Online marketplaces like Amazon, Lazada, Shopee, and Facebook Marketplace have all transformed how small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) reach customers. These platforms provide an accessible way to sell products and develop committed followings among millions of users.
However, relying solely on these marketplaces as sales and marketing channels has serious limitations. While they’ll be useful for kickstarting your business’s initial growth, they have significant control over your branding and customer journeys, thus severely limiting your growth potential.
It’s not that you should abandon these platforms altogether. But to truly bring your business to the next level, you must consider creating a high-quality e-commerce site solely focused on your brand.
Having your own website allows you to control your branding and customer experiences, boosts your legitimacy (even on third-party marketplaces), and helps improve your profit margins by helping you circumvent commissions and intermediary fees. Perhaps most importantly, it frees you from restrictions in your product offerings and approaches to customer interactions, helping you build uniquely close customer connections—much unlike the price-based relationships typically found on third-party marketplaces.
Of course, simply having your own e-commerce site will not guarantee any of those benefits. To gain these advantages, it helps to implement these time-tested best practices:
1) Offer Popular Payment Types
Any buyer would want a diverse selection of cash alternatives to shop online. For that reason, your site must offer multiple payment options, including credit cards and e-wallet payments, to cater to the complex preferences of today’s shoppers. If you’re based in the Philippines, you can integrate a link for payment solution like that of Maya Business that lets customers easily complete payments over chat, email, or social media messenger apps.
2) Prioritize a Simple Checkout ProcessA complicated buying process on an e-commerce site will prove one of the biggest turn-offs for consumers, particularly those who have to rely on smartphones and slow internet connections to complete their purchases. From the beginning, your site design and development process should emphasize having as few clicks or taps as possible between the customer visiting the website and completing a purchase.
3) Choose the Right E-commerce Platform
4) Prioritize Mobile Optimization
As mentioned above, many consumers now depend on smartphones to access the internet. Even households with computers are probably going to discover your products over tablets and smartphones. Knowing this, you have to adopt a locally appropriate “mobile first” approach to your web design that provides a first-class shopping experience on smaller screens.
5) Invest in High-Quality Media and Content Production
Clear, high-resolution images and well-written product descriptions will give you a more professional brand image and increase your site’s emotional appeal, boosting visitors’ confidence in your offers. Display your products from multiple angles and provide succinct, but useful information to convince visitors to buy.
5) Use “HTTPS”
Customers have become more sophisticated over time, and most now understand that they need to trust that their personal information is safe. Purchasing SSL certificates encrypts your site’s data transfers and gives its address a trusted “HTTPS” rather than a vulnerable “HTTP”. This prevents your site from getting flagged as unsafe by browsers and increases its potential for earning repeat visitors and conversions.
6) Take Advantage of Social Media Integration
Connect your e-commerce website with your social media platforms to reach a wider audience and make it easier for visitors to share products, reviews, or whatever thoughts they might have about your brand. You can also invest in social media marketing to further boost customer engagement and drive traffic to your site.
7) Integrate Time-Tested Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Techniques
SEO is the practice of gaining relevance in web search engines such as Bing and Google through the clever use of keywords and thoughtful site design practices. Building your site with vetted SEO techniques fully in mind will, over time, increase the number of people organically discovering your brand, boosting your credibility in the process. As a welcome bonus, SEO also works synergistically with other marketing practices, helping to reduce your dependence on paid ads and reducing the cost of each sale.
8) Offer Integrated Customer Support
Lastly, offering great customer service is key to providing positive experiences with your website. Your website must provide multiple channels for support, including live chat and email. For round-the-clock support, consider implementing a FAQ section or chatbots so that customers can still get assistance when you’re offline.
Importantly, all your channels’ customer service functions must be integrated so that customers know that they are dealing with the same entity regardless of how they’re contacting your business. For instance, your website customer support should be able to help with problems encountered on your Facebook store, and vice versa.
Discover the Full Potential of Your Emerging Brand
It may not be easy to transition from an online marketplace to your own e-commerce site but think of it as a necessary step for unlocking new opportunities for growth and for increasing your trustworthiness in an increasingly crowded e-commerce market. Indeed, building a professional website can even be beneficial for sales in your online marketplace stores. With these proven best practices, your future website can become a powerful sales and marketing channel that both complements and boosts your existing online presence.
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