Repositioning Your Business For eCommerce (5 minute read)
RepositionING Your Business FOR eCommerce (5 minute read)
Due to the circumstances we are all facing, businesses all around us are having to show true innovation to survive and keep the money coming in. As a result, in typical kiwi fashion, we’ve seen loads of New Zealand businesses getting underway with eCommerce websites and digital marketing.
If you’re looking at getting eCommerce for your business, we’ve put a few things together which we hope you find helpful. And please feel free to get in contact with us for any questions you may have!
Now before you get started, it’s good to keep these key principles in mind …
1). Get Your Tone Right
No profiteering: you may get quick cash, but it will damage your relationships in the long-term
Abundance mindset: use positive language on your website and communications, people will respond much better
Positioning: position your company as a provider of creative solutions, you are there to serve your customers
Long game: your actions now will affect your company in the long-term, so think bigger than only lockdown
2). Having a Reasonable Goal
Be realistic: everybody wants to move online because of current lockdown restrictions and changing shopping habits, but it doesn’t mean unlimited income as you will have competition. So you need to ensure you have realistic expectations and goals to start with, so “slowly, slowly catchee monkey”
Demonstrate brand value: don’t just sell sell sell, you still need to offer value to people and be helpful. So run campaigns that are not just promoting your products, but promoting your business and brand through good content and information to help people out in these testing times
Choosing the Right eCommerce Website Platform
There are quite a few to choose from, and it’s important to choose a platform that’s right for your business. Plus at the moment you also need to look at something you can get up and running as quickly as possible, which is not complicated!
Simple websites: there are plenty of companies that provide ecommerce websites that allow you to quickly get things going. Here is a list of the main ones worth considering: Shopify, Square, SquareSpace, Wordpress, WooCommerce, Wix
Social media shops: Facebook Shops and Instagram Shops allow you to build an ecommerce store for free, plus they’re easy to use and already have loads of people using these channels to get in front of
Existing website: the ability to add ecommerce functionality to your current website really depends on the website platform you currently have running. It could be potentially too challenging and expensive to add products and online payment to your current website. If so then it’s probably a better option to create a new site that already has all the product and payment functionality built-in. Best to speak to your website developer or someone you can trust - and feel free to reach out if you would like some advice at all to speak to one of our team, we can also put you in touch with some great ecommerce website companies we partner with.
Accepting Online Payment
When moving online and into e-commerce, your business needs to be able to take payment, which you have may not have had to do before. There are various ways of organising payment for your website. Setting up your payment system can have a few delays as you gather any ID verification and complete forms, so it’s best to get this underway as quickly as possible.
If you setup a shopping website like Shopify or Square, then they have all of those payment systems set up for you, it’s really easy to get going. Other platforms like Wordpress or SquareSpace require a little more work, but it’s still relatively easy, and you can get a payment system setup relatively quickly, so you can then accept online credit card transactions.
There are plenty of options available, here is a list below of the key providers for New Zealand businesses:
Windcave (used to be called Payment Express)
Paystation (by TradeMe)
Stripe (quick to integrate into your website)
Paypal (if you don’t want or can’t to get a merchant account setup)
POLi (accept payment into your bank account from people without a credit card)
Account2Account (like POLi)
As well as the above, you can also look into ‘buy now, pay later’ systems like Laybuy, Afterpay and Zip. All of these can make a huge impact to your sales volumes so they’re definitely worth considering. You want to give your customers different options to help increase your chances of making sales.
All of the above solutions are reliable and tested, but it will be up to you to decide which one is best for your business!
Start With Your Products and Shop Structure
Here are some quick tips to save you time and get you going as quickly as possible:
Before you get caught up in site design and picking templates etc, it’s important that you first setup your products in your online shop. That will make it much easier to design the informational part of your website afterwards, as you’ll be wanting to link images, photos, videos, text links and buttons etc through to the different products and categories in your online store.
Spend a bit of time thinking about core categories and product filters that will make it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for.
Getting your the headings, titles, descriptions and photos together for products can be time-consuming and a bit frustrating to do at times. But investing time in the content up front will reap rewards for your search engine rankings later on so it’s worth the investment. If you are short on time though and just want to get going that’s fine, as you can always refine and add to the content later.
All the websites listed in the previous section have a bulk product import tool - make sure you use it! This will save you a huge amount of time and effort. And if you create the CSV import template in a Google Spreadsheet you can also get many hands working on the same sheet for an extra speedy turnaround!
Get Going Promoting Yourself!
