15 Ways To Improve Your Ecommerce Brand On A Budget

Thanks to the extraordinary power or Ecommerce and the internet’s limitless potential, large brands, with even larger budgets, have the ability to reach of millions of consumers.

With countless thousands to throw at new marketing campaigns and teams of highly paid experts guiding their way, improving the Ecommerce presence of a well known brand can have a global impact, while a highly successful campaign can see brands grow and profits rise.

But what about the little guys? Those who are just starting out, have limited resources and limited budgets, is there a way to improve and grow a Ecommerce brand without the funds?

Thanks to a few little tricks and hints, I think you can.

In this article, I highlight 15 simple ways to grow your audience, connect with your customers and improve your Ecommerce brand, without the hefty price tag.

Social Influencers

The rockstars of the digital generation, YouTube and Instagram stars have major sway when it comes to influencing their followers – who can come in their millions. To find these young entrepreneurs scroll the YouTube channels, or check out web stagram. See who corresponds with your product or service, then contact them with a friendly note asking if you could send them a sample for them to share with their audience if they’re a fan.

Live By The 3 Second Rule

Visit your site as any potential customer would. Is it clear what you sell within the first 3 seconds of your visit? If not, work to clarify your homepage and your brand message.

Engage With Your Audience

An easy, and cheap way to improve your brand is by developing a human relationship with your existing customers.

Being active on your social media channels, asking for feedback, responding to comments and encouraging honest reviews, builds trust between you and your customer. When you are just starting out, these early exchanges will be vital in securing word of mouth recommendations.

Give Peace Of Mind

Have a simple returns policy clearly visible on your front page. Give your customers the confidence to trust you with their payment details, then ensure your product is so good they will never want to return it.

Blog About It

Blogging is a fantastic way to boost engagement and retention for your brand. A blog is the perfect way to share your brand story, customer reviews, product tutorials and humanise your brand, all while generating more traffic to your site.

Be Mobile Friendly

The consistent rise of user’s shopping on their phones is reason enough to make sure your site works perfectly on mobile devices. Shopify has found from its 100,000 Ecommerce stores 50.3% of traffic came from mobile devices and Google has even started to penalize sites that aren’t fully mobile optimized.

Encourage User Generated Content

If you have a collection of loyal customers who have bought and enjoyed your products, you may be sitting on a bank of free marketing potential.

Encourage your customers to share images and videos of themselves enjoying your products and promote these via your social media channels. You could offer money off their next purchase if they share reviews on your social media channels.

Offer Free Shipping

Hook budget conscious shoppers and deter basket abandonment by offering free shipping. Red Door found that making shipping free increased orders by 90%.

Know Where To Invest

When improving your brand on a budget it is important to understand where to invest and where to cut back.

When it comes to Ecommerce; photography and web design are not the place to start. This doesn’t mean you will have to fork out hundreds to hire a photographer every time you have a new product, investing in quality photography equipment and taking a few lessons could get you a similar result.

Attention To Detail

Treat your customers to strong attention to detail.

Going above and beyond for your customers will make them feel valued and encourage them to share and recommend your product. This can be anything from including a handwritten thank you note with their purchase, to using beautiful packaging, to sending an email to make sure everything arrived as it was meant to.

Be Consistent

Know your brand inside out and back to front.

If you are a luxurious, high end brand make sure this is consistent from your point of contact right up to how your customer receives their product. Fully understand what your brand is and optimise each process of your business with it in mind.

Upsell

Whether it’s in a high street drugstore or an online shop, up-selling works. In 2006, Amazon reported that 35% of their revenue came from their cross sells and up-selling efforts.

Add impulse products to your payment processes and allow your customers to add more to their basket on checkout. Tie related products to respected upsells. Are you selling vintage jeans? Why not remind your customers of the wonderful selection of vintage belts you also have on offer?

Use Instagram To Its Full Potential

With 500 million monthly active users, Instagram is a platform bursting with cheap marketing material.

Learn how to use it well and reap the rewards. Schedule content months in advance with Later, use high quality images and encourage users to tag friends.

Host Giveaways And Competitions

Anytime you encourage your customers to engage with your brand on a personal level is a win for building your brand.

Hosting competitions allows you to get to know your customers better, allowing you to sell to them smarter. Also, having a clear call to action in the form of a competition or a giveaway is the perfect way to generate traffic for your site.

Partner With A Worthy Cause

Contrary to popular belief, millennials are not entitled as the media would have you believe, but actually respond better to brands who share their values.

If you are looking to attract millennial consumers, consider picking a worthy cause to partner with. Perhaps you want to donate 10% of your profits to their charity? Or design a product especially to help them raise money? Whatever it is, share your values and make what you care about visible.

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