You may ask why so?

Well, as easy starting an e-commerce business sounds, maintaining and raising its bar is not something everyone can manage to do.

The way eCommerce is bubbling up, it is expected to hit $4.5 trillion in 2021 without a doubt. We can guess by the figures that how much crowded the eCommerce marketplace is today. And if you are the owner of a Multi-Vendor Marketplace Store, for people to notice you among such a competitive crowd, you got to play some tricks and try some hacks to swim the ocean of e-commerce and win the trophy. We will tell you how.

Sell Stories & Not Just Brand

Customers today are not just interested in the product or service they are acquiring online but are also keen to know the background of it too. Who you are? How you came up with this idea? What challenges you overcame and so on. Telling them all will give an emotional touch to your brand and as a multi-vendor, you can also encourage your sellers to share their stories as well. The more good exposure your vendor partners will get, your brand will become more popular in the market.

With your and your vendors’ stories, you will be not only simply selling products/services, but in a way will be actually giving an experience of it to your users before they buy/acquire it for real.

Instant, Impressive and Unforgettable Customer Service

Of course, the quality of product/service and price matters the most to the customers, but your survival depends more upon how you are serving them. Customers are looking for a great experience in any business. The one that delivers the best, they stick to them.

A customer can face difficulty at any point on your store and if don’t have an efficient customer service team to pull them out of it, remember they have plenty of other options who offer the same you are offering in a better way. If you don’t want them to migrate to others, make sure you have an efficient and dedicated service team too.

Ensure whether your customer service team is quick in responding to queries, trained in handling the customers well and skilled in solving errors as much as possible at their level or not so that customers don’t just walk out of your site.

Get to Know your Competitors

You can’t compete unless you know whom you’re up against. Take some time to peek into your competitors. Run a background check, study their tactics, this will help you plan your move well.

Since it is not that you are selling something unique that nobody has ever discovered, you got to keep an eye on your competitors.  Make a strong and bold online presence, stay updated with the latest trends, be open to change something as and when required, re-develop your aged website with latest technologies, offer something unique than your competitors, take feedback from customers and modify or serve accordingly, all these will help you make your e-commerce marketplace definitely different from others. For best results, implementing Magento Multi-vendor eCommerce Marketplace Software onto your store will yield amazing results beyond your expectations.

Sculpt Your Social Presence

As much your online presence is important, equally important is for you to socially connect with people. Reviews, ratings, testimonials of customers are what makes you socially famous. As they are the proof how great your customer service is. The more they are satisfied, they will not only keep coming to you but will bring four others with them as well. Like today, before opting for any service or buying any product, people do check out reviews, hence, gaining a good social exposure is something you must get in any way.

Sharpen Your Strengths

Not all eCommerce marketplace is the same, you might be good at something your competitor is not. Try to figure out what your strengths are so as to use it as an excellent tool against your competitors. How? What’s Google for then? Monitor your website using Google Analytics and know your digital strengths as in what and from where are you getting website traffic. Like, if it is coming from Facebook, focus more on Facebook posts and ads. If it is the blogs that attracting your customers, focus on your content more. Concentrating more on your strengths will make you an expert in it and gain more attraction easily than others.

Experimenting is a Good Idea

The market is changing at every second. Your today’s tactics may not work tomorrow. Therefore, you must keep experimenting with new ideas every now and then. Try new campaigns, advertisements, offers, designs, themes, etc., as per the target audience you are serving. The soon you break your monotonous pattern and try something new and creative, the better.

Wrapping up

The market is too crowded for any customer to wait for you. If not you, they have a plethora of options to choose from. Hence, in today’s eCommerce marketplace, Darwin’s theory ‘Survival of the fittest’ truly proves to be right. You got to have your store built with an exceptional Magento marketplace software builder to make it self-efficient enough to lure customers and once you get them to notice you, you can easily impress them using all the above tactics, at the right time, in the right way.

The post How to make your eCommerce Marketplace a Crowd-puller in the Market Today? appeared first on Relevance.

Mistakes happen in any business and it may happen that in spite of knowing what and where could go wrong, we fall for it. Thanks to the internet today, knowing those common eCommerce mistakes and correcting them so that they don’t cause harm to the business or staying aware, have become easy. Hence, we will discuss today, what are the top 7 common eCommerce mistakes that you must jot down to not commit them later. Ready? Here are they;

eCommerce Mistake #1 – Skipping Market Research

Don’t be in a notion that people buy anything that is available online. The market is intelligent and they have options if not you. Hence, burying your head into the market study is the first and the foremost thing you must do before getting ready to launch your online business.

