8 Tips for Growing Your Online Business

You’ve decided to start an e-commerce store, and you’ve even had a few customers – Great! That’s a wonderful place to start. But, you have a lot of competition online, so you don’t want to get too comfortable. It’s time to grow your online business. But, where do you start?

Know Your Target Audience

When you’re trying to grow your online business, it’s especially important to know your target audience. You can’t market to the whole world, so you need to create a marketing strategy designed to engage your target demographic.

Utilize Google AdWords

If it’s in your budget, consider starting a Google AdWords campaign. When consumers search for a product or service you offer, they’ll see your ad. You’ll be able to reach people who would have otherwise never heard of you before.

Create High-Quality Content

No matter how you’re marketing your company (through ads on Google, on social media, etc.), create content that’s relevant and engaging so your website visitors want to return. Consumers might not buy anything the first (or second) time they visit, but if you’re creating relevant content, you’ll give them a reason to keep coming back. Eventually, they’ll trust your company and buy something.

You shouldn’t just be creating content that pushes your products; you should also create content that gives back to your consumers. If you’re an online clothing boutique, for example, write a blog post about the newest trends. Your readers will want to check out your store to see what trendy items you offer.

The more quality content you create, the more likely you’ll get ranked on search engines, which will lead to even more people finding your business.

Engage with Your Customers

Don’t just put content out there and hope for the best – actively engage with your customers. Put your blog posts on social media, then talk to your customers when they interact with the post. They’ll start to trust your company more and more, making it more likely that they’ll continue to shop with you for a long time.

Personalize Your Content

Consumers want a unique experience. If you’re creating content for an email newsletter, personalize it for your customers. You can even go so far as to generate product recommendations based on your customers’ personal preferences and past purchases. Your email subscribers will love your recommendations, so they’ll want to go purchase them quickly.

Make Your Checkout Process Painless

If your online checkout process takes too long, consumers will give up and buy from another online store. Make sure you optimize the process to make it as quick, easy, and pain-free as possible.

If you’re not sure how customers feel about your checkout process, ask your friends and family to try to purchase something from your store. Watch them go through the process and note where they get frustrated.

You can also try to reduce the number of unnecessary steps in the process. For example, no one wants to have to type in their address twice, so let your customers click a box to indicate that their billing address is the same as shipping.

You should also give your customers the opportunity to create an account or checkout as a guest. If someone knows they’ll shop with you again, creating an account will make the checkout process even easier. If the customer isn’t sure if they’ll be back, they’ll still be able to check-out quickly with no problems.

Start a Loyalty Program

A loyalty program will give your customers a reason to come back. You can offer exclusive discounts, give them free shipping, or even offer them free products with purchase. The more reasons a customer has to come back, the more likely they will (and they’ll tell their friends).

Run a Contest

If you want to attract more customers, run a contest. Contests are great ways to not only build your audience, but also to engage and interact with your audience. If you do a Facebook or Instagram contest, you can give people an extra entry if they tag a friend or share the post – your audience will do a lot of the marketing for you.

Conclusion

Growing your online business won’t happen overnight. To reach more customers and turn your existing customers into loyal brand ambassadors, you’ll need to know your target audience, create high-quality and engaging content, make the checkout process as easy as possible, and give consumers reasons to look you up.