Building an Online Store – What You Need to Do
Choosing to add an eCommerce section to your blog is a great business decision. It can help you generate additional income on top of any ad revenue that you are already receiving. However, there are some considerations you need to make if this is your first time handling an online store. Here are some of those tasks you need to complete to ensure that your store is the best it can possibly be.
Find the Right Builder
There are so many sites that claim to offer some form of eCommerce platform to your site. However, many of these sites or widgets may not be able to offer your visitors as seamless an experience as you may want. Do your research to ensure that you are grabbing the best eCommerce website builder on the market. This will help you to create a tool that works best for your business.
You will always want any eCommerce site to be smooth, intuitive, and looking professional. You should have the opportunity to put in as many pictures as you might need, plus other forms of content. Whatever tools you happen to be using to do this, you need to make sure that they are easy for you to manage.
It can take quite a bit of trial and error to find one that truly works for you. Make sure that both you and your staff are familiar with both the layout of the final site once it is live and all the back-end controls that allow you to alter things. The more knowledge you have about your online store’s platform, the finer you will be able to tune it.
Create Engaging Content
Having a brilliant platform is often not enough. In addition to having a fantastic, functional website, you need to make sure that you have buckets of engaging content with which to fill it. This starts with the actual text that makes up a lot of the website. You need to make sure that your copy is engaging and driven, and that things like your font choices are easy to read and fit in well with the site as a whole.
You can then move onto video and image content. Anything that goes on your website needs to be of the highest quality. Try to create as much of it as you can from scratch, and make sure anything else you use is royalty-free. However, by choosing to make your own content, you can dictate precisely what goes into it. This allows you to properly curate everything that goes on the store, from product images to even something like the store banner.
All good eCommerce stores – and all business websites in general – should try to have a blog for SEO purposes. Luckily, as a blogger, you’ll already be an expert in this. With high-quality blog posts in place, you can start to build on the keyword usage already in place in your static copy. Take the time to create engaging copy that people will want to read through and use. It can really help you out when it comes to visibility online.
Build a Social Media Community
When creating a store online to gain additional income, you need to accept that there are many other stores all offering similar products and services to you. To go that little bit extra and rise heads and shoulders above the others, you need to take the time to build an online community of customers.
Start this on your social media channels. Push out some of that engaging content you have spent so long crafting and invite people to comment on it. You can run competitions and gather opinions about product or service launches. You can even choose to set up your own Facebook group or some other space where people can come together and chat.
If you can create a positive online environment that customers are happy to respond to, that will begin to build your reputation as a brand. What is important is that you also make sure that the experience on your website matches this sense of community you have built across your platforms.
You need to run a tight ship and ensure that all parts of your online store are kept to the highest of standards. Make sure that there is a uniform experience across all areas of customer service, from your social media to the complaints team, so that customers know that you are a trustworthy and remarkable brand.
Start Building Today
No great business is launched overnight. It takes a tremendous amount of planning on your part to ensure that all parts of the company are brought up to the same standard. Launching an eCommerce platform can be an exciting time, but you need to ensure that what is set live meets the standards that you have set across the rest of the company. Take the time to find the right tools so you can create the perfect online store. Once you get started, you’ll make that additional income in no time at all.