There are many fundamental aspects of having an eCommerce website. Examples include such things as a shopping cart, payment processing and inventory management, but there are also a variety of optional things to consider. Options are simply those aspects of a website that not every online store has, but you may find them beneficial to your business in the long run. In fact, some of these optional items can increase your business’s profits considerably.
Consider adding a forum
Too often, an online store will only have their products listed along with product descriptions and photos, but customers are fond of talking about certain products with each other. This is the value of a good forum. You can post announcements about your products as a sticky post, while allowing your customers and others interested in the products you sell to discuss various issues pertaining to the use of the products. A forum can be a powerful tool for traffic, as search engines will pick up on a variety of words used by people in their posts. Those searching for various things associated with the posts will also find your site, and this can lead to additional sales.
Consider adding a blog
Many people find the idea of an eCommerce site and a blog to be mutually exclusive, but the truth of the matter is that they are complementary. One will feed of the other and vice versa. If you have a blog, you can then fill it will quality content about your product line. Articles can be written about how to use your product along with discussions about why the product you sell is the best one on the market. You can also include various ideas of new applications for your product line. Like many blogs, you can include a comment section and reply to some of the comments as you see fit.
Have a way of creating an email list
When someone arrives at your site, they may not make a purchase. In fact, there will be a great many people that come to your website and only browse. You will want to get the emails and names of those who are interested in your products, but are not ready to order anything right now. Once you begin to build up this list, you will have a large number of names of those who are prospective customers. You can then use this list to attempt to sell to them at a later time with an email marketing campaign. The trick is in knowing how to get these names. One idea is to offer a newsletter that they can opt into. You can also offer to give them a free gift or discount coupon at a later time. All they need to do is give them your email list.
The three ideas listed above are important, and you should consider using them. The values they serve for customer satisfaction is important, but when you factor in the value of generating a lot of traffic from search engines, one or more of the above options will be well worth including in your new e commerce web design.