Online store - how to succeed?

Ostania aktualizacja 27 January 2023

Online store – how to succeed? Every year, several thousand online stores disappear from the Polish e-commerce market. What is the reason for this? How to protect your own business against falling and yourself against financial losses? Most often, owners of failing e-businesses are unaware of the importance of planning a marketing campaign. The most common reason for the collapse of an online store is excessive savings on promotion.

Being able to sell via the Internet, they downplay the fact that a certain amount should be allocated to the promotion of their e-business. There are situations when advertising campaigns are extremely limited or they are completely abandoned for lower costs. Some sellers focus on one promotion channel. When starting an advertising campaign, you can be tempted to make such a decision, but in the long run reaching new customers is a slow process and does not translate into sales results.

Spis

1 A common form of promoting an online store

2 Online store promotion

3 Online store with your brand

A common form of promoting an online store

Facebook is a very common form of promotion. The store fanpage has several thousand likes and the sale is negligible, because there is no incentive to make a purchase, or at least review the store’s offer. Over time, there is an obstacle preventing you from reaching new recipients, in which case you must invest money in new promotion channels. Definitely, one form of online store advertising is not enough. There are sellers who, when they achieve better sales results, settle on their laurels and start saving on advertising, they think that they have developed a customer base. However, if they plan a steady increase in profits and want to stay at a level that gives a high return on investment, they must continue to promote their online store.

Online store promotion

Promotion is a long-term investment, so you need a budget to achieve your goals. Online stores with several years of experience, depending on the advertising channels used, devote from 15% to 40% of the monthly turnover value to promotion. However, there are online sellers who think that any advertising is superfluous, that online stores will promote themselves without investing. Often, to maintain a business, extreme products are launched to maintain the store. This short-sighted approach will sooner or later prove to be deceptive. The weaker the promotion of the store, the lower the sale and the lower the earnings. Unfortunately, if the seller realizes this, it may be too late. Once, in fact, promotion, advertising of an online store was unnecessary, because this type of activity was carried out by a few people, there was no competition and there were few buyers in this way. Now the competition is huge and the number of potential customers has increased. In order to have profits, you must first convince customers, and this is a difficult task that requires creativity, and above all knowledge of the target group, which will allow you to tailor the promotion and “tailor it”. The first step to take is to encourage potential customers to visit your online store. Thanks to Google AdWords and activity on social networks you can gain interest in the store’s offer. However, this is not enough, you need to make the customer feel that you are at his disposal. In addition to contact forms and a phone number on the store’s website, you need to ensure communication, you should think about the use of an interactive live chat, chatbot or CallPage. Credibility is also built by adding photos of a stationary store, if any, of the owner and the employee team. It is also a good option to allow customers to leave reviews. However, it will be a mistake to focus only on acquiring new customers, forgetting about those who have already made purchases.

Online store with your brand

The ability to sell over the Internet has meant that almost every industry sells online. You should create your brand, because it will contribute to achieving financial profits. It is important to plan a detailed development strategy including contingency plans, you must be prepared for any occasion. An online store should be advertised in as many channels as possible, it is necessary to control the inventory, respond to customer inquiries, facilitate returns, ensure efficient delivery and, above all, control the budget. There are such articles that are characterized by seasonality, using a campaign in this type of online stores, it should be adapted, because it can be conditioned, for example, by the season of the year. The advertising campaign must focus on the period in which promises to be the greatest interest in products. The quick way to reach the customer is important, so time-consuming channels such as store positioning will have to be implemented sooner. In fact, most problems occur during online stores at the least expected times. Of course, they can be solved, but you need time and money, as everywhere is better to prevent than then to think about how to fix it.