E-commerce has become one of the most popular ways to do business online, with new entrepreneurs and established companies taking to the Internet to make money. With websites hosting online stores for no extra cost, it has become a favorite in both developed and developing nations. In Africa alone, e-commerce is expected to reach a $567 billion market value. There are many trends and strategies that newcomers can take advantage of to find success online – here are a few of them.
Offers & Promotions
First is a strategy that will never go out of style – offers and promotions. This is where a store or service asks for less money, or sometimes nothing at all when giving out their product. Discounts, bundles, and free offers have been around for decades and will be around after the 2020s have ended.
The internet has made it easier to host these promotions, which can attract new customers. For ideas, check out how the pros do it in other businesses. Amazon, the largest e-commerce site of them all, offers free Prime subscriptions for a month. Likewise, other online industries like iGaming give free test periods to customers, where they can test games and see if they like them. Online casino promotions can range from free spins, deposit bonuses, or free shots at a daily jackpot, all geared towards showing their selection of games to new customers. Impressed customers will stick around, though they may never have interacted with the brand if they didn’t host free promotions.
E-commerce sites can learn a lot from these tried-and-tested strategies. These strategies can often turn temporary visitors into permanent clients if they like what’s being sold. The top e-commerce websites make it easy to start a discount for products or a free test period for an online service. No matter which you sell, you should run offers & promotions periodically to drive new interest in your brand.
Mastering SEO
In today’s age, the success of an online business doesn’t just depend on impressing customers. For your store to show up in search results, it needs to rank highly with Google. To make your site more appealing, you’ll need to practice Search Engine Optimization – SEO. Think of it as promoting yourself to Google, so that they’ll show your store to everyone.
Google isn’t going anywhere in the next decade, neither is internet search, so becoming familiar with SEO is a worthwhile investment in your company. Fortunately, you can learn most of what you need to know for free online. When a site ranks highly with Google or any other search engine, it’ll attract more customers who often click on the first links they see. So, through optimization, businesses can rake in thousands more views, clicks, and possibly conversions.
SEO is a great equalizer when it comes to online business. Large brands will always have an advantage due to their big names, and many spend lots on SEO, but it’s possible for smaller businesses to outcompete them in some areas if their SEO profile is superior. Most would recommend finding a niche and fulfilling it, finding profit in a less competitive space.
Smartphone Marketing
Most web traffic comes from mobile devices, a lot of which include search queries for products and services just like yours. Going forward, every business should try to maximize its engagement and compatibility with smartphones and tablets. A subset of SEO – mobile SEO – exists just for this.
4 Mobile SEO Tips & Best Practices
— Semrush (@semrush) December 10, 2022
•Create Mobile-Friendly Content
•Use Structured Data on Your Mobile Website
•Target Voice Search-Friendly Keywords
•Optimize Mobile Site Speed for Better UX
Find four more here👇 https://t.co/dz4IdTuHUt.
Gone are the days of cold calling and other mobile marketing strategies, now many customers find e-commerce stores through social media. Your business should also be on social media too, either through advertisement or through content creation on those platforms. Uploading posts, pictures, and video content can advertise your product/service while building a community interested in what you’re selling – a great way to get repeat business.
A modern e-commerce business should embrace traditional promotional tactics while filtering them through mobile content, all optimized for search. That way, you can please customers, find new customers through mobile platforms, and rank highly in their searches. These three approaches are so fundamental for modern marketing that they won’t change much in the next decade.