Are you thinking of opening an online store to sell your products?
With the pandemic affecting small businesses today, most of them are adapting and launching an online store to catch up with their loss in profits so far. However, there are over 30 million small businesses in the USA. You can bet that most of them are also doing the same thing for their businesses.
You’re going to need all the advantages you can get to prevent yourself from falling behind. A great way to do this is to choose the right eCommerce platform to put your business on. There are factors to look for to determine if you’re choosing the right platform for your business.
Read on to learn how to choose the right platform to sell your products on. Help your business grow and thrive on the right platform today.
- Shop Setup
Before you start selling your products online, you must first set up your shop on your chosen eCommerce platform. This makes it important to note how easy it is to build your shop on different platforms. The faster you can get your shop up, the sooner you can generate an income.
You can achieve this by seeing if the platforms offer templates for shop setup. Templates allow for easy setup and allow you to change it with ease later on. This also helps you avoid hiring expensive outside help only so you can start your online shop.
It’s also important to be able to personalize your shop on the platform. Expressing your brand is important to make it distinguishable on your chosen platform. Look for this quality when checking potential platforms.
While setting up your shop, see if the platform is easy to navigate. You don’t want your customers to have a hard time checking your products or searching for what they want. They’ll hop off and go to another shop that works when this happens.
- Easy Integration with Social Media Platforms
Another quality to look for in eCommerce platforms is social media integration. This is important because over 3.8 billion people use social media regularly. It’s a large demographic that you must take advantage of when you’re opening an online store.
Look for any sign that the platform supports integrations with different social media platforms. This allows you to market your products on these platforms to help generate traffic. You should also look for integrations for plugins and such.
Plugins allow you to personalize your shop and add more features to it. A shop that doesn’t allow this means that your shop will look like every other shop they have on their platform.
- SEO Optimization
Once you open your shop, how will you guarantee the generation of traffic leading to your store? SEO is the answer, and that makes it an important quality of an online shopping platform.
Having great SEO optimization allows your store to be on the front page of Google when searching. See if the platform allows you to use your domain name when signing up under them. Doing this helps you increase your SEO score by yourself.
See if they also allow you to add content to your page. Content creation is among the best ways to improve your search engine optimization score and will also establish you as a professional brand.
This is also important so you can make your store compatible with mobile-users. Most people hop onto the internet using their mobile devices. This means that making your website easy-to-use for mobile users is a surefire way to get this demographic on board with your store.
- Analytics Tracking
Is your store making as much money as you were expecting? Regardless of the answer, you must know why it’s the case. Analytics tracking is the best way to find out what you’re doing right or wrong.
Some eCommerce platforms track your data for you whenever you make a sale. They also track customer browsing patterns on your page to help you gather data. This is similar to what eCommerce development companies can do for you.
The information you get from them helps you improve your marketing strategy. You can also use this to change what you’re doing to see if it has a better effect on your sales.
- Customer and User Support
The best eCommerce platform will have amazing support for both your customers and for you. You’re going to need this since customer engagement is an important part of making your customers feel involved with your brand. This helps you get them as loyal customers along the line.
It’s also important for you to reach out to your hosts while you’re using their platform. You never know when you need an issue resolved by them. Having them around whenever you need them is important to keep your business going.
- Features and Payment Options for Customers
You’re going to want to ensure that your customers have a great experience in your store. This means that you don’t want them lacking the features that they’re accustomed to. A shopping cart feature and flexible payment options are the most important ones to have.
Without these features, a store feels incomplete. It will also cause inconvenience to the customer when they can’t find these features. They’re likely to hop onto another if the platform doesn’t include them.
- Platform Pricing
You mustn’t forget that you’re signing up for a platform to make money. They also make money by asking you to pay for their services. If what you expect to make won’t pay for your stock and their price, it’s better to change platforms.
You should also check how much they take from every sale you make. Some platforms take payments from you whenever you make a sale. They take a cut before giving the rest to you.
If it’s too much for your business to bear, then it’s better to move to another platform. What’s great is that there are good platforms that allow you to sign up for free.
Choose the Right Ecommerce Platform Today
Do you want to keep up with the other businesses on the internet today? Choosing the right eCommerce platform can help you do that! Choose the right platform and watch your business grow today!
Are you interested in learning more about eCommerce? Having a deeper understanding of how these platforms work can help you rise above your competition. Check out more of our blogs and guides and help your business today!