Whether you are starting a business or a merchant who wants to expand his business on the Internet, selling online is within the reach of all businesses. Professionals in tourism, gastronomy, home care, health, and household equipment whatever your sector, if you sell a product, its marketing on the Internet is strategic to improve your sales.
Indeed, e-commerce offers many opportunities to reach your potential customers, attract them to your online store, turn them into customers and retain them. Return on all the technical and strategic aspects related to the opening of a commercial site through this guide of the e-merchant. You can get all information about how to set up an eBay business account in this case.
Selling on the Internet: what are the key steps before embarking on the e-commerce adventure?
Before getting into the deep end, it is essential to have a thorough reflection on your potential. The competition is high and the online behavior of competing buyers purchasing behavior in physical store.
Indeed, on the Internet, the Net surfer has access to a colossal quantity of information almost instantly to help him in all his thinking of purchase. In addition, certain obstacles such as the marketing of fragile products or the impossibility of touching, smelling or trying the products require thinking about a winning strategy. Thus, two areas are to be developed: gain visibility against the competition and develop reassuring content to facilitate the transition to purchase.
In the reflection phase of your store, it is then necessary to conduct a market study to assess the demand for your product, but also purchasing behavior:
- What are the market trends?
- What are the fears and motivations of your target audience?
- Who is she, what is her relationship with the Internet?
- What is his real need?
- Who are your competitors online?
- What are their weaknesses, their strengths?
- What do they put in place to convert your target audience?
Depending on the results of the study, you will be able to build a digital ecosystem around your online store and budget for it. In particular: the first avenues of a digital strategy (presence on social networks, blogging, inbound marketing), the marketing actions to be implemented (advertising, natural referencing, e-mailing), as well as a reflection on the design of the site (technique, design).
This market study will also allow you to see the tasks that you can manage and those to outsource to e-marketing experts.
What are the main trends in e-commerce?
These figures correlate with the evolution of Internet users’ consumption patterns, who buy more and more on the Internet and especially on mobile devices.
A constantly evolving market, marked by the diversity of Internet sales models. We note in particular:
- The online store: the extension of the physical store.
- Drop shipping: the sale of products without stock (direct shipment by the supplier).
- Affiliate trade: purchase and shipment of the product through a third party site (example: Amazon).
- Membership: periodic sending of a product in the form of a subscription.
- Trade in services: the sale of services such as online training.
Beyond the multiplication of sales platforms, the marketing levers are also constantly evolving to conduct increasingly effective campaigns. These include SEO, the delivery of native and ultra-targeted advertisements, and the integration of customer data into traffic and conversion campaigns.
