Ways to run an effective Online Shop

Just because you’ve built your online shop doesn’t mean the customers will begin to come. You need to bring in the visitors, showcase your products, influence them to buy, and bring them back yet again to make any major gains. The customers need to be encouraged by the unique customer understanding that will bring them back, and have them sing your praises to their friends, spreading your business name. This may seem like a tall order, but it isn’t. Below are some great ways to build, manage and profit from your online shop.

Organize your collection around product types

Many sites either provide a long list of products or lump them behind a search button, making it difficult to find them. Arrange your products into logical categories and sub categories, but do not overdo it. Research says that most people get overwhelmed with more than seven categories. The customer must be able to search any product easily without help. Your product should have a clear, high quality picture and short but detailed specifications. If necessary, add actual video or pictures of different viewpoints (top angle, side view) along with the product specification.

Offer multiple payment options

Keep all kinds of payment options available to your customers. Not everyone feels comfortable buying over a credit card. Allow for debit cards, fax, telephone, paper and electronic checks. Sign up for the fraud-checking facility, without which you could easily end up losing entire day’s sales within minutes. Provide a currency converter if you offer products or payment in other currencies. Including a phone number for customer support on the order is a must. It gives the buyers some extra state of mind of security that they can always talk to a live person if something goes wrong in the ordering procedure. Paypal is a good example of payment gateway for buying and selling products and are accepted in many countries.

Privacy policy is important

Make your privacy policy in public and keep it in a noticeable place and link it to the home page, products, and checkout pages so that the customers who are cautious of providing personal credit card details feel more secure. Tell them if you plan to share their e-mail address with newsletters. Further, allow them to unsubscribe or opt out of such e-mail if they want. Never sell the customer’s personal particulars unless they have agreed.

Terms and conditions

Write clearly and prominently all the sales and after-sales support terms to avoid confusion. The Internet is worldwide, and your customer can come from any country. List your shipping and  handling cost up-front, and be steady to ship anywhere in the world. Publish your returns policy, support hours, and even the approximate time taken to deliver the product. Make an automated confirmation thanking the customer, and listing all the products, prices, and key items of the purchase in an email. You can also promote your other products in your confirmation. Keep the customer updated of the order status at all times by e-mail or by providing a link in your shopping page where they can check the status of their order anytime.

Use SSL (Secured Socket Layer)

If you plan to collect sensitive information from your customers, you should use the security systems like SSL (Secure Socket Layer). This guarantees that the data provided by your customer will not fall into the hand of a malicious hacker while transferring from his laptop to the web server. This also calms your customers that you are truly concerned about the security of their personal data.

Make a newsletter around your products

Seriously plan to launch a newsletter, and send it to all prospects and customers on a consistent basis. Apart from the credibility of being a serious entrepreneur in the market, dazzle them with your commitment by releasing the newsletter on fixed days. You can also show your expertise in your field by writing regularly, in-depth articles, covering the latest trends in the industry, and reviews of new products. Your customers, distributors, and partners will start to await your newsletter eagerly. Sprinkle your promotions and products among the contents in the newsletter, and be ready to receive an increase in web traffic and order bookings every time you send out the newsletter.

Promote your website everyday

Strong marketing is the most important aspect of having a successful website. The best of sites won’t make money if people don’t come in crowds. Launch promotions, and get the word to everyone possible within your target audience. Do promotions using email, Facebook ads or Google Adwords. These are very powerful advertising sites and you can make even more money by exposing your products using these advertising platforms. By using this, you can measure the results you are getting from each promotion and note what works and what doesn’t on a continuous basis. Experiment. Study. This is the only way to know how effective your campaigns and promotions are. You can also bring in some external people to visit your site and give you sincere feedback about each page. The more critical they are, the more changes you will make more success to you. Eventually, it will benefit you and your customers.  Also the traditional marketing like flyers and tarpaulin will do. Don’t leave any technique untried.  What works today may not work tomorrow.

Customer Expectations

Customer expectations are a sure way of engaging them over. Let them feel that they are really lucky, that they made the right choice by selecting to order from you. Give them freebies such as free gift wrapping, or a free discount coupon on their next purchase. Getting a product or service for free will make the customer glad and open doors for future sales.