Three E-Commerce Tips For SMBs

Online shopping is now the preferred way for many consumers to purchase goods. While major retailers are doubling down on efforts to cultivating a thriving online business, SMBs are lagging behind in this department. Here are three tips to help SMBs make the most of e-commerce opportunities.

online shopping image from Shutterstock

Creating a successful online business isn’t just about setting up a website and waiting for customers to roll in. You need to work hard to drive sales even if it is an online store. Gary Tramer, co-founder of online sales team company LeadChat has three pieces of advice for SMBs:

#1 Sessions spying

Learning about customer behaviour is an important aspect of running an online store. According to Tramer:

“This sounds a bit creepy, but have you ever watched someone browse through your online store? You can use a program like SessionCam to record the visitor behaviour. Like replaying their mouse movements, scrolling and more.
 
How does this help? It lets you figure out where and why people are getting stuck so you can fix it moving forward.”

#2 Be transparent about additional costs

Added costs at cart leads to a higher chance of it being abandoned. If you can bake in shipping costs so customers don’t get a surprise when they’re checking out, do it. If shipping is free, be sure to post it all over the site.

#3 Show people what others are buying

This is going to be a bit controversial given there are many people who hate pop-up notifications. But Tramer noted that pop-up notifications is commonly used by the bigger retail outlets to show customers what other people have bought.

“Some of the best sites like Eatnow and Kogan have popup notifications every five seconds showing you who else has made a purchase in your area.”

Trammer said that this method gets people talking about certain products, which has the potential to drive sales.


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