Is there a fixed set of guidelines that can be followed to assured success in eCommerce? The answer is no because the guidelines will vary a lot depending on the specifics of any given set of circumstances. Are there certain universal guidelines that can improve your chances of succeeding in eCommerce? Yes, there are certain factors that every online company must pay attention to improve their chances of surviving, succeeding, and growing. Let’s quickly go over three of those key factors next.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most important elements in succeeding as an eCommerce company. You can have the best products, services, and deals in the world listed on your website, but it won’t matter much if your target customers do not even know that the site exists, or if they cannot find your site by searching online. SEO is not about letting people know about your business, it’s about letting the most potential customers know about what the business has to offer.
Nothing else in digital marketing is as important as SEO with high-quality, unique content that has the relevant keywords in just the right percentage. Note that every social media website from Facebook and Instagram to YouTube and TikTok has search engines as well. Therefore, search engine optimization is just as important for benefiting from Google and Bing searches, as it is for benefiting from social media search engines.
Employee Motivation
An early mistake that a lot of new eCommerce companies make is not realizing how important it is to keep employees connected and motivated in a virtual business environment. In stark contrast to the popular notion, remote employees for online businesses actually need more motivation than their local counterparts.
Avoid productivity loss and motivate your employees to improve performance with employee recognition and reward programs. Virtual work environments create a sense of detachment that’s unique to remote employees. It can be extremely demotivating for them unless you take the necessary steps to let them know they are very much a part of the team and reward them for their hard work.
Ensuring Site Quality and Reliability
As an online business with an eCommerce platform, ensuring the main site’s quality and reliability are the two most important, as well as basic requirements for success. A successful SEO campaign will ultimately lead them to the main site and how the site looks and performs at that time will be the most important factor in deciding whether the visit turns into a sale or a bad impression.
Confusing menus, bad web design, misleading links, slow loading speeds, failure to load key pages, server failures, and failed transactions are just some of the things that can go wrong. If any one or more of such inconveniences affect potential customers consistently, you must act as soon as possible. Perhaps the site needs to be debugged and/or redesigned, or maybe your website needs a dedicated server to handle the traffic. Whatever the remedial actions may be, they must be taken swiftly.
Most precautionary and evolutionary steps that successful online businesses take are not any different from those taken by traditional businesses. Depending on the kind of trade you are in and the business model you follow, you may also need to consider both the online and offline aspects of the company to ensure growth and success.
