Launching an eCommerce store involves an eclectic set of skills….and a good amount of luck and judgement! It’s tempting to think that a well-sourced product, a niche market, inventive pricing and solid financials are enough for success …. and then the sobering reality sets in - you realize that this will take more cash than expected and you need some solid advertising strategies.
Even with unique products and a great design, it takes time to make your store work. And one of the things that’s hardest to be patient about is your marketing.
SEO, social media, and email marketing will all work to get traffic to your store. But they all take time to grow.
Advertising is one of your only options to make progress faster when you’re just starting out.
Launching an online store requires a lot of preparation. And when it’s finally live, you want to see results NOW!
Advertising speeds things up in three ways. It allows you to:
1. Actively test your website
No matter how much you spent on testing your website some mistakes only show up once you have real visitors to your site. Broken links, unclear instructions, missing product info, etc.
With tools like Optimizely you can create heat maps and recordings that will show you what’s happening, allowing you to catch obvious mistakes or things you can further improve.
Two other great tools are quick polls or live chats. They allow you to get extra information about your visitors, find out what’s missing on the page or discover why users aren’t buying.
2. Know Your Numbers
Before you started your store you hopefully made a rough calculation of how many sales you needed. How many visitors would you need to make a sale? How much would you pay for each click? What would an average order be worth? What are your costs and how will your pricing affect your profits?
Advertising allows you to get clarity on these numbers. With visitors (and sales) rolling in, you’re able to adjust your plan with actual numbers, not ones you made up. That might be sobering, but it will help you make smarter decisions.
3. Make sales
There is nothing like making actual sales to motivate you. Even if the numbers don’t make sense at first, and in the early days your advertising budget is stripping away all your profits, generating sales will feel good and show that there is potential in your store.
By now you’ll know that advertising absolutely makes sense for your store, and that you’re unlikely to be successful without it.
A word from the author:
Our software Profitizer, is an app that makes it easier for eSellers to understand their marketplace profit & loss data from the top of their business right through to individual or grouped product profitability. For Amazon, eBay, Etsy and other marketplace sellers, Profitizer is “Profit and loss, made simple”.
Find out more: https://www.profitizer.app
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