Written by Raúl Carrión
Índice
We are not yet fully aware of it, but today we are living the beginnings of the golden age of e-commerce. Rarely have we seen annual turnover growth of 25%, and this figure is even more impressive in the current economic climate.
It all started with the cheapening of computer equipment. Few of us remember when a personal computer cost half a million pesetas, but now for about 300 euros you can buy a laptop to work with dignity, as long as you are not a fanboy of the little apple like me.
The second key milestone has been the democratization of web development thanks to open source CMS such as WordPress, Prestashop or Magento.
And last but not least, access to information. Nowadays we have at our disposal information on online marketing, traditional marketing and e-commerce strategies in all its variants and formats: webinars, video tutorials, posts, ebooks, etc. For very little money, even free of charge.
In light of these three points, what is stopping you from setting up an e-commerce business? More importantly, what do you need to achieve the desired sales volume? As they say in the movies, you only need three things: work, work and more work.
Now you may be wondering: so if I am on my own, can I create a successful online store?
The answer is yes, but you will have to work a lot harder. Be disciplined, constant and do not lose the illusion if the results take a while to arrive. In this article I propose a daily work plan that can help you get organized. Try it and feel free to share your experience with us.
Let’s get started!
Start-up of the online store
I assume that you already have the product under control. You have analyzed your competitors’ prices, your margins and according to your numbers the business looks good.
I just want to comment that in e-commerce the margin is fundamental. Especially at the beginning when product turnover is low. If you have little margin, think carefully because you will not have the resources to invest in attracting visitors: Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, even paying the Paypal commission, 3.4% of the turnover.
Logistics is also taken care of, either because you are going to work by dropshipping, you have outsourced it or because you are a crack in warehousing and distribution.
Now it is the turn of the online store. If you control programming, layout and hosting you can choose to set up an open source online store CMS such as Prestashop or Magento. Or if you come from the blogosphere and have experience in WordPress, it is also an option to install one of these CMS for blogs with a plugin that allows you to sell online such as WooCommerce.
With any of these three alternatives you will have to hire a hosting service that is compatible with the platform and that provides you with email accounts to communicate with your clients.
If, on the other hand, programming is not your thing or you simply think that you are going to be busy enough without also having to fight with the installation of modules, updates, etc., you have at your disposal several platforms of online stores for rentwhere for a small monthly fee, the provider takes care of everything: hosting, emails, setting up the online store, maintaining and updating it. This way you can focus exclusively on driving users to the online store and getting them to become customers, which is no small feat.
Choosing the priority traffic channels: the strategy
Not all traffic channels work equally well for all online stores. Since your resources are limited – like mine, like anyone else’s – it’s best to invest them where you get the most return on investment (ROI). And you can only find this out by testing.
By web traffic channels I mean SEO (search engine optimization), Google AdWords and social networks. With email marketing you will also achieve visits but in a punctual way, we will see it later.
Another important channel in the future will be direct traffic, i.e., visits from users who directly enter the domain of our website in the browser or who have us saved in their favorites. However, in the first phase of our project, referral traffic will have a marginal volume because very few people will know us and because our brand image is still to be developed.
Before we start discussing web traffic channels for your online store, there is one concept that is essential to be clear about.
Getting a visit to your online store will cost you money
And this is so, no matter where it comes from, no matter how you pay for it. You may pay for it in time, by generating content for your online store or by investing in sponsored ads. Anyway, it has a cost that we must be aware of in order to focus more resources on the traffic channel that generates visits at a lower price. Provided that the conversion rate is similar.
This value is easier to calculate when we work with Facebook Ads or Google AdWords, however it is interesting that we can economically value the investment we make in social media strategies and SEO, always bearing in mind that these types of actions generate visits in the long term and in a sustained manner.
Search Engine Optimization
It will provide you with medium and long term visits at a low cost. Largely because once we stop making improvements in this aspect, its effects will remain for quite some time.
SEO is a gateway to users who are searching. They may be looking for our products, our brand or the solution to a need. Therefore, if the interest in buying is high, we will have a high probability of closing sales, as long as the keywords for which we are positioning ourselves are well selected.
This strategy is less effective in the following cases:
- Our product is very innovative. If our customers don’t know about it, they won’t look for it.
- Our product does not satisfy a clearly determined need. For example, in the fashion sector, customers buy mostly by brand. Even so, you can always find keywords for which you are interested in positioning yourself.
Google AdWords
No matter which store you have, you have to test at least for a couple of months the various types of campaigns offered by this pay-per-click tool. You will get visits from interested users immediately and in this way you will be able to validate your business model.
You can also know exactly how much a visit costs you and if you have it configured correctly, how much each sale costs you. In addition, Google often offers free investment bonuses for new accounts that can reach up to 120€. So you have no excuse not to try it.
