“I practically buy everything online now,” one of our colleagues confessed to us, earlier this week, “It’s just too easy and convenient not to. I’ve gotten accustomed to just looking something up online and clicking on it if it’s available. It definitely beats driving out to a store, searching for it on the shelves and standing in line to pay for it. Especially because of COVID, I think I’m just hooked on trying to shop online before I go anywhere for what I need.”
Unquestionably, online shopping is popular. However, you can’t take for granted that your online shop will be successful. Here are four steps to creating a popular e-commerce site:
1. Optimize your website for search engines.
SEO (search engine optimization) counts for a lot. In simple terms, it refers to how often your site pops up in search engines. Naturally, you want your site to be a popular find when online users type in keywords that are related to your industry. To outdo the sites of your competitors, it’s important to better your website’s design and content.
A few ways to do that, says Allison Bowlus on Forbes.com, is to ensure your site has a fast loading speed, is mobile-friendly, includes internal links throughout the site to keep people clicking and contains positive reviews. It’s also important to utilize your social media accounts to offer links to your online shop.
2. Offer online-exclusive promotions.
“Only available online” – this is a great way to garner greater interest in your e-commerce shop. Consumers love the idea of being able to take advantage of special deals. If they can go to your online store and see promotions they can’t get anywhere else, they will be a lot more likely to take advantage of them. Offer exclusive deals in your online store. We’re not just talking about discounts. There’s a wide range of promotions to choose from.
“Everybody loves free stuff and fantastic deals,” writes Rocco Bombardieri of The Influence Agency, “Whether you offer free shipping for a minimum purchase or have curated bundle deals that are a steal deal, make these visible on your e-commerce site through well-designed banners.”
3. Regularly create and publish quality content.
The Unity Payments website is updated with a new blog no less than three times a week. We love pumping out new content because it enriches our website with valuable information. Naturally, this helps to grow our SEO. It also offers a customer service resource to our site’s visitors, encouraging them to keep coming back.
“Both content quantity and freshness are important to search engines, so it’s important that you create a plan to publish quality articles and/or blog posts on your site and on external sites that link to your site,” insists Bowlus, “If you want to rank highly in search engine results and encourage people to return to your site again and again, you will have to update your website with new and relevant content as frequently as possible.”
4. Take advantage of Unity Payments’ online payment gateway.
Syncing your payment processing with your online shopping cart is now easier than ever with our e-commerce payment solutions. We provide a direct connection to our powerful and reliable processing network, which can help eliminate the costs and complexities of dealing with a third-party gateway provider. To learn more, call us at 1-800-661-3761 or email us at info@unitypayments.ca.
