Four Overlooked Elements for a Successful eCommerce Site

Like many online business owners, you are committed to making your company the most profitable as you possibly can, and you are also looking to the future, to achieve growth for your enterprise. However, there are often overlooked areas that are important for an online business to succeed. The following are four of them.

Optimizing your website display for smartphones

In the past, it was important to make sure that your website displayed properly using all of the most popular web browsers. Although this is still true today, you must also make sure that your website displays well on the 3.5 and 4.5 inch screens of a smartphone. The trend towards using smartphones to shop and make purchases online is rapidly growing. Your website must display clearly as well as function properly when accessed with a smartphone.

Make sure you have a security certificate

If a shopper finds a product they are searching for on your site, but they believe your site is not trustworthy, they will leave quickly. No one wants to have their private information compromised when the only thing they were trying to do was shop online. Of course, the most important information of concern to an online shopper is their credit card. The best and most common way to achieve security for your customers is by using an SSL certificate. Basically, these are files that are purchased and installed on the server side of your website. In essence, they create encryption channels or tunnels for credit card information to pass through. There is little, if any, chance your customer will have their financial information stolen. These ssl certificates can be purchased from several sources; examples include web design and web hosting companies.

Advertise your eCommerce site

Although this may seem obvious, too often an eCommerce business owner will be struggling with his or her sales. There doesn't seem to be any root cause for the problem, until it is discovered that there is no advertising being done. Sure, a savvy eCommerce business owner may have already done extensive search engine optimization for the website, but it is a mistake to depend solely on search engines to bring traffic to your site. There is no substitute for advertising, even with an eCommerce business. There are many possibilities to explore with digital advertising, but the best way to approach the issue is consult with an Internet marketing firm.

Use your customer list

Naturally, you should be getting an email address for every person who buys from your company. Order confirmations and shipping emails need to be sent. Once you get these emails, you should not ignore them. Staying in business has a lot to do with repeat business, so you need to send out a sales message to your customers periodically, offering them coupons and discounts to return and order again.

There is a lot of competition in eCommerce, and regardless of your specific product, you need to take every advantage possible to get traffic to your site, getting people to place an order and encouraging them to return.