Once you had a dream to launch an online store that would grow up in a mature full time income. You have successfully survived the torture of choosing your e-Commerce online store builder, have made the first steps and got the first results! Now it’s time to take a deep breath and relax, isn’t it? Probably not.
Your business has finally got on track, and it’s high time to think about additional options for your webstore that will distinguish your ‘baby’ among the monstrous competitors.
1. Introduce additional options
I mean literally differentiate your products and you will kill two birds with one stone: firstly, your customers will get a wider choice; secondly, you’ll be able to put an extra cost to various extra options.
Let’s imagine that you sell candies and biscuits. You offer three variants of payment: Card, Paypal and on delivery. Say card and on delivery payments are free for you, but Paypal requires a particular fee and you want your customers to pay it if they choose this method. You can create additional fees in your store for that. But that’s great when you provide different payment options. This also applies to delivery and products variations.
2. Consider the shipping options
The costly shipping or its absence is often the reason #1 for customers to abandon their shopping cart and go to another e-Commerce store. You put so many efforts to attract new customers to your webstore, that it will be too sad to look how they refuse from the goods that they have already put in their carts! This is a huge problem, and unfortunately it happens very often.
So, how to prevent the so called cart abandonment? Try various options.
- Offer discounts on shipping. Shipping can add too much expense to a purchase. It stops being a bargain, but becomes something far from the customer’s budget.
- Don’t forget about the KISS principle.Always keep it simple. If a checkout process extends for several pages, you’ll probably lose your customer right there. Streamline the checkout procedure at your store. Make it easy for people to finish their purchase.
- Expand the shipping options for your e-commerce store. Today there are numerous add-ons and extensions, offering advanced shipping options. You can set different rates according to the customer’s location, as well as according to the shipment size and weight. The right extension can help you charge fees much more accurately and even split orders if necessary.
3. Online advertising is a must-have
Never miss a chance to earn extra money, even if you don’t like different ads yourself (actually, no one does). However, it is one of the easiest ways to gain additional profit, using the most effective places on your website.
Today many plugins will help you optimize the space of your webstore and dedicate several spots for advertising purposes. You even do not need to be a professional coder or a designer to add these advanced advertising systems to your website. You may freely set different prices for different advertising spots, upload banners and choose timing for ads display.
Online advertising is everywhere. It helps business owners and individuals make additional income without any investments.
Conclusion
Today we’ve briefly touched three additional options that you can easily implement while running your own e-commerce store. However, every business has its own image behind the brand story. Only you can figure out what is best for your webstore and what feels right. Try different options until you find the very best approach. Good luck!