Deciding to bring our mortar brick store online is a brave step. This decision is often found stuck with a few other small or big decisions.
Found yourself simply neglecting the importance of owning an online store? If you are a dealer, you cannot ignore you were at crossroads about bringing your shop online.
Covid’s presence made us rely a little more on online stores. But we also think stuff like, are dealers happily joining the internet revolution? Are there some who are confused about their Shopify store?
Does this bother you: even if you make your mind to register your shop online, who can guarantee your success?
Remember, success is inevitable with things done right, step by step.
Singapore’s e-commerce growth is creating new records. Make sure your business does not remain behind in reaping the trend’s benefits.
Are you facing these online store problems in Singapore, during the initiation phase?
Low marketing spends ratio:
Online stores like any other business are a sheer investment. Every business desires investment, on which the ROI is expected to be returned “within time”.
Facts share 60% of the business mindset population is ready to invest more than 5000 AUD as an investment. Though this share keeps drifting towards a low figure as we move ahead.
The real reason is not the lack of funds but the unwillingness to take the risk. Something only we businessmen, can work on.
Ignoring the tech-spend need:
The first step that any businessman would do in a tough situation is, to save. But momentarily, it is about spending wisely on the demands that would help an online store soar.
This includes saving a part of funds. For incorporating higher development and best technology incorporation.
To name some from the bigger list, one needs to take care of developing back-end business functions, including inventory control, billing, sales analytics, and hosting.
Avoiding the right Talent needs:
An online store needs a team. Even if the team is small, Team stands for itself. We are not advertising about having a bigger spend required group that brings hefty expenses to the table.
Starting small or depending on one’s budget, we need to bring the right people into the team. Failure in which, initiates the whole momentum on the wrong note.
Hiring a web developer to bring the right technical insight to your site, SEO geek and a finance managing person would be a good step to start with.
But with low resources or a failure in organizing resources well, we miss the proper track for an online store’s success.
An online store would surely suffer a lot, not only due to lack of resources but also due to misplanning of the available resources. With all the scenarios mentioned, there is a bigger roleplay of investment and resources.
Convenience and logistics hold a bigger ratio in determining Singapore’s Online Store’s fate.
Customers demand convenience and ease that is well depicted in this statement below,
“Ultimately, convenience is king. It’s the convenience of shopping when I want where I want. And it’s 24/7.” Vaughan Ryan from NielsenIQ.
They want to enjoy the feeling of being treated, the very moment they place an order.
What ratings will we give our delivery and logistics service? This is a concerning topic.
Singapore’s circuit breaker or the partial lockdown laid bare the possible delivery and logistical challenges in the eCommerce sales of Singapore.
With the ongoing reports and discussions held on the topic, the basic and very clear amendment was to seize future opportunities by investing in infrastructure that supports their business.
This was evident by the statement, “E-commerce platforms need two pieces of infrastructure: Firstly, they need great digital payment. The second thing is that they need great supply chain”, made to CNBC by James Root, senior partner, and chairman at Bain Futures.
Talking about the solution to this convenience gap, the need to bridge the gap by social media is a potential point.
Singapore-based Ninja Van used this theory and has seen a tremendous increase in its performance rates. With the mindset of covering distances to bring ease and convenience in the process, the final step of merging the virtual world and the physical world was attained.
As is evident from this statement of Lai Chang Wen, CEO and co-founder of Ninja Van, a courier service in Southeast Asia, “We bridge the virtual world and the physical world — you shop for something online, and we make sure it gets delivered to your doorstep, into a locker, to a nearby convenience store,”
With a growth mindset based on working towards uplifting the condition of logistics and delivery, Ninja Van started working together with the Singapore e-commerce market towards overcoming supply-related disruptions.
Thus if we are working on opening an online store in Singapore, keeping convenient delivery and ease is an important factor to consider along with the right use of the resources and talent.
It is completely okay if we did not crack the code of opening our online store well during the initial phases. But the thing that we must look into next is how to work on improving and making our online stores better in appeal and sales.
Don’t worry this also does not happen overnight but surely one step at a time!
