The market has never been more saturated with ecommerce businesses than it is today. Your wholesale ecommerce business sits in a sea of competition that stretches around the entire globe. Anyone with a minimal start-up investment, access to high-speed Internet, and time on their hands can create an ecommerce website. Therefore, the real question is how do you accelerate your business in 2021? How can you separate yourself from the pack? In this article, we will discuss 11 ways you can break away from the competition and accelerate your wholesale ecommerce business starting right now.
Differentiate Yourself Through Fulfillment
The days of expensive shipping costs and slow lead times are over. All customers expect free shipping and 1 to 2 day delivery. Thanks to the standards set by Amazon prime, your ecommerce website won't get too far if you are not competing on this level. Some wholesale ecommerce websites will set an arbitrary limit of $25 or more to receive free shipping. However, one way you can accelerate your business and stand out from the competition is by offering free shipping on all items within a certain geographical range.
Many ecommerce store owners don't realize that fulfillment can both drive sales and revenue into your pipeline. Here are a few tips to accelerate your fulfillment process to enhance your customer experience and increase your overall revenue.
1.Keep the checkout process super simple.
2.Make sure customers automatically receive delivery updates as their package gets closer to the destination.
3.Make sure your packaging is branded and don't forget to include a special thank you note inside every delivery.
4. Find the perfect balance of inventory to avoid outages and excess supply.
Follow the above steps to make sure you accelerate your fulfillment process and optimize your customer experience to the max.
Take Your Brand Offline
As the digital market expands, many ecommerce entrepreneurs forget about the traditional way of doing things. Taking your brand offline allows you to attract customers where your competition isn't. You don't always have to focus on Google ads, keyword placement, and search engine marketing. A good old fashion cross-marketing partnership can help your business accelerate where you least expect it. If leveraged correctly, this can be a critical way to accelerate your ecommerce business to the next level. Even if you are selling wholesale Chinese fidget spinners, you can take your brand offline to make deals happen in the real world.
That means getting out and finding non-competing businesses that exist in your same space to strike a marketing partnership. It's a common practice for many enterprise-level businesses. However, as the ecommerce market becomes more and more saturated, savvy entrepreneurs are looking for any and every way to capitalize on a larger market share. Here a few ideas that will help get you thinking about how you can take your brand off the Internet and into the real world
1.Place creative stickers or floor decals in highly trafficked areas where your customers frequently visit.
2.Host collaborative workshops or seminars where you help customers learn more about your industry and products.
3.Split the cost of a trade show space with a non-competing partner to attract customers in a face to face setting.
4.Build your reputation by sponsoring community events.
5.Order branded promotional giveaways from your suppliers on Made-in-China.com
Optimize Your Website For Voice Search
2020 was a big year for voice search. Smart home products like Amazon's Alexa, Google hub, and other wholesale Chinese smart home devices help consumers simplify their life through voice command. That means customers can search Google, Amazon, YouTube, and all the major search engines by using their voice alone. If your ecommerce website is not optimized for voice search, you'll be missing out on a decent percentage of consumers. Here are some ways you can optimize your wholesale ecommerce website to make it searchable by voice.
1.Use a conversational tone in your website content.
2.Add geotags to your keywords to capitalize on local voice searches.
3.Make sure your website has a Google business listing (GMB).
4.Verify your website is mobile friendly. If not, optimize it for mobile devices.
5.Develop blog posts that answer frequently asked questions by your customers like, where can I find the best green tea online?
Don't skip out on optimizing your website for voice search. If you need some additional clarification on this step, feel free to do some research online. The web is filled with innovative and creative ways you can make your website voice searchable, friendly for smart home devices, and wearable tech like Apple watches.
Cultivate A Sales Department
You really want to accelerate your ecommerce business by getting systematic about your sales. Many enterprise-level ecommerce operations like Petco, Home Depot, and other large organizations have sales departments that physically make outbound calls when carts are abandoned. You don't just have to wait for someone to abandon their shopping cart to attempt to close the deal.
Get systematic about responding to emails and letting customers know when you have upcoming promotions or items you might be interested in. There's really no one specific way to build a sales team. It all depends on the information you have available and how hard you're willing to work. However, one thing is for certain. Cultivating a sales department for your wholesale ecommerce business will help accelerate things from your current level beyond your wildest dreams.
Brand Brand Brand
Everyone wants more bang for their buck. Branding your items as the premium option helps give customers the impression that you are a reliable & trustworthy place to spend their hard-earned cash. It creates the reputation of value.
There are two schools of thought when it comes to branding. The first is applying your logo onto product packaging only and shipping out generic items purchased from your wholesale Chinese supplier.
The second school of thought suggests that you take the time in sourcing quality products that have been branded with your chosen messaging & logos. As we move into 2021, customers expect that their product isn't just something any ecommerce business can purchase overseas. Customers in today's world want to feel unique. Take your branding to the next level by matching your product packaging with the same messaging contained on the actual products you sell. You will see a return on your investment in the form of increased revenues, better customer reviews, and an overall higher reputation within your market.
