It is hard to overstate how vital a launch is for the new business. Your launch with significantly impact your business’s fortunes during its earliest days of operation. If you fudge your launch, your business will be starting on the wrong foot. eCommerce businesses are no exception to this rule.
Launching a new e-commerce business is a challenging prospect in 2020. However, as long as you take the necessary steps beforehand, there is no reason you cannot have a successful launch. Below are six tips any new eCommerce business can utilise to refine their launch plans and ensure their business hits the ground running.
Don’t Rush
If there is one thing that is going to be rail and otherwise smooth business launch, it is rushing things. A successful launch should be a carefully choreographed affair. For eCommerce businesses, a well-designed website is absolutely essential. Refining your design until it is as good as it possibly can be takes time.
You only get one shot and making first impressions with your customers. If you launch a sub-par and buggy website, your first wave of customers is less likely to become loyal users. By the time your website opens, and you start accepting your first orders, everything you are offering should have been polished and tested.
There is nothing wrong with securing your domain name early. In fact, it is often a good idea to do this. But you should not go live with your storefront and start accepting orders until everything is in place.
Focus On The User Experience
One of the most important aspects of any online business is the user experience. If your eCommerce store is awkward to navigate and difficult to use, this will inevitably be reflected in poor sales figures. On the other hand, if you enable your users to glide effortlessly around your website and find what they need without any trouble, your sales figures will remain high throughout your business’s lifespan.
There is a lot more to a decent user experience than you might realize. Getting this right is not easy. Throughout your design process, you need to put yourself in the shoes of your audience and ask yourself what the service is like from their perspective.
One disadvantage that an eCommerce business always has compared to a regular retailer is that the eCommerce business cannot put its products physically in the hands of customers before they decide whether to make a purchase. However, eCommerce businesses can still use a range of design techniques to encourage impulse buying on their platforms. You should embrace at least some of these techniques.
There are numerous components to your user experience. As well as the obvious example, such as the navigation and user interface of your eCommerce store, the user experience will also be affected by things like your pricing strategy, your shipping and returns policy, and the checkout system that you use.
Pick The Perfect Platform
Choosing the right platform is essential for both eCommerce businesses and their customers. The platform that you choose will determine your initial successes and the kind of growth rate that you can expect. It will also impact your running costs; some platforms are considerably more efficient than others.
Of course, one of your primary considerations when choosing an eCommerce platform will be how easy you find it to use. Ecommerce setups such as WordPress and WooCommerce, or Shopify make it easy for even an inexperienced web designer to put together a professional-looking storefront. Numerous plugins also enable you to add custom features and modules as you need them.
However, another important consideration when choosing your platform is how you will market yourself. Professional SEO agencies often have experience with specific platforms. If your site is built on a platform that they have experience with they can boost your profile much more quickly and efficiently. For example, Magento 2 is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms available right now. If you decide to go with Magento 2, SEO agencies like this Magento 2 eCommerce agency can turbocharge your early business growth.
Test, Test, Test
Before you launch your business, you need to test every feature thoroughly. Launching an untested website is a recipe for disaster. You can be sure that your first wave of customers will find everything that can break on your website and proceed to break it. However, as long as you test comprehensively, you should be able to unearth any bugs or other issues before your launch.
As well as testing the navigation and overall design of your storefront, you need to test the tools and features you provide to customers. It is worth hiring professional beta testers if you are in a position to do so. If you are going to be relying on your own testing to root out any issues, you will need to come up with a reliable system for digging into your design and finding any problems that might be there.
There are many A/B testing tools available that you can use to maximize your conversion rate. Also known as split testing, A/B testing enables you to put two versions of your webpage next to one another so you can compare them directly.
Market Your Launch Appropriately
You want to hit the ground running when it comes to your marketing. Having a strong marketing campaign right out of the gate will help your business make it through those crucial first months in as strong a position as possible. Don’t skimp on your marketing; it is worth investing in this facet of your business. However, it is also important to realize that money is not everything in marketing. Just because you are spending an extraordinary amount, that doesn’t automatically mean you are going to get good results.
A thoughtful marketing strategy that is based on hard data is more likely to be effective than one that you try to devise on the fly. Prior to launching any business, you should conduct market research. Your initial market research will provide you with the first pieces of data that you can use to inform your marketing strategy. Once your business is up and running, you can start gathering your own data about your user base.
Don’t Neglect Your Mobile Users
The majority of internet browsing now takes place on mobile devices. The mobile market is simply too big to ignore whether you are making mobile games or an e-commerce store. Throughout your website design and testing process, make sure that you are always considering the experience from the perspective of a mobile user. If your website is too heavyweight, it will load slowly and incur heavy data costs for anyone browsing it.
Most eCommerce websites today will automatically rearrange themselves to suit the device they are being browsed on. This approach is much more efficient and user-friendly than building an entirely separate mobile version of your site. If you are able to offer a decent mobile experience, it is much more likely that your users will make impulse purchases while on the go. The income from these purchases can ultimately account for a significant source of your revenue.
Launching any kind of new business is a risky proposition. But the field for e-commerce businesses is already very crowded and competitive. If you want to launch a successful e-commerce business, the way that you approach your initial design and launch will be critical in determining your success. It is possible to recover from a bad launch but doing so requires you to invest time and resources that you could have put into improving the service. Stick to the advice above, and you should have no problem pulling off the perfect e-commerce launch.
