Thursday, September 3, 2009

3 Ways to Boost Sales For Your Ecommerce Company

No eCommerce company in existence would ever set any volume of sales as 'enough.' There will always be another deal to close and another deal to make, so long as you know how to work with your market in the right way. Here are four techniques used by some of the biggest and most successful web retailers in the business. Employed properly, these tricks can get you into their ranks soon enough.

Create Customer Communication

Methods for customer service like helplines and customer assistance emails are often seen as open floodgates for customers to complain. But putting those systems in place can be for more than just irate customers, and can concretely improve your site's sales.

It's highly unlikely that your product descriptions and information pages cover everything that a customer might want to know. So if customers wonder about something but aren't able to ask the proper party - you - they'll almost always take the safe route and navigate away from your site without buying.

By incorporating customer communication methods in your eCommerce web development, you end up making your business look much friendlier and more trustworthy. And it's that image that gives your eCommerce company a sales boost at the end of the day.

Invite with IncentivesPsychology is a huge part of effective marketing, and few concepts are as fundamental as rewards and punishments. By rewarding your customers for transacting with you, they're motivated to come back and give you return business. This might seem too much like dangling the proverbial carrot in front of the customer horse, but countless companies will attest to its effectiveness.

A moderately full-featured shopping cart software package is all you'll need to efficiently provide customer incentives for return business. Electronic coupons and promotional codes are some of the most effective and most widely used in the business, but things like loyalty cards and exclusive client clubs have also been proven to work.

The Opt-In Objective

Mailed fliers, catalogs and newsletters have been part of the traditional marketer's arsenal since time immemorial. With the right eCommerce web development strategy, you could also make use of these tried-and-tested methods to attract even more sales.

Opt-in newsletters have been a part of the Internet since the web's early days, and they remain as effective as they were a decade ago. These digital fliers and newsletters not only inform your market of new products and promotions, but also give you a good idea of how many people have great interest in what you have to sell. Combined with an incentive like an attached promo code, this method can be very effective indeed.

At the same time, you get to bring your eCommerce company to a more prominent seat in your customers' consciousness. When they see your logo, read your name and think about your products on a regular basis, you become one of those trusted establishments that they automatically visit whenever they need anything.

Increasing your sales is never easy. As you may have noticed, all three techniques above require quite a bit of involvement on your part. But employing them goes beyond just attracting buyers; you get to cultivate a client base as well. And it's that kind of result that usually guarantees the success of any eCommerce company.

You've got tough competition, and we at Jelecos.com know about it. That's why we'll help you formulate strategies and plan approaches to help bring your eCommerce company to the head of the pack - even in the most crowded of markets. To know about pls click here- eCommerce web development

eCommerce-Selling To The World

Think about this. You are planning to engage in “eCommerce”, to take your business online. So, you need to learn a new set of business rules, a new way of doing things, because online business is “different”, right?
Well, actually, no, not really. You still have a product or service to sell. You still have a store with a shop “window” (your website) and you still need the customers to visit your store, in order to buy whatever it is that you are selling.

The only major difference is that (continuing the analogy) your local store window can only be seen by a small group of people, whereas your online business can be seen by the whole world. By engaging in eCommerce, you can take your business “global”.
For many businesses, this is truly an advantage, representing a wonderful opportunity.

But that is not the case for everyone, particularly for companies who sell a physical, tangible product. When planning to go online, therefore,you should spend some time thinking about your product and exactly who your target market is, because this will be a crucial factor in determining whether your venture is a success or a failure.
What it is that you plan to market on your eCommerce enabled website, and who will want to buy it? Some products will, by their very nature, not be totally suited to a world wide market. Pork based food products for example, will not be popular in Muslim countries, nor will wine, whisky or beer. Sales of open toed sandals may be disappointing in Iceland, Greenland and the frozen polar North.

Secondly, give very careful thought about how you will get your product to the customer. For example, if you were to make laser toner cartridges in Asia (as one of my client companies does) there is absolutely no sense in trying to sell one or two cartridges at a time to a customer in the USA, because of the cost of delivery.
So, if your product is bulky or heavy, selling outside your locale may not be practical.

Furthermore, you need to consider that, whilst most countries use the same Standard International Trade Classification (S.I.T.C) codes for deciding on how much import duty to levy on a particular product, the actual duty to be paid varies from country to country, and such variations can (and will) lead to disputes. Again, using my client as an example, they sold a consignment of toner cartridges to a customer in Finland, which got held up in Customs for several weeks on arrival in Helsinki, because of a dispute over the Import Duties to be paid.

Whilst this was not the fault of my client or his customer, nevertheless, the result was an unhappy customer, who obviously did not become a regular customer.
Likewise, if you plan on selling a service online, can that service be provided outside your local area in such a way that you still make money? Do you need to have one of your own staff actually work with the customer (in which case, you need to stay local) or can the work be easily subcontracted on a global basis? Would it be easy to find such a local subcontractor capable of supplying your advertised service in such a way that both you and the customer are happy? How much would such a subcontractor cost?

Unless you can get positive answers to all of these questions, then, again, it may pay you to keep your services local, rather than overreaching, in order to become a global player.
The simple truth is that, whilst the global nature of the internet allows you so sell to the whole world, it is the nature of your product or service that will ultimately decide whether this is practical for your potential customers, and profitable for you, or not. To read more, Click here!