So, you’ve decided to finally start your eCommerce site after almost the never-ending research and uncountable sleepless nights. Completing the very first sale in the first few weeks of your business can be symbolic and can give you a boost to continue what you’ve been doing.
However, one sale may seem so simple to get, but that isn’t always the case. It can be a long and tiring journey that you must be equipped for.
To help you with your journey, here are some sure-fire ways to get that first sale of yours.
Before Launching
Setting up your business can be tiring, but once you get the hang of it, you’re on your way to that long-awaited success. That said, success doesn’t happen overnight. Before you launch your awesome business, make sure you have all the small details covered. Here are some essentials you should do:
Setup Social Media Accounts
Pick the social media platforms that best suit your business. If possible, at the start of your site, focus on only two. Setting up social media is a must for eCommerce websites, otherwise, marketing your store can be even more challenging.
Prepare Email Marketing Strategy
Collecting emails allows you to stay in touch and speak with your customer base. It has proven to be one of the best sales-generating strategy in the eCommerce industry and a no-brainer to integrate to your store.
Prepare the Blog Topics
Your blog won’t always be where you will sell your products again and again. It’s where you’ll build relationships with your customers by giving them stories and behind the scenes of your blog.
Maybe you can share about how you come up with your eCommerce idea, what your next products will be, or even how you take photos of your products.
Install Google Analytics
Knowing your website performance can give you lots of ideas and more challenges that you can act upon. The good thing about this is whatever data you get is the result of your all your hard work. Make sure you’ve correctly installed Google Analytics before you spread out the word about your site so all the traffic that will come can be recorded.
Build a Beautiful Website
A beautiful website design can be a deciding factor on how a potential customer perceives the business. Meaning, if your site looks and loads poorly, you can then say goodbye to your first sale. For now.
Prioritize user experience. Always make sure that your website is user-friendly because the last thing that you want is for someone wanting to buy click the close button because of your confusing design.
Be mobile friendly by using responsive themes, write clear descriptions, and create easy to spot call to action buttons.
Use high-quality imagery and typography that you can stand out from. While there are many competitors out there, who may be using the same template as you, make sure that there are elements in your store that stand out from the rest. This will make people remember your site and possibly go back to your store again.
Now that you’ve prioritized this information, you can then welcome again not even one, but a lot of sales coming your way.
Create a Killer Landing Page
Humans usually judge books by its covers. Meaning, first impressions matter. To make that first sale, you have to capture your visitor’s attention at a glance.
Creating your landing page allows you to target specific audiences, offer something valuable to them, and turn them into leads.
You can use Leadpages or any other landing page builders to create your lead magnet when you launch your store.
Make it Easy to Purchase
While you’ve been steadily researching more about how to increase sales for your store, you may have been neglecting the ease-of-use of your website.
Unclutter the pages that may hinder them from purchasing. Remove distractions around your call-to-action buttons and don’t make them visit some pages just to complete their purchase.
To keep people browsing your store and then turning them into buyers, it is important that you also maintain the interface of your website as simple and clean as possible.
For more tips on how to make the purchasing process more convenient, read this post at FreshSparks.
Promotion
Make sure you’ve gotten enough exposure from the crowd. To do this, you must know how to properly promote before you even launch your store. Then, continue the momentum even after launching.
Social Media
Being present and active on social media has proven to be the best when it comes to building relationships with your future customers. When you grow your followers, the next thing that comes is leads and sales. Post regularly and don’t forget to maximize the use hashtags!
Paid Advertising
If you have a budget, you can use paid advertising to drive traffic to your site. Know how to use Facebook Ads to increase conversions properly. You can also dive into Adwords and study carefully what keywords you will be using.
Email Marketing
Remember when we told you to prepare your email marketing strategy? It’s for capturing emails that could save you a ton of time looking for leads. Those who visit your site may want to hear from you more. Don’t forget to collect their emails so the next time you have a store update, they’re the priority. You can use the services of MailChimp or ActiveCampaign to setup your first email marketing campaign.
Conclusion
One last thing to note is to be a successful eCommerce entrepreneur means that you test everything. Whatever doesn’t work should be tweaked enough that it will go around and be the best strategy you’ve ever made.
Naturally, you are now thinking about jumping into a train and doing everything all at once. However, when you are doing this solo, it’s best to focus on things one by one and see where it goes.
If you’re a little short on ideas, we hope this list has given you enough insight to get that iconic first sale of your store!
