Tips & Guidance of Successful eCommerce Website
Once you decide to put your ecommerce website online, you have chosen to trust the modern business mode and mostly you're going to live for it. Thus it's crucial to start the first step correctly and treat it as your little daughter. This article briefly introduce some important points in promoting a successful shopping cart site. Some helpful tips are generated by real store owners who work or manage a store site.
Choose a Proper Domain Name
It's important to choose a proper domain name to build your store site. Unlike a physical store where you can pick up any name for it, domain name is invisible treature that's shared by many people. Lots of great names already preemptive registered by domain companies. You must research a lot and find the corresponding name for your business. For example if you're selling shoes, then it's suggested to get the word shoe in domain so people can get to your site easier from store search.
Find a Right Hosting Service
The most important part. Once your website goes online, all actions on website will 100% rely on hosting thus we can not use any hosting service to upload our business store. With regarding to business site, uptime and fast connection is a MUST no matter how many transactions you get. Because of this, those super cheap server plans should be avoided from the very beginning. A decent store hosting is configured at a reasonable price because they must ensure our business site performance and apply necessary technologies from server end. When you look for a reliable store hosting service, following points must be primarily considered
- Industry reputation is the first checking point, just search some negative terms regarding to their service and check what problems you might encounter.
- Server features is crucial for what kind software you can run with their service. You also need to learn about server end restriction such as CPU/RAM.
- Network facility help us understand if we can get fast loading speed directly. For example if our clients are mainly from local city then it's no reason to host websites from thousand miles away.
- Customer support availability determines if we can get instant communication when our site fails or when we need some server end changes.
InmotionHosting is by far the best recommendation for fast and secure store hosting service. Not only for its server performance but also their leading concept in offering the most helpful customer service. For many years till present, their company has been recognized standard choice for business hosting. Their people are also sponsoring lots of shopping cart softwares as platnium partner.
Check out InmotionHosting for business hosting plans www.inmotionhosting.com
Use the Right Cart Platform
It's quite important to learn what kind of cart site you would like to setup then you can pick up the right software. For example if you plan to setup up a global store site and multiple child stores feature required then those giant solutions like magento should be your choice. For small and medium size cart site, what you need is simple and easy without dealing with lots of technical stuff. Some good and light weight software like opencart and zencart should be the best choice for such purpose.
Use a Suitable Payment Gateway
Payment gateway is the door to allow people to submit money. There's no free gateway however and each gateway service is working different with difference service fees. Some gateway service requires lots of server end installation to ensure the best security and reliability. So it's crucial to understand you online transaction requirements and frequency to determine the best gateway solution. Many hosting companies also provide merchant account service that you can use directly on website with small fees. Find the most suitable gateway service based your needs because its money collector on your store.
Tips in promoting a successful store
It's not so easy to get success in any business. You really need to work hard in order to be profitable. For online stores, we collected the following tips from real e-store owners who have been running their business for years. Hopefully you can benefit from it.
Upload new products regularly
You should upload new products or promos regularly to home page. In case you don't have something new, you can also update old products via new images. The reason by doing this is people would like to stay longer to learn about your products information so more sales opportunity is expected.
Be active in customer interaction
Keep online as much as possible and be active in communicating with your customers/visitors. Try as much as you can to guide more potential buyers to your store. You don't have to convert each visitor to purchaser but need to give them good impression so they can remember your site for recuring visits.
Keep update with industry development
That means to learn from your competitors and keep an eye about what's going to be style so you can foretell the next selling point.
Handle negative information properly
Don't think negative comments are bumbs to your business. Sometimes it's good chance to show your confidence by heartful replies.
Be positive in doing all above
You don't need more tips. The simple and gold rule of success is to repeat what you have been doing. Just do what you have planned and never stop then success is just a matter of time.
