Surviving the Race called E-commerce

How convenient is it to shop with just a few clicks of mouse! And, easier is to find hundreds of alternatives and options for e-stores. The competition has gotten real tough for the online businesses now, with more and more companies joining the race. The challenge is to attract new buyers, while retaining the previous ones.

Online shoppers have little patience, million options, and indefinite access when it comes to e-commerce.  To be a portal, where consumers end their search for online vendors, all you have to do is understand the rules of the game, stick to it, and keep the users interested in your site. Here are few tips, which can help you keep your e-commerce site popular with the users.

Innovate:

Why do you need to innovate with your e-commerce portal? Simple, to hold back users on your webpage longer than usual. And how do you do that? Well, even a small change in your website is not bad to start with. Make it a point to revamp your website on regular intervals, say in every 3 months! From design, to presentation, content and merchandizes…all need to be updated and upgraded to spice up the user experience.

Initiate word-of-mouth campaign:

And to do this, you have to encourage group buying on your website. Provide options for buyers to form groups and join like-minded people, interested in the same category of merchandizes available in your webshop, and shop together. This will not only encourage discussions and talks about your products but also get you new user groups, adding to your consumer base.

Limited offers:

Shopaholics love discounts, and when it comes for limited time period, no further effort is required to attract them to your website. You can also announce season sales twice or thrice a year. However, all these sale and discount alerts should be mailed or sms’d to them to add a personal ouch to it.

Flash offers:

Offer free goodies and gifts with selected merchandizes and make it flash on the homepage (and other pages) of your website. This will not only attract attention but also inform the passersby, browsing through your website, about the latest offers going on, thus giving them a reason to register and login.

Personalized shopping experience:

Nothing can please a buyer more than your personalized sales pitch.  Track the buying habits of users on your website and offer them discounts and gifts on similar sections. You can also make your users fill up a form explaining their interests and hobbies. Use this information to promote your products. For example, for a football fan, what can be better offer than a football T-shirt free with purchase over a certain amount!

Create a Market niche:

Unless and until you create a niche, buyers won’t give any particular attention on your products. Highlight and popularize different categories of merchandizes, thus drawing more traffic to your website and encourage online shopping.

Use Social Networks:

The only ‘mantra’ to survive the tough competition is spreading the word, and when it comes to popularizing your business, nothing can work better than social networking sites. Create communities, write blogs, join forums, initiate discussions and stir a conversation.