6 Key Success Factors for Your Online Shop
What are the key issues that online retailers should resolve to prosper? We identified five key areas that will help you to enhance your profits.
Growth hacks by definition will help your company grow without much effort. We've collected 7 tips for you to improve your online shop's performance. Let's not beat around the bush and get straight to it...
1. Revise your "About Us" page!
Believe it or not, the "About Us" page in your online shop is very interesting to visitors, especially if you run a smaller shop.
Customers are interested in the people, the history and the motivation behind a shop.Tell them about who you are, explain what makes your shop unique, and show them who the people behind the scenes are.
Here are a few ideas for what a great "About us" page might include:
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How you can help your customers
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Who are the people behind the shop (founder and team)
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Why you started the company (it’s rarely just about the money)
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How long have you been in the industry
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What sets you apart from the competition
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Testimonials from happy customers
Online shoppers are longing for an authentic, human shop. This one change can lead to more loyal customers, a high recognition value and, as a result, more sales.
Don’t forget: the more content the better.
And that little bit extra might mean the difference between ranking above or below the competition on Google.
2. Be faster!
The average online shopper can wait about 3 seconds when surfing on their desktops, or about 5 seconds when they’re on the internet via smartphone.
If it takes longer than that, users will click back to the search results and look for the next website.
Some websites load this quickly. Others often need much longer.
You can literally lose customers if your online store is too slow.
Amazon found that about $ 1.6 billion would be lost if the website took just 1 second longer to load.
In most cases, the product images are responsible for slow loading times. Many shop owners are unaware that you can significantly reduce the file size of an image without sacrificing the quality of the image.
Most shop platforms, or external developers, offer add-ons for exactly that. There are also free online services where individual images can be optimised, such as TinyPNG.
Recommended reading:
7 Tips to Increase Your Online Shop's Page Loading Speed
3. Use customer reviews
According to Statista, reading customer reviews is the most common way for shoppers to learn about an unfamiliar retailer (93.4%).
That's why online stores without reviews don't look very trustworthy. That's why you should start collecting reviews as early as possible.
Some shop owners decide to buy positive reviews - a questionable and, above all, an illegal tactic. Hoping and waiting for reviews would actually be a better tactic... but not the best one either!
With certain tools, you can collect more reviews. Using a paid reviews platform allows you to schedule review requests automatically.
It's worth noting that service reviews can be found throughout Google (including in Google itself). With tools like the Reputation Manager, companies can send out review requests for other reviews platforms (e.g. Trustpilot) even if you're not a customer there. By getting more reviews on more platforms, you can harmonise your online reputation and make a more trustworthy impression on the users who are researching your company.
4. Use videos!
Video has been around for a while now.If you don't create any videos, you really should consider it. It is engaging content for many social media platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and more.
Even if you do not see yourself as a video producer, it pays to invest in video.
Shutterstock/Gerain0812
Online shops in particular can produce a large number of different videos:
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Honest product reviews (advantages and disadvantages)
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Tutorials on how to use products properly
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Industry information and insights
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Backstage/behind-the-scenes content
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Success stories
Videos that show the advantages and disadvantages of a product, as well as honest test report videos, have the potential to greatly increase your conversion rates. Videos created on YouTube, the second most popular search engine, also increase the chances that potential customers discover the videos and thus your online store.
Remember, videos don't need to be made for just social media. Videos can be useful on product pages as well as on your homepage.
5. Use pop-ups!
Everyone knows them, nobody likes them, and yet they are still used: pop-ups! Although they are unpopular with almost everyone on the internet, their effectiveness speaks for itself.
However, it's important to try out what works best in your store. Figure out what produces the highest opt-in rate.
Offering discounts, free shipping, a raffle, or interesting information (i.e. newsletters) in a well-timed popup may be an incentive for customers to enter their e-mail address.
Once you have the customer's email address (and consent), you can email them periodically to introduce new products, bestsellers, and upcoming events in order to increase your sales with the touch of a button.
Tip: However, for good email marketing, it's important that you not only send sales emails, but also videos, blog posts, or anything that adds value to your customers!
6. Use social networks
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (X), WhatsApp & co. have been part of the mix for a while now. Just one more reason to use social media for your online shop.
Give shop visitors the opportunity to share products with their friends. This increases the likelihood of attracting new customers because visitors may discover a product that a friend might like, or might simply want to seek the opinions of others.
Be aware that a single share can grab the attention of hundreds of potential buyers.
Again, most shop platforms offer useful plugins that allow the sharing of images and pages.
Shutterstock/makjepret
Another advantage: It is becoming increasingly clear thatlikes & shares also influence the Google ranking algorithm and thus lead to better rankings.
You don't need to be on every social network to find success (but it can't hurt!) It's important to know that your audience might be more active on one platform than another, so research this based on demographics and industry research.
Once you do find the platforms that are most interesting to you, research how to get discovered in those apps. Many platforms such as Twitter (X), Instagram, and Pinterest rely on a good hashtag strategy.
7. Add alt tags to your product images
Speaking of Google and rankings, a large number of online shops ignore this SEO tactic and are thus missing out on a huge potential – and the thing is that it’s very easy to implement!
Shutterstock/Vitalii Vodolazskyi
Be sure to add matching alt tags to your product images to boost your SEO.
Make sure that:
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old tags of product images are optimised for the same search terms as the product pages themselves
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the text is short and concise to maximise impact
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you do not engage in keyword-stuffing to avoid being punished by Google & Co. The alt text should be natural and not forced, but still contain the topic and search terms.
Conclusion
Implement these 7 easy growth hacks and you should notice positive effects in traffic very quickly. Remember that customers are impatient, so anything to make their customer journey smoother and quicker is going to yield positive results. Combine this along with some clever SEO hacks and watch your site’s traffic increase in no time!
