There is virtually no barrier stopping entrepreneurs from entering the e-commerce landscape. Anyone can set up an online storefront and start selling their products and services within minutes. This leads to market saturation, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is time to shy away from e-commerce altogether.
Today’s e-commerce landscape is still growing at an incredible pace as more people turn to online shops for the products and services they need. Winning their businesses is a matter of making your online store unique and recognizable. Here are the four ways you can separate your online business from its competitors.
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Invest in a Stronger Online Presence
Branding is a big part of marketing your online business. Anyone can start an online store, but only a handful can really develop their brands to a more mature state. This means there are still plenty of opportunities for your online store to be recognized for its valuable brand.
The way to do that is by investing in a stronger online presence. Forget about posting promotional offers to social media pages all the time. Abandon most of the hard-selling tactics you’ve been using and start focusing more on telling the stories behind your brand.
Share valuable content and make your social media profiles—and your website itself—appealing to a wider audience. The goal isn’t to generate sales, but rather to attract potential customers who are looking for valuable information.
Once you start building relationships with the audience, converting them into customers gets a lot easier. Even at that point, your focus should remain on delivering value through the content you share. That’s how you continue to strengthen your online presence.
Deliver a Personalized Experience
Even when you start with a unique product idea, there will come a time when there are other competitors are offering the same—or similar—products and services. This is a challenge that cannot be avoided in a market as vibrant as the e-commerce landscape today.
So, how can you sell similar products and still be the customers’ number 1 choice? The answer to that is customer experience or CX. Being an e-commerce business, you actually have more flexibility and leverage in delivering a unique, highly personalized experience to each of your customers.
Church Hill Classics is a good example of how an e-commerce store can amass a huge customer base through unique customer experience. Sure, you can buy frames for your diplomas anywhere, but Church Hill Classics takes it a step further with quality and user experience.
The website itself adds value to the whole experience; you can access Church Hill Classics by typing diplomaframe.com into your web browser. The product selection and the level of customization available to every customer are also part of that personalized CX that makes this company so special.
Stay Informed and Updated
It is difficult not to follow trends and take active steps to improve when you are in the e-commerce landscape. These two ingredients are critical if you are serious about staying ahead of the market. Even better, there are plenty of trends to follow and new ways to improve as the market shifts toward the future.
Updating your site, for instance, should not be seen as a burden that you have to lift every couple of years. Your e-commerce site needs to be at its best shape at all times, which is why adopting a more agile, continuous development stance is a must. You need to be on the lookout for new ways to improve the user experience of your e-commerce site to stay ahead.
The same can be said for learning. Every part of the business and every member of your team must view learning as a way to better serve the customers and grow as a business. When a new complaint reaches the support team, for instance, you can learn a lot from the problem faced by the customer and implement real measures to prevent that issue from happening again.
Don’t Forget Your Pricing
Last but not least, make sure you know how to leverage your pricing strategy to gain an advantage. Pricing is still an important matter, even in a more mature market with customers focusing on experience more. At the end of the day, it is your pricing strategy that acts as the determining factor as you try to convert viewers into customers.
Here’s a secret to keep in mind when it comes to pricing: You don’t have to be the cheapest but you want to be the most valuable. Rather than trying to cut prices, you can offer more value to customers instead. That added value will justify the higher prices you put on your products, resulting in more sales and better recognition at the same time.
These strategies will help you stand out and stay ahead. You can implement them separately or integrate them with a more comprehensive marketing strategy. No matter how competitive the market is, you now have what it takes to lead.
About Carson Derrow