Here is our road map to increased online sales:
To begin with, we need to be mindful of things like:
- Having a better spend ratio and strategy when it is about marketing.
- Building impactful brand awareness.
- A smooth and enjoyable shopping experience that is topped with the cherry of helpful and reliable customer service.
Going deeper in the talk, here are few more insights:
Get a mobile-friendly website
Do you know at what rank your website stands when you compare it to few other best competitors of your niche?
People like to surf and browse things on their mobile in their free time.
First impressions matter a lot and you don’t want to create a bad one! A slow and untrustworthy website will harm your sales.
People like to expect more when it comes to online shopping sites. Fulfil their expectations by giving them the features they desire and watch your sales boost up.
Has it been a long while, since you updated your website? If so, then it’s time to update it now and bring all the necessary stuff in your checklist: making website responsive being the first.
Offer discounts, giveaways, discount codes or promo codes.
Discounts, promotional items, or promo codes are effective sales driving factors. Promotions increase the frequency of shoppers visiting e-stores for their needs of apparel, accessories, shoes, and beauty items.
Providing discounts and coupons is effective when customers know about them before the offers expire. Thus, timely marketing about offers, promo codes, and discounts is necessary.
Some of your best offers can be, buy more at the price of four shops and we deliver free of cost and buy one get two.
Showcase your Best Selling Stars
One of the best tricks to enhance your online sales to date. People tend to buy more when they see something worth having.
Showcasing your best-selling stars appeal to newcomers leading to even more sales. Good reviews and ratings on the already best-selling products add to the momentum.
A good trick, to bring people to your website, is by showcasing the top-selling items on your homepage.
It is a good opportunity for people to visit your pages who might have not visited other pages- to find out about other popular products.
Adding navigational links to products and pages is helpful. Allow your product lists to get sorted using the Best Sellers on top and see the magic!
Always include the customers’ reviews and ratings
Winning customers’ trust and making it easy for them to buy your products is by making sure they are comfortable shopping from you.
A major chunk of the population depends on the user ratings and reviews that help them in making a decision.
Adding customer ratings and reviews helps in building trust and loyalty among the customers. And it helps in selling more items.
This one is more about creating a psychological impact on the customers while they make the purchase.
The best way to move ahead in this direction is by noticing how some of the well-doing online stores have worked on this. Customers satisfied with good service will never hesitate to give good feedbacks that are loyal and would help others in making the right choice.
Offer free shipping
Shipping charges many times put customers in a place where they wait before ordering. Being able to bridge this gap helps in making sure we are opening ways for our business to be considered, most of the time.
Providing free shipping is important and should be made possible only at the verge of making sure, your business is not losing.
Studies reveal in higher shipping rates or a calculation where shoppers face struggle to make up for the amount, they tend to abandon their shopping cart. While the studies done with free shipping helps in driving up the conversion rate by 29%.
More payment options help and convert well
The famous payment options are PayPal and credit cards. Is your shopping portal providing enough payment options that would make people feel at ease as they shop?
Allowing for options like MasterCard or Visa is a prominent option. But we can always incorporate more payment options like PayPal and Stripe.
Incorporating Buy Now Pay Later option of installment also provides enough flexibility to the customers.
Check out Hoolah, a popular Singapore site providing interest-free 3-month installment plans to shoppers with a tight budget.
At last, these quick and necessary to include online sales enhancing plans are a good way to stick to, starting from today!
These are not any sort of shortcuts to eCommerce growth. But sticking with these few helpful insights will help to crack the code of Singapore’s e-commerce website growth.
Simplify your checkout process
Simplifying your checkout process is a proven strategy for increasing eCommerce sales. A streamlined checkout experience can reduce friction and make it more likely for customers to complete their purchase.
By keeping the number of steps to a minimum, optimizing for mobile devices, using a progress bar, pre-filling form fields and offering multiple payment options, you can make the process faster, more efficient, and more user-friendly.
This can lead to an increase in conversions, and ultimately, boost your sales. By focusing on improving the checkout process, you can create a more positive experience for your customers, which can lead to increased customer loyalty and repeat business.
For example, you can offer a single-page purchase that allows customers to browse all the things they want to buy without having to sign up first.