Chrissy Weems believes that it is really easy to start an online store. If you find someone trying to charge you thousands of dollars to install an eCommerce solution to your online store, walk away from them. The tough parts of the online store are how your website is ranked when performing a search on the internet, getting customers to purchase things after visiting your website and keeping them coming back for more.
We are going to look at five things that Chrissy Weems agrees that you should consider before you start your online store.
Select your system with caution
You should stay away from specialized solutions that are custom made and are built using old-fashioned code. Go for a popular system that is well supported, produces really user-friendly and stunning online shops, and there is a community behind it. To avoid even interacting with a code, use a hosted platform to get a subscription to plans that start from approximately $30 a month e.g Shopify. Alternatively, if you want to have full control over the code of the website, you can use WordPress which also uses popular eCommerce plugins or some dedicated eCommerce solutions.
Optimize repeatedly
A slow loading page means that you are going to lose customers very fast. If you have opted for a hosted solution like Shopify and you experience slow loading pages, there is nothing much you can do; but if you are using a self-hosted system like WordPress, you can optimize the load speed of the page.
Stand Out
If you are not producing your own products, you are most likely using the manufacturer’s product feeds, descriptions and photographs; this is a terrible idea. Your online store will be the same as hundreds of other online stores who get their products from the same manufacturer.
Start off by rewriting the product descriptions and have your own personal touch on them. Take images of the products on your own from different angles.
Be aware of your competitors
This point applies to all websites including the eCommerce websites. Take a keyword you are hoping to establish your website in and search for it. If the results that come up are outdated and not well designed, then you are on a trajectory to success in that niche. Although you have a good stepping stone, you should consider how to be better in case someone else comes into your space.
If you discover that the search results produce sites that are well designed, and they are doing well, you need to come up with a way you can compete with them. What difference will you offer your clients that your competitors are not offering?
Selling is never enough
The option of shopping online is a great fabric that consumers can decide to go to any website anywhere in the world. Unless the price is the competitive factor, your site has to be more than an online shop because it is virtually impossible to set up a shop without any cost and stand out by undercutting. For established customer brands, they can charge premiums for their services because their customer base trusts them and their customers turn to them for their needs.
SEO is key
Bloggers have things somewhat easy. They can develop unique content and it works for them. But when it comes to eCommerce sites, it does not work that way because it is vulnerable to issues of SEO, and most of the online stores struggle after Google add changes in their algorithms. Why is it so?
- Products that are in different categories create URL’s that are similar; ensure that you use rel-canonical
- Variants of products like color or size can create new URL’s that have effective duplicate content. Ensure that you canonicalize them to the main page of the product
- Descriptions of products are usually short which can lead to low-quality page content because there is small content on a page
- Categories of products span different pages and multiple products
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