The e-commerce industry is booming. It’s estimated that the industry made about $4 trillion in sales in 2020. Currently, many online stores are getting a lot of attention, but why is yours failing?
Having an online store can help business owners and entrepreneurs reach a much wider audience than ever before. However, for some businesses, their online store may not entirely live up to their potential. If your online store struggles to make sales, it could be for several reasons. Read on to find out why an online store fails—and how you can fix them.
Low Visibility
One of the essential elements of having an online presence is making sure your website is visible and easy to find. The higher your SEO ranking, the more likely customers will find your website and buy from it. However, without proper SEO optimization, your website may not appear in search results or appear on the first page—which means prospective customers won’t even know you exist.
To increase visibility, focus on creating quality content with relevant keywords sprinkled throughout and use backlink building strategically to link back to other credible websites. Metric Marketing helps with this process by ensuring high visibility across all channels so that customers know where to find you when searching for your offer. Additionally, consider these two other tips to increase your visibility.
Micro-Influencers
Many people know influencers, but micro-influencers have a lot more success when it comes to promoting products and services. These people have active social media followings but are not necessarily famous. They’re often niche marketers who work with small brands to promote their products or services. They are passionate about the brands they work with, which makes them powerful brand ambassadors. If you can get a micro-influencer to promote your products or services, you will immediately see an increase in sales and visibility.
Affiliate programs
Another way you can increase sales is by partnering with other online businesses through affiliate marketing. This requires you to find other companies aligned with your products and goals, then create an affiliate program that will help benefit both of you. For example, if you have a costume store online, you can partner with a makeup brand to offer costume makeup kits or accessories as part of your affiliate program. Customers who purchase these items through your online store earn a commission based on the percentage.
Data Breaches
Hackers are now more sophisticated than ever and will target any online store with personal information. Whether through a data breach or phishing scam, this can lead to financial loss for both you and your customers.
One way to protect your online store from these breaches is by partnering with a cybersecurity team to monitor all vulnerabilities and find the problem’s source before it spreads. An experienced managed IT service can do these for you. These services look into your firewalls, protect your website from malware, and monitor all data to ensure it’s safe.
No Clear Call-to-Action
Another common reason why an online store might fail is that there isn’t a clear call-to-action (CTA) for customers who do land on the page. Your CTA should be obvious—for example, where to click if someone wants to purchase a product or sign up for a service. Without this information visible on your site, customers may become overwhelmed or confused about what they need to do next, leading them away from purchasing from your site without ever clicking that “buy” button. To create a successful CTA strategy, consider what action you want customers to take after visiting your website and ensure it’s easy for them to do so by providing visual cues like buttons or clear links within the text of each page.
Lack of Variety
If someone visits your site but doesn’t see anything they want or need immediately, chances are they won’t bother returning later. So it’s important to have a wide selection of items available to entice shoppers into making purchases now instead of later (or never). You also want variety in terms of pricing; if everything on your site is too expensive or too cheap compared with competitors, people might shop elsewhere for better-value products or services. So make sure you have something for everyone by offering different price points and types of products/services so that everyone who lands on your page can find something that meets their needs—at least one thing!
When running an online store, several vital elements must be taken into consideration if it’s going to meet its full potential. By following these tips and staying mindful of customer preferences when developing new offerings and marketing campaigns, you can ensure that success isn’t far off!