Explaining all the possibilities of Google AdWords is not the purpose of this article, so I invite you to read what we have written lately on the subject in our Google Adwords section of the blog.
Social networks
The success of this way of web traffic will be linked to the theme of your online store. If you sell fashion or leisure-related products, it will be essential to have good visibility on social networks. However, if you work in a professional sector, social networks will probably be relegated to a secondary role in your visitor acquisition strategy.
First of all you must locate in which social networks are your potential customers. Next, research the competition: analyze the tone they use, the actions they carry out, promotions, etc. To design a communication strategy aligned with your customers and with the sector in which you operate.
If your product is oriented to individuals, you should probably have a presence on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Whereas if you sell to professionals, LinkedIn is your network.
In social networks, as with search engines, you have tools to boost your visibility at an affordable cost. For example, you can use Facebook Ads to get “likes” or visits from interested users with a really low cost per click, much lower than with Google AdWords. Therefore, you must test it, and measure it. A couple of euros a day is enough to get started.
Here I could talk at length about the actions to be taken in social networks. And how to approach the strategy depending on the sector you are targeting. But neither is today’s objective. The important thing in this article is to plan the daily work in an online store. If you are interested in this topic we have many articles on social networks in our blog and a book on social networks published by Anaya multimedia.
Daily plan for online stores: 2,5 hours of pure online marketing
If you have reached this point it means that you already have your online store, product and logistics sorted out. You have also detected which traffic channels are going to be a priority for your business. Congratulations! Now we can move on to the next level.
The job of online store manager, or if you want to call it E-commerce manager to make it sound better, is a daily work where the results are seen in the medium and long term. My philosophy is:
My online store tomorrow will be better than it is today
It means that you should not despair if you see that there are many things that can be improved. You have to work hard to make your project better every day. Below I detail a daily work plan in online marketing of 2.5 hours a day for 7 days a week. Indeed, Saturdays and Sundays we have to work if we want to improve quickly and climb up the ranks of our competitors.
10 minutes. Review web analytics and draw conclusions
The first task of the day, to keep a clear head, is to open Google Analytics and see how the store is doing. You can compare the data with the previous day, with the previous week, with the previous year, as you consider.
I recommend that you set up a customized dashboard with the most important KPIs so that you can go for broke. Here is an article that will help you create a custom dashboard in Google Analytics for online stores. For this task to make sense, you must be able to extract information that will help you make decisions, both in the short and medium term.
40 minutes. Improve product content or add new products
Content is king on the Internet and in your online store as well. Every day you have to choose a product or product family and enrich its description to be much more complete than that of your competitors: descriptions, instructions for use, photos, videos, FAQs, everything you can think of to make your product the number one reference source.
When writing new content, remember to keep in mind the terms your potential customers use and use them in a natural way.
30 minutes. Social media customer service and generate and schedule daily posts on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
Half an hour to answer the questions you have received on social networks. Keep in mind that social networks such as Facebook make public the time it takes you to respond to your customers. Therefore, if you receive an inquiry even if it is outside your working hours, if you are able to respond at that time, do not hesitate to do so.
In this time you also have to elaborate and schedule the publications that you are going to publish in the next 24 hours. In posts you can share products and items from our store or share relevant information from other blogs. The important thing here is to get the frequency of updates and the focus of the content right in order to develop an active community.
10 minutes. Working on conversion
So far we have worked to progressively increase the number of visits to our online store. Now we are going to work to increase the percentage of users who finally buy from us.
First we will check the abandoned baskets from the previous day. Therefore, it is essential that our e-commerce platform is able to provide us with this data. For each of the abandoned baskets where we have the potential customer’s contact information – because they abandoned the purchase process once registered – you should contact us to inquire about the reason for the abandonment.
Again, depending on the sector, your strategy may be more or less aggressive. The least intrusive option is to send an email inviting the user to continue shopping. To make it easier you can offer a promotional code with a discount with a defined expiration date.
It may be the case that most of the users of your online store are not regular readers of your emails. For example, in online stores aimed at individuals of a certain age. In this case, your potential customer may never read the cart recovery email. To avoid this situation, you can go a step further and contact via an instant messaging app such as WhatsApp or an SMS message.
The most radical case is that of calling the user directly. Here the effect is unpredictable: they may see it as five-star customer service or as if you were a maniac with a persecutory obsession.
1 hour. Weekly task
Finally, every day you should spend an hour doing a task from the weekly task list. The order is up to you, as long as you dedicate each day of the week to one of the following questions.
Weekly tasks
Each day of the week you should spend one hour doing one of the following tasks:
Writing an article for the online store blog
One article per week is a great frequency to generate visits to your online store and build trust for your customers. Select a topic of interest to your visitors and unleash your creativity.