What to do: Market research will help you figure out whether what you are preparing to sell has the market for it or not. Instead of jumping with a parachute, spying on your competitors is a good idea to avoid your eCommerce from turning into a big flop. Talk to experts, dig out some histories and analytics, work on stats and plot some strategies if you want your online business to live for long years.

eCommerce Mistake #2 – Bad Navigation and Slow Loading Time

A customer wants everything quick and easy today and if your website fails to do so, they take the exit right away. Within a split second of time, your customer can move on to your competitor if what they are looking for is not easily found or takes too long to load.

What to do: Make the navigation of your online store, simple and easy. The sooner they find what they want on your website; more are the chances of them buying it at the instant. For that, categorize your products precisely; give them filter options at the search bar so that they can narrow down their search. And avoid too much graphics or animation on your site which takes up a lot of time to load and keep the customers waiting which they hardly do.

Improve your site speed by visiting Google’s PageSpeed Insights Tool to discover what is taking up too long. Also, get your site hosted with a trusted service provider that uses high-performance servers that are optimized for website hosting.

eCommerce Mistake #3 – Poor Product Description

Customers not just simply fall for high-quality product images and buy the product, but they do also read about the product. If you fail to describe your own product in a manner that the customer can understand, forget conversion rates then. Now when we say description, don’t write an essay praising it.

What to do: A couple of crisp informative lines will do the trick. Mention the features and benefits in short layman language with accurate details such as size, colour, weight, etc. without bluffing.

eCommerce Mistake #4 – Complicated Checkout and Shopping Cart

In a quantitative study of reasons for abandonment showed that 28% of users found the checkout process too complicated while 37% of them abandoned during checkout as they were asked to create an account. Forcing a customer to register or making them fill a long list of details will only urge them to close the tab. Similarly, a poorly-developed shopping cart may make the customer abandon the product forever and never return. Guess what, the global average abandonment rate of the shopping cart in 2017 was recorded to 78.65%.

What to do: Never force a customer to register, instead ask them to leave their email and later sent a password to their email using which they can create an account later. This will not hinder their checkout process. Also, avoid showing unnecessary products and offers while they are making the purchase as distractions will make them leave the checkout and chances are they will postpone the purchase or forget about it.

Get a persistent shopping cart developed at the hands of an experienced shopping cart website development company which will help the customer shop the abandoned items easily as it will stay in the cart until and unless they buy or remove it.

eCommerce Mistake #5 – Hidden Shipping Costs and Aggressive Return Policies

Surprising customers with hidden shipping costs at the end is a bummer. When the extras add up, the customer will definitely bail out. Some businesses have stringent return policies that annoy customers to the extent they neither shop nor will allow their friends and relatives to do the same.

What to do: Whatever you are charging, display all before checking out so that the customer can shop accordingly. It is not necessary to offer free shipping but let them know the minimum amount of checkout. Taking about return policies, make it clear to them how long are they eligible to return, when and where.

eCommerce Mistake #6 – Ignoring Customers after Sale

Pampering customers only for the sale of the product is not a good strategy. Many of the businesses make no effort in interacting with the customers once their sales target is achieved.

What to do: Customers must always be valued before and even after the sale of the product. Take feedback; ask them to write a review or share suggestions and experience, this will build a good trust factor and bond between you two.

eCommerce Mistake #7 – Considering making an app, unnecessary

A mobile app is often considered as an extra and unnecessary cost. Approaching an online e-commerce store app creator is often ignored fearing the cost. Well, this can be a big mistake as today mobile shopping is preferred more than desktop ones.

What to do: Your eCommerce business may be doing well on the web but it can do better with an application of it. Consumers using their mobile devices, phones and tablets, to acquire goods and services have reached $1.4 trillion and is expected to touch $3.5 trillion by 2021. You can guess the need for e-commerce mobile app by now. An app investment will only bring the flow of sales, revenue and business growth and double your return in no time.

Final Thoughts

Common eCommerce mistakes can still happen, it’s not that perfecting all above you will be safe but don’t panic, learn from your mistakes and look out for solutions as there’s always a way out.

The post 7 eCommerce Mistakes to Avoid and How to Deal With It appeared first on Relevance.