansion Strategy for E-commerce Websites
Who will be your customers?
This is the most important question to answer. Knowing something about your customer can be much more crucial than knowing everything about your product. This is where most online stores overlook and fail to leverage all the benefits of an Eshop and its features. They usually define either a very specialized or too broad target audience. This should be a top priority for every business – precisely identifying their customers, understanding their needs, and offering solutions.
How to Manage E-commerce Daily Operations
These are just a few of the functions you need to have in place:
- Payment methods to offer to customers
- How to handle payments – manually or automatically?
- Which payment gateway to use for processing payments: Credit/Debit card or PayPal?
- Website development cost and subsequent monthly maintenance.
- Customer service – setting up a hotline, email, chat, and chatbots
- Order fulfillment and all additional material to protect the packaging.
- Courier delivery (including return package percentage, return handling costs, and COD charges)
- Payment processing – bank or payment provider fees, currency exchange fluctuations, etc.
- Marketing – media budget, marketing agency fees, participation fees in events/exhibitions
Not so simple right ?
Marketing and Campaigns
Whatever you decide, you should also know that things take time. The first 3 to 6 months of marketing efforts in a new market are always a form of market recognition. A fundamental cornerstone for your investment to move towards the right and desired target. Don’t expect instant returns from professional campaigns from day one. You need to first familiarize your website’s visitor audience and potential customers with it. It’s tough for people to trust new brand names they’re not familiar with. Be patient, and sales will come.
One thing that could make your life much easier in terms of marketing is testing. Try new approaches you haven’t used before, such as geographical targeting or a new message in your ads. As mentioned above, there are many benefits of an Eshop that allow you to maneuver like never before with its creation.
If you’re unsure you’re using the right marketing plan for your new campaign, it might be better to hire a company with significant experience in the field, like Visual Pro. It might seem like an additional cost, but consider the time and money it will save you in the long run.
Customer Service
Always create and develop a list of frequently asked questions (FAQs) about your products and services over time. They will help your team answer questions more swiftly. Someday, it might also serve as a foundation for configuring your chatbots.
Another crucial factor that could help you sell more is automation. Email sequences and automated SMS/Viber messages could make a difference in your favor compared to your competitors.
The Objective
The goal of building an online store is to be able to offer online shopping, safely and without any hesitation, even to a less familiar internet user. For this reason, the online stores we build at Visual Pro are dominated by creative yet simple design, with an emphasis on user-friendliness.
Visual Pro
The experience we have gained by building and advertising dozens of our clients’ online stores, and having seen in practice which design and functional options perform best, enables us to design online stores that direct the user to purchase the product, just as a salesperson does in a store. The final choice is always the user’s. But we must easily provide him with all the information he needs to make his choice, provide him with an unobstructed path to the checkout and guarantee that he will buy with complete security. The possibilities and benefits of an EShop are too many and at Visual Pro we know how to use them to the fullest extent.