Some tips for writing blog articles for your online store:
- The recommended length is about 700 to 1,200 words so that it is well positioned and does not become too heavy.
- Look for topics aligned with your customers and their concerns:
- Sector news
- Sales arguments
- Anticipatory searches
- Encourage your readers to post comments.
And if I still haven’t convinced you, here is a motivating article with 7 reasons to have a blog in your online store.
Review Google AdWords campaigns
Log into your Google AdWords dashboard to check that all campaigns are active and generating visits, measure, make changes and get better results. Here you can go as deep as you have time, but the most basic tasks are as follows:
- Select as analysis date range from the last time you reviewed the campaign until yesterday (one week).
- Check that all active campaigns have impressions and clicks.
- Check that there are no anomalous variations in CTR, CPC, and other key indicators.
- Optimize your ads: create new ones, modify those that perform worse and eliminate those that do not contribute.
- Add keywords or include negative keywords.
- Adjust bids to achieve more conversions for less money.
From my point of view, this task is the one that needs the most specific training. On the Internet you can find plenty of manuals, video tutorials and webinars. In the Google AdWords section of our blog you will also find many tips.
Collaboration with influencers or guest blogging
Find a blog where it is interesting to be mentioned and negotiate some kind of collaboration. Many blogs will publish an article for you if you meet their writing requirements. You can also buy a sponsored post or agree to publish information about your product in exchange for a sample unit.
Whatever you do, negotiate well so that they insert a link to your online store and also that this link is conveniently labeled so that you can measure the impact of the action from Google Analytics. Google provides a utility to easily tag your links: it is the URL builder.
Your collaborations do not have to focus exclusively on the blogosphere. If there is sufficient social activity in your sector, the investment in visibility on social networks will be fully justified. To do this you should rely on influencers on Facebook, Instagram (with their viral Instagram stories) or Twitter. Depending on their cache, they will publish information about your brand and products in exchange for products or through financial remuneration.
I recommend that before starting to work on this visibility channel, you make a list of the influencers you find and order them according to the criteria you consider key: number of followers, number of likes per publication, etc. Once this ranking is done, start contacting those who have a good position and that is enough of a product for them to promote us on their social profiles. If it works well, you will have no problem establishing paid collaborations in the future.
Design of promotions and contests
If you want your potential customers to have you in their sights when it comes to buying, you must make sure you are present in their lives on a regular basis. A creative and economical way to increase your impact is through promotions and sweepstakes communicated through social media and periodic email blasts.
This strategy forces your customers to be aware of your communications in order to achieve good prices. It is not necessary to create a contest or promotion every week, however, you should invest this time to follow up on the actions, evaluate the impact, communicate winners, etc.
Competitive analysis
Don’t be lazy to know all the moves of your competitors. It is imperative that you become their number one fan. Follow them on the networks and see if they start selling new products, price variations and promotional strategies.
Along with your own actions, it is not superfluous to incorporate those actions that you see that they perform, of course, always trying to improve them.
Product photography or videos
One hour a week should be devoted to creating new multimedia material: product photos, product videos, video tutorials, infographics, presentations, etc. The more of your own material your online store has, the more trust, the more positioning and the more conversion.
In addition, this type of material can help you gain visibility in search engines, for example by positioning videos on YouTube, or it can increase your visibility on social networks if you share it among your fans.
Review advertising campaigns on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
Just as you do with Google AdWords, one day a week you should dedicate an hour to review the status of your social media campaigns. In this type of campaign it is advisable to vary the ads more frequently so as not to bore your followers. But that’s not all, check which types of ads work best and provide more investment.
Monthly tasks
With this work plan your online store is assured a progressive and sustained growth in visibility. But is that all? No, there is still more. Every month you can do the following tasks to give your online business an extra boost.
Newsletter design and mailing
Advertising emails are a very interesting source of additional sales. Emailing never goes out of style!
Send one every month with your latest news, new products, relevant information for your customers and of course, a promotion that drives your customers to the online store.
Market analysis for new products
Research trends and locate business opportunities. Do you have all the products your customers demand? Think that in addition to achieving maximum visibility, you can work on getting the maximum benefit from each visit, for example by offering more products.
Set objectives for the following month
Because a strategy without objectives is meaningless, every month evaluate the performance of the store and set new objectives for the following months. But be careful, the objectives must be measurable and achievable. For example:
- Reduce cart abandonment rate by 2%.
- Increase average order value by 10%.
- Increase your product portfolio by 10 references.
And finally, beyond online marketing, you will have to take the time to manage orders in the shortest possible time and provide outstanding customer service.
So, can I run an online store on my own and grow your business volume?
Of course you can, you have at your fingertips more facilities than ever to achieve it. It is a matter of investing time, energy and a minimum of economic resources. Best of luck and above all, lots of energy!
