Questions You Must Ask when Creating an Online Store

Thinking to Hire eCommerce Development Company? 7 Questions You Must Ask When Creating an Online Store

As one of the biggest revenue-generating opportunity, e-commerce has totally revolutionized the way we human shop. The new buzzword of digital realm is to buy products/services at a mere click of a button. If one looks at the numbers of U.S.A’s online retail sale only, one will observe how retail sales are growing exponentially, and they are certain to reach $278.9 billion by 2015, according to Cambridge, Mass.-based technology and market research company Forrester Research.

Looking at such baffling statistics, is your business ready to reap the benefits of online sales? Kick-starting an online store can surely be quite challenging in a today’s digital world where businesses are often short on time, budget and manpower.

In a world where mass-market items are slowly losing their charm and authentic and individual (and independent) brand and dealers are gaining momentum in a world of franchise same-ness; it is here that esteemed e-commerce vendors come into the picture to help you create, design and maintain an online store, all in a relatively simple and affordable manner.

But before starting up, do ask your digital vendor these 7 important questions when creating your brands’ first online store:

1. How can I best customise the overall look of my online store?

It is usually observed that if you already have a company website, your e-commerce venture should be an extension of your existing brand image, hence the overall look and feel of the website should remain the same.
However, on the other hand, if you don’t have a business website, do try and choose background and accent colours for your e-commerce website which expresses your logo in a complimenting manner. We at Loginworks Softwares offer a wide range of design templates, which come with preset theme settings, and do not require you to go around tackling the hassle of learning HTML or CSS knowledge your customise. We provide you with a quick tutorial on uploading product images, banners, slideshows and content on CMS in a swift and easy manner.

2. What type of payment methods and systems should I use?

We often recommend PayPal and PayU Money to most of our e-commerce clients before they are starting out. This is because third party accessors such as these are widely known as the most secure system for managing hassle-free online payments.

There is a very marginal sign-up fee and no fixed monthly charges for the basic services of these payment methods. However, do note that PayPal sellers pay a 2.9 percent transaction fee on the sum of total sale amount, and in addition to that a 30-cent fee per transaction is also required. For PayU Money, you can go live instantly and it has a transaction charge of 2.9% 2% till 31st March, 2015 with no setup costs and no hidden fees. Apart from these payment methods, one needs to understand that shoppers also prefer to pay using cash-on-delivery mode, so this a must-have option in your payment mode page.

3. How will I handle customer service efficiently?

In order to respond to your customer’s concerns in a more clear and vivid manner, it is strongly suggested that you choose an e-commerce vendor that gives you access to a strong and robust customer relationship management (CRM) tool.

This tool helps in documents, structuring and streamlining a score of merchants who interact with customers on daily basis, all at one central place. This tool includes additional features too, such as recent purchases, complaints, customer contract information, and pending tools. We also recommend our customers to get a toll-free number, which would be specifically dedicated to customer service, along with 24*7 live chat feature.

4. How do I create the best product images and descriptions?

One has to understand that in online business, the user doesn’t get a chance to see, touch, smell or feel your product, hence it is imperative that the product images and descriptions are succinct, crisp and clear. They also add heavily to the overall visual imagery of your website. As far as writing product descriptions is concerned, do make sure that they are short, taut, rich and are loaded with apt keywords and interesting details to up your customer’s interest.

Try and establish an emotional connect with your user, obviously without getting too carried away with the use of flowery adjectives. Apart from this, do include product uses, characteristics, dimension and related defining features of what you aiming to sell online.

5. I want maximum social sharing for my products – how is that possible? Also, should I be including customer reviews?

We also give an option for you to connect with your user in every possible manner. To start with, we allow customers to post comments on your products and leave their testimonials on the website. This would help customers to boost the confidence in your store.
To top it all, social media shares could result into more sales gradually. To keep the negative comments in check, we also provide you with customer review options that allow you to respond or remove undesirable comments as per your discretion.

6. What all strategies should I adopt to attract shoppers to my online store?

Soon after your store is up and running, we recommend you start spreading the work both in online and offline mediums. Start cross promotions across a host of e-commerce giants and start sending out weekly newsletters.
LOGINWORK SOFTWARES also recommends having a strong and sensible social media presence across a myriad range of social media ventures, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Youtube. Update these profiles on daily basis with informative and fun status updates, insightful infographics, daily deals and other such promotions. It is also suggested that you choose an e-commerce vendor, which uses a sound Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) policy in order to rank top in online searches. Right SEO tactics can surely provide you with the right eyeballs your store would need!

7. How can I realistically track the success of my online store? 

We always provide our e-commerce clients with several reporting tools, such as free self-service analytics, and various google analytics reports to help them track their venture’s performance over time. These reports are the most practical and realistic approach in understanding what’s your target audience, how often they visit you, how they found you and where they live. Further to it, they can reveal which all websites drive the most traffic to your store and what all products are your customers genuinely looking at and purchasing more often.
Image source: http://tribulant.com/files/productimages/shot_1398345779.png

Soon after your e-commerce website is up and running, LOGINWORKS SOFTWARES then goes on to next stage where search engines are monitored for a better ranking, conversion rates’ strategies are formulated and customer retention is checked upon for your users to keep coming back again and again.

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