Hyperlocal Marketing Gets Bigger
Savvy ecommerce entrepreneurs have been segmenting their market based on geographical locations for years. However, you can still accelerate your wholesale ecommerce business in 2021 by getting laser-focused on hyperlocal marketing. Doing your research into which products are most desirable in which communities will help tailor your marketing to acquire the best possible return on your investment.
As an example, perhaps you use Google ads offering a certain product in Region A and Google ads for different products and Region B. The more tailored and hyperlocal your marketing, the better return on your ad spend you'll receive.
Prioritize Customer Retention
Everybody wants to build customer loyalty and cultivate repeat business. But how can you prioritize customer retention to make it a reality? One of the best ways you can enhance customer retention is through the art of surprise. Certain ecommerce platforms like Shopify and others offer special widgets where buyers get a chance to spin a prize wheel after making a purchase. While this may be the most famous way brands emphasize customer retention, it's not the only way. Here a few tips you can take on to instill loyalty into your customers and facilitate repeat business.
1.Send regular emails to buyers to let them know you still know who they are.
2.Reward customer loyalty by offering incentives to repeat buyers.
3.Every purchase should be followed by a thank you email and a short story about how your business plays its part and being sustainable.
4.Be quick to resolve issues because customers will write reviews about them.
5.Get serious about a social responsibility program where you give back to the people that support your business.
Welcome To The Era of Social Commerce
One way to really accelerate your ecommerce business in 2021 is to take advantage of social commerce. Almost all of the social media platforms today are offering customers a way to buy directly from their social channels. That means shoppers never have to leave their Facebook or Instagram page to make a purchase. You can take social commerce to the next level by installing an AI-based chatbot that gives customers the ability to purchase directly from the chatbox screen. Social commerce has come a long way and you may have already seen some Instagram stores that you like. As we move into 2021, this is becoming something that all brands are taking advantage of.
Sustainability Becomes Profitable
This may seem counterintuitive, but the truth is that sustainability is profitable. In 2021, you can definitely accelerate your revenue by taking a sustainable approach. It is more than just biodegradable packaging. While some eco-friendly website content will help tip those customers on the fence into your pipeline, actually taking a green approach has become financially profitable. Here are a few ways your ecommerce business can take a sustainable approach while simultaneously increasing profitability.
1. Go paperless with all invoices and communications between you and shoppers.
2. Embrace minimalism to save on shipping costs while minimizing your carbon footprint.
3. Cultivate content that promotes your commitment to sustainability.
4. Leverage your sustainable philosophy to create conversations on social channels and start building a buzz.
Personalize Conversations Through Marketing Automation
Leverage innovative marketing automation tools to personalize your interactions with customers. As an example, when a potential prospect lands on your ecommerce website, you can use a chatbot to respond using the prospect's name, preferences, buying patterns and other personalized information.
Marketing automation tools have the power to deliver customized messages and responses to individual shoppers. Additionally, accelerating your ecommerce business needs to start with a sophisticated email drip campaign that keeps customers inside the loop.
Marketing automation tools have reached the level where they automatically pull customer information to use when sending emails. This can be useful when trying to segment certain campaigns based on geography, interests, shopping behaviors, and/or other variables. All the technology can seem complicated on the surface, but it gets easier to use. Certain programs like Outreach have been designed to make marketing automation a simplistic tool in your arsenal when trying to conquer your ecommerce market space.
Augmented Reality
Whether you sell clothes, household goods, teas, or jewelry, you want to incorporate augmented reality into your website. Giving customers the ability to visualize your product within their world will help you push more customers down your funnel. Augmented reality has really taken a turn in 2020. The technology has advanced far enough to give even the smallest ecommerce websites the ability to leverage custom augmented reality for customers ready to visualize before they buy.
You can enhance your ecommerce website with augmented reality by working directly with Shopify, a custom web designer, or one of the other many software as a service firms offering the technology on a monthly basis.
Get started and let customers try on your clothes before they buy. Let them put that new couch in their own living room right from the computer screen. While it may not sound so special, statistics show that websites utilizing augmented reality maintain an average purchase price per person higher than websites that don't.
Act Quickly To Seize 2021
Online shopping is at an all-time high. Consequently, that means there are more online ecommerce stores than ever. Leveraging the above tactics to accelerate your wholesale ecommerce business means increased revenue and an above average reputation for your brand. But you must act quickly. Things in the digital realm change fast. If you aren't using any of the tactics above, your competitors are guaranteed to be taking advantage of them. When it's time for you to place your next order of wholesale Chinese merchandise, head over made-in-china.com to check out a wide range of manufacturers and suppliers ready to help build your ecommerce kingdom.
