Have a new eCommerce business idea? Or already finished setting up your business online? The next step is to start acquiring your first customers. After you’ve gotten to 100 orders, it really starts to feel like things are moving. Then, you can start considering customer retention strategies and finding an eCommerce showroom and storage solution.
The benefit of having an eCommerce website is that you don’t need to worry about getting customers to a physical store. You can make the most of digital marketing, bring people to your online store and encourage them to convert. There will be a learning curve if you’ve never done it before but it’ll be worthwhile if everything works out.
Before you get into the tactics
Before we get into more actionable tips, it’s important to talk about understanding your customers first. Knowing exactly who your target market is will help to make the following tactics more effective. This involves understanding the value that you provide to them and the key selling points behind your product.
Check your eCommerce website design and functionality
Wrapped up in the excitement of everything, you’re not to blame if you’ve forgotten to make sure everything looks okay and works properly. This is something that people overlook when trying to get their first few orders. Unfortunately, the market is incredibly competitive and having an average looking website that potentially has bugs just won’t cut it for most people.
To increase the chances of people converting when they get to your website, you need to make sure your website design is in order. Your website should have a consistent and aesthetically pleasing design across the pages. Check for typos, make sure product descriptions sound amazing and images are clear. Get at least a few external opinions on this!
In terms of functionality, make sure that clicking on links or buttons lead you to the right place. Though testing isn’t a fun process, you’d rather discover any errors on your own rather than have potential customers leaving your website, or worse, leaving a negative review for your store.
Reach out to your existing network
When you’re first starting out, reaching out to your friends and family could be one of the easiest ways to get sales, depending on the type of product that you’re selling. Whether it be on social media or in person, tell them about your eCommerce business and see if your products could be the right fit for them.
Reaching out to your network could make for a great opportunity to get thoughts and opinions as well. See what people think of your product, how your store looks, what the prices are like etc. Even if you’ve done testing and checks, the initial starting period is bound to come with a few bumps in the road. Your friends and family could make finding issues a lot easier.
Set up your eCommerce business on social media
Part of setting up your eCommerce business should involve setting up your social media profiles. Having a presence online is absolutely crucial in today’s day and age. You might not need an entire social media strategy from the get go, but you’ll want to have something for potential customers to look at.
Setting up your social media profiles could simply involve securing your username, updating your photos, description, contact details etc. This helps to make your business look more reliable and will make people more likely to convert. Don’t forget to get friends and family to follow you while you’re reaching out to them.
Create social media posts and ads
Following on from the last tip, having a profile isn’t always enough to attract new customers. You can start by creating new posts across your accounts. Keep in mind that people don’t just want to see hard sells, you can save these for your ads. Creating interesting content and personal stories gives you the best chance of keeping people engaged and getting your posts shared.
To really harness the power of social media, you’ll want to consider setting up a few ads. Facebook and Instagram ads allow you to reach your target audience. Your budget doesn’t have to be crazy. While you’re testing the waters, keep an eye on what types of graphics and captions perform well. You don’t want to pay for ads that don’t get people buying.
Build an email list for your eCommerce business
Typically, building an email list is more of a long term game. In saying that, it’s really important to start building your base of customers and potential customers at the start. The same way you don’t want all your social media posts to be ads, you don’t want all the emails you send to be ads either.
Send a mix of engaging content, stories, promotions, updates etc. You want to build a strong relationship with your email list. Though you might not get orders from your email list immediately, if you give it a few emails and a few weeks, you can definitely get your first 100 orders through this method.
Have an irresistible giveaway or deal
After you’ve set up your website, your social media and your email list, a great way you could make the most of these channels is by having an irresistible grand opening giveaway or deal. The actual deal that you run will be different depending on the characteristics of your business model and products.
A few things you could try:
- Do a giveaway on social media, have people follow and tag friends as entries
- Offer a 50% off, or $10 off coupon for anyone that joins your email list
- Have a buy one, get one free sale
Final words
We hope that these tactics help to get you to 100 orders! You’ll definitely learn a lot from this experience. You can read tips on starting a successful eCommerce business to learn from someone who’s done it before.