A friend of mine who owns an online store was worried about her website’s bounce rate a while back. When she asked me to look at it, I saw that it was a bit messy and wasn’t set up for mobile devices either. This made me realise that a lot of people don’t start their business with the right online store strategy.
Well, if you’re also new to the field, you should start by learning all the tips and tricks for running an online store. Because of this, I’ve come up with some smart ideas that will help you quickly improve your online store.
The Importance of Website Improvements for Your Store
Having an optimised online store is crucial, so before we get into the specifics of a plan, let’s review some hard data that will back up that claim.
SEO-friendly websites tend to rank higher because Google processes over 40,000 search queries every second.
A recent survey found that 75% of consumers want a unified brand voice across all of a company’s digital platforms.
If your website is not interesting or easy to navigate, 38 percent of visitors will not bother to use it.
Websites that take more than 2 seconds to load can expect an abandonment rate of 80% or higher.
Search engines are the starting point for over 65% of all online activity.
Advice on how to make your online store work better?
After going over some basics, let’s start putting together a plan for a successful online store by keeping the following things in mind:
Choose technologies that can be changed and that look to the future.
When making an online store, the first thing we need to think about is what kinds of technologies will be used on the front end and the back end.
If you want to make a dropshipping store, you should use a service like Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, Wix, or BigCommerce. You can compare these platforms based on things like their overall features, how much they can be scaled up, how much they cost, and so on. Some platforms, like WooCommerce, are more flexible, while others, like Shopify or Wix, are easier to use.
You should also choose a reliable dropshipping tool to take care of all the back-end work. For this, a platform like Dropship Corporation would be a great choice because it is free and has a lot of features.
Make sure that your online store is easy for people to use.
It goes without saying that the way your online store looks as a whole can make or break a sale. Ideal, around 38% of users don’t interact with a website if it doesn’t have an appealing layout.
A lot of people who are just starting out make the rookie mistake of adding too many parts to their website, which can make things even more complicated. One of the best tips for running an online store is to keep your website’s design simple. This will meet your customers’ needs without making things too hard.
Make sure your online store loads quickly.
As I’ve already said, the overall time it takes for your online store to load can also make or break its success. Think about it from your customers’ point of view: if your website takes more than 3–4 seconds to load, they might just leave it and go to one of your competitors instead.
So, the time it takes for your website to load will have a direct effect on how often people leave it and how well it does in the long run. So, when you’re planning your online store, make sure the speed at which it loads is a top priority.
Make Your Online Store Mobile Friendly
Experts say that the mCommerce market will grow by a factor of ten over the next ten years. After all, about 79% of smartphone users have already bought something with their phones, and that number will only go up in the years to come.
So, if you don’t already have a mobile app for your online store, make sure it has a responsive design if you decide to make one. That is, your website should be optimised for all kinds of handheld devices so that users can have a better and faster experience.
Get rid of scripts and plugins that you don’t want.
Your online store’s back end would have a lot of different scripts and plug-ins. There are a lot of scripts and third-party plugins that can help you make your website run better, but some of them can also make things worse.
For example, if you use a website template that is easy to find, it will have a lot of leftover content that can affect how well your store works. So, you can just go to the website editor of the tool you are using (like WordPress) and remove any unwanted parts (like scripts or plugins).
Images, videos, and other objects should be compressed.
One thing that can slow down the time it takes for your online store to load is the presence of media files and other heavy content. In an ideal world, you would need to use product pictures, testimonials, videos, and so on as part of your online store strategy.
They might help you get more leads, but they can also make your website heavier. So, you might want to think about optimising and compressing these media files and other heavy parts of your website. You can do this by hand or with advanced third-party tools that are easy to find for many platforms.
Think about caching the information on your website.
Website caching is a common method used to speed up the way your online store works. In this, some important parts of the website’s data are stored on the client’s end, which makes the website load much faster.
Because of this, you might want to cache some of your website’s pages (like the welcome screen or its home page). This would cut down on the time it takes for your store’s website to load and give your users a better experience.
Don’t send your customers in many different directions.
In an online store, it is a common strategy to send leads from a marketing funnel to a specific page in different ways. It can help you count your leads and turn them into potential customers, but it can also sometimes go wrong.
For example, you can change the overall customer experience if you plan to send them to different pages several times or have a long checkout process. If you want a fast checkout flow, you should keep the process simple and avoid too many redirects.
Get help from a professional
If you don’t have the technical knowledge or time to get into the details of your online store, you might want to hire someone to help you.
Professionals like website designers, WordPress developers, and others should be able to help you put your online store strategy into action more effectively. Just make sure to talk to the professional you hired and be clear about what you want the store to do in the end.
Choose Dropship Corporation to get started with dropshipping.
Even though these tips for your online store would have helped your site perform better, you would need some unique products to get more leads.
- You can do this with the help of Dropship Corporation, which is the official AliExpress dropshipping tool and has one of the largest lists of suppliers in many different fields.
- You can make a free Dropship Corporation account and find the best places to buy thousands of products all in one place.
- Dropship Corporation will let you run your store from anywhere by connecting it to your favourite platform, such as Shopify, WooCommerce, or Wix.
- There are a lot of advanced features, like variant mapping, product bundles, store management, and more.
- You can also order a lot of products at once and use its automatic features to check on the status of your order from anywhere.
If you get confused, just use the Dropship Corporation Supplier finder feature, which will choose the best-rated supplier for any product.
Last Words
Now that you know how important it is to have a professional online store strategy, you can improve your website and make it work better. There are so many online store tips that you should use to help your business do better, like putting more effort into search engine optimization and making the interface better overall.
Also, if you want to take your dropshipping store to the next level, you can use Dropship Corporation, which is the official AliExpress dropshipping tool and will make it very easy for you to run your store.
