- E-Commerce
What to expect from adding online shopping to your website
If you have a product to sell, in the current market you need it available to be bought online. For many people, shopping is no longer physical – it’s all online. They can view images, reviews and facts about products sitting in their living – so why waste the time and effort to go to a shop to buy it. From your perspective, while you need to be in a physical shop to promote and sell your items, your online store is always available – even when you are not.
If you want to make online shopping work for your products, you need to provide all the information a customer might need to make their decision and you need to be competitive with others offering similar products. If your product is in any way complicated or difficult to explain, consider whether promotional videos or animations showing how to use the product or what to use it for would be useful. People don’t really like to read lots of information about a product – they want to be told as quickly and clearly as possible why this product is useful to them.
5 top tips for selling online
If you are planning to sell online, here’s five top tips you need to think about:
– Know your market and your customers. Your site is what sells your product or service, so take the time to think about your target market and what information a potential customer will need to make an informed decision to make a purchase. If your product is technical, consider whether information manuals or videos would be useful. If it is something people may find hard to visualise or understand, make sure your images are clear and demonstrate what can be done with the product.
– Good customer service is an essential. Remember that unlike traditional shops where complaints are spread by word of mouth, if you don’t provide good customer service negative comments are very easily shared online and via social media. Good reviews are essential as those who are unfamiliar with your brand will look to other online users to see their feedback and this can really impact their decision to buy.
– A picture is worth a thousand words – but videos and animation are helpful too. Whichever combination you choose to use, it needs to be well put together and look professional. You will quickly turn a customer off your products if the visuals don’t show your product in a good way. Badly lit photos or untidy background images suggests that you don’t know what you are doing and might be enough to cost you a sale.
– A responsive website is a must as lots of customers now access sites from mobile phones and tablets. This means your site must flex its appearance to ensure it looks good, no matter how it is accessed. It must also be properly search engine optimised so that search engines can quickly find your product matches what the potential customer is searching for.
– You wouldn’t leave a normal shop with the same goods for years – so don’t let your online shop become old and outdated. If you want customers to return, you need to give them something new to look at – whether it’s new products, images or information. Refresh your website on an ongoing basis – there’s nothing worse than going to a site which hasn’t been updated in years to see news articles from years ago, products which are no longer available or links that no longer work.
Why Choose Visionworks Interactive for your new E Commerce store?
Our experienced team are always here to support our clients to achieve their ecommerce goals. If you aren’t satisfied, neither are we. We believe in developing professional, beautiful sites which are easy to navigate – both by your customers and your staff. We prefer to provide our clients with platforms which can be easily used by their staff to update products and manage their orders themselves, so that you are not tied to having an outside agency doing your regular updates – but we do provide this service if you need it. We also provide training for you and your staff so you won’t have to work it all out alone.
What is my next step for adding online shopping to my website?
The simple answer is to get in touch with us. If you are thinking about adding online shopping to your website, our first step is to review your current site, have a chat with you about what you would like to add and then provide you with some proposals. Every website is technically different, so we will need to look at whether integration is possible with your current arrangements or whether a fresh look is needed.
We recognise that this is a challenging time for businesses, so we won’t make false promises and we will give you our honest opinion of your options and then let you make your own informed decision about how to proceed.