So you’ve either got your new ecommerce website up and running (good for you!) or you’ve bolted on eCommerce to your existing site (nice work!), so now it’s time to promote those products and services:
Start with Google Shopping
You’ll want to get results fast, so you should get Google Shopping up and running right away. Google Shopping is a pay per click advertising service managed via your Google Ads account, and you can setup a direct feed of your products to the Google Merchant Centre you will need to run Google Shopping. Here is a blog we wrote last year about getting started on Google Shopping.
As the results are visual like below, people will immediately see your products which generally results in higher conversion rates.
Build Your Audience
Set up your social media accounts as a way to connect with people. Tell your story to engage with people at a personal level.
Here are a couple of Facebook posts from clients we worked with that posted about being back up and running and contactless (Buckley Road Cafe), and another offering a new home food delivery service (ProducePronto).
As well as posting on your Facebook and Instagram pages, you can also get in front of new audiences by running some targeted advertising. You can do this by setting up ads with Facebook Ads Manager, and you can be quite specific at who you target. More on Facebook Ads can be found here.
Start with your loyal customers and local community, as these are the people that are most likely to support you the most. Here is an example Facebook Ad for one of our awesome clients that promotes the new home delivery online ecommerce service:
Some other tips for social media:
Reach out to friends of your customers, they are more likely to trust you and have heard about you already
Go niche if you can, as it will make your messaging and targeting that much easier.
Email Marketing
A bit of a no-brainer really, but you need to make sure you are communicating with your customers! Keep them up to date with what you are doing with your ecommerce offering, any new initiatives, products, deals, deliveries, promos etc.
If you have not ventured into email marketing yet, then now is the time! There are plenty of free/cheap email platforms out there, and a lot of them already synchronise with ecommerce websites so it makes it even better.
The most common email system that’s easy-to-use is Mailchimp, and they already have ecommerce functionality for retailers which makes it a powerful way to connect with customers. Also be sure to enable Mailchimp’s abandoned cart capability.
Another platform which has a lot more features and works really well with Shopify is called Klaviyo. It’s a big step up from Mailchimp but if you are into a bit more data and sophistication, and you’re already using Shopify, Woo Commerce, Big Commerce or Magento, then it’s a very good platform to use as can quickly integrate with your ecommerce store. We are an accredited Klaviyo Agency Partner and can help you set it up, so just drop us a line if you want to find out more about it!
So in summary - the return on investment with email marketing is a no-brainer, so get going!
SMS Text Marketing
Don’t be afraid to give text marketing a try, right now in lockdown people are spending a lot of time on their mobile phones, and they’ll be receptive to receiving your text messages. Not only that, it’s a pretty cheap way to get in front of your customers. And let’s face it, who never opens a text message? That’s right, open rates are are generally 100%!
Get Found in Google!
Working your way up the natural search engine rankings takes time and effort. The key to good rankings fast is to target very specific phrases. Make each page of your site focused on a very specific keyword theme and ensure the headings, url, links, buttons and body text all contain the relevant keyword phrase. See more about SEO here.
Upgrading an Existing eCommerce Website?
If you already have an ecommerce website, then now is a good time for some a bit of a spruce-up! Here are some of the key things you should be focusing on to improve your online shopping experience, and to get more customers to your site:
Create a content calendar and communicate regularly with your email list and on social media channels
Mine data from your website: traffic, Google Analytics, do keyword research on current popular products
Highlight health products if you sell them!
Check which old ads, promotions, content can be / needs to be repurposed?
Enter new markets: identify whether a market you didn’t service before could be relevant now. For example, raw materials are more lucrative than finished products at the moment
Impulse buys have shot through the roof so develop ‘one-click’ purchase functionality if you can
Develop New Channels and Relationships
It’s good to think outside the box right now, and identify areas where you can promote your products and team up/partner other businesses who are also finding things a bit tough right now.
Public market: list your products on other sites and sell on there. TradeMe Stores for example, even Amazon if it makes sense for you, and other established marketplaces provide you with instant, free access to engaged audiences to promote your products
Co-marketing: it’s important to avoid over-marketing of the same audience (and disengagement). Partner with someone you already work with, market their products to your audience and vice versa. This gives you both access to a new market and is a complete win-win!
Next Step?
If you are finding it all a bit overwhelming, then the best thing you can do is start, then refine as you go. Don’t put pressure on yourself to get it perfect, because you probably won’t, and you’ll learn and improve along the way. Before you know it you’ll be selling online like a pro and will ask yourself why you had not ventured into ecommerce earlier!
If you want to have a chat about getting started, we’re happy to take a call and talk through the best options. From the website platform to the digital marketing, we are happy to assist. We have a wealth of ecommerce digital marketing experience and partner with some super experienced ecommerce website companies who we can put you in touch with!
Good luck and stay safe!