Online shopping has given customers a world of products right at their disposal, which they can access from the comfort of their homes. With Millions of online businesses now in the market, customers avidly compare products to make informed buying decisions.How to build a brand from scratch?

To make your products Brand stand out in this process, and increase the likelihood of customers buying your products, it’s important to know e-commerce branding, how you can make your products stand out in today’s highly saturated market. 

So how can you draw attention to your e-commerce shop and make your products unique? In this blog, we’ll give you some tips to improve your visibility and achieve higher product recognition in the market. 

1. Create a unique brand and set yourself apart

Products are temporary; the brand lasts forever. You’ll have new products coming in and going out; your brand lasts throughout. Every company’s brand is different but built in similar ways; through advertisements, graphic design, customer service, social media presence, and so on. 

Having an online presence is crucial to gaining traffic for an e-commerce store. This means you must put out consistent content that is in line with your brand’s message and values. Blog posts, videos, and other content are a great way to create a unique brand that your customers can always remember and relate to. 

Let’s look at the famous Canadian beauty brand Soap & Glory. They developed their brand around the ‘70s persona, with very quirky marketing campaigns and packaging.

Instead of throwing the usual scientific facts at their customers that are used by most cosmetic manufacturers, S&G uses puns to advertise their products, giving their users a good laugh out of the captions and delivering the value of their product to them.

They have new products coming in regularly, but their brand stays consistent- providing relatable content to consumers, staying active and regular on all their social media, targeting a certain audience, and keeping up their witty marketing campaigns and packaging.

soap ad CTA

Source: Soap & Glory

2. Enrich Product Information

Product information and its management are the backbone of e-commerce businesses. This includes optimal product images and descriptions, as well as a carefully constructed sales pitch that lists out all of the product’s uses and benefits for the customer. 

Having product images that allow customers to see how your product would be of use to them is central to e-commerce success. Giving your customers images that display the product from each angle allows them to see the product for what it really is. Not being able to hold a product, and physically see it is a huge hole in e-commerce that must be filled by great product images.             

patch shirt product page

Source: Zara

As important as product images are, you must also have product descriptions that clearly describe the type of product you’re selling, and answer any questions the consumer might have regarding it. Rich product data results in conversions. 

Apimio-Signup-CTA-yellow

Achieving rich product data is a challenging task, but one that can be made attainable through the use of Product Information Management Software.

PIM gives you a central repository for all your product data, allowing you to easily share information with all your distribution channels, and achieve consistent and accurate product data on your storefronts.

When product data is accurate and consistent, it builds trust around your brand and results in repeated purchases from customers who know they’ll get what they’re ordering from your store. 

3. Be Charitable and Sustainable

We live in a world where people are becoming a lot more socially and politically aware and active. They want to make a constant effort to add to society through their everyday practices, and this includes online shopping.

As an e-commerce business, when you make the effort to be more sustainable in your business practices, make charitable donations, and associate yourself with environmentally friendly products, it creates added trust for your brand.

People are becoming increasingly skeptical of brands’ efforts toward environmental sustainability and moral practices and scrutinize each brand thoroughly before indulging in business with them. 

Giving people an easy way to feel good about doing business with you by allowing them to feel good during their shopping experience with charitable giving will be rewarding for your business.

4. Sell on third-party channels

You’re probably wondering why you should sell on third-party channels when your business has its own website. Well, marketplaces like Shopify, Amazon, and eBay have a huge reach; it wouldn’t hurt to put some of your best sellers on these.

We’re not asking you to have all your products up there, but a few can go a long way! It will also help drive more traffic to your personal website if consumers like what they see from your brand on these third party channels. 

You might think these marketplaces are your competition – which they are – but you can always turn this into the healthy competition! Use their reach to your advantage. While they do charge commissions, the payoff to your online store will be much more than what you’ll be paying in commissions.

Learn What is Shopify and how you can also start selling on Shopify.com in only 9 steps.

5. Be Open to New Technology

There are two things that give you a cutting edge over your competitors: technology and customer service. The way you allow these two to come together to provide the ultimate shopping experience to the end consumer is what sets you and your products apart from your competitors. 

How do you think Amazon has been so successful in recent years? It’s because Amazon has been able to use new innovative technology and pair it with the ultimate customer experience. 

Make sure you’re staying up to date with any new technology in the market, and try to incorporate that into your own online store as it will bring many benefits to your business. For example, look at ASOS’s video feature on product pages; this technology is a game-changer. It allows customers to see how apparel pieces would look when worn on a human. 

When shopping online, customers abandon carts because they’re unsure of how the clothing item would look on them. Giving them the chance to see it worn virtually gives them that reassurance that turns them into buying customers. 

Implementing cutting-edge technology to help your products stand out is a great way to create convenience for customers!

6. Engaging Web Design

You might have the best technology at your disposal, and the most accommodating customer service, but if you have a lousy web design that is hardly navigable, then you’re doomed. Visuals matter. They matter more than you think they do.

An ill-designed website gives the impression of a mismanaged business that isn’t putting in the time and effort to deliver a good customer experience. This automatically leads to customers assuming that the product you’re offering will also not be up to par, and they will leave your website immediately. 

To create a profitable online store, there are many options you can choose from. You can either pay a professional web designer, or you can select one of the many e-commerce platforms in the market that allow you to create and customize your own online store. This includes Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, and many more.

nike reactor

A great example of an interactive web page is the Nike Reactor which allows you to build your own personalized Nike React footwear and try it in your own size via the website. 

Top 6 E-commerce Platforms to build a website in 2021

7. Track Analytics  

Analytics is a great way to track and strategize for your online business’s growth. You might think you’re doing well just because you’re making sales, but tracking your analytics could show a whole new side of the story.

You may find that only 2.83% of people visiting your website go through with a purchase, indicating a high bounce rate. Analytics can help you understand why this is happening, so you can improve on these areas, and increase conversions. 

The best way to track your selling activity and customers’ behavior is to use a tool like Google Analytics. This program provides sellers with clear metrics about their store, such as the percentage of product sales, the number of site page visits, and the number of abandoned shopping carts. 

Continually track your selling metrics with Analytics so that you can form long-term insights on how to engage customers more effectively and encourage more purchases.

8. Offer Return and Refund Policies

For customers, buying a product online without the possibility of returning or exchanging it is very risky. If the product isn’t as they expected, then it’s money down the drain for them. 

When there’s a possibility of a product not being up to the consumer’s expectations, they will most likely not go through with their purchase if there isn’t a return policy in place. That is why customers prefer buying from brands that do have return policies. It makes them feel safer and also creates trust around the brand. 

The famous clothing brand Pretty Little Things made record sales this Black Friday 2020 because not only were they offering up to 90% off on all their stock, but they also had an easy return and exchange policy which led to consumers buying everything without worrying about whether it would fit well, or turn out the way that they had imagined. 

Sellers can build buyer trust and incentivize purchases by offering generous return and money-back guarantee policies. Allowing customers to return an item if they change their mind or if it doesn’t match the product description shows other consumers that you trust your buyers and want to provide them with value. 

9. Keep an Eye on the Competition

With everything only a click away, customers now take their sweet time to compare products: be it their prices, features, or warranty, before making a well-informed decision. Customers will go from one online store to the next to find the cheapest product and the store with the most satisfactory shopping experience. 

To keep up with the competition, it’s important to know what your competitors are doing. Are they offering something that you’re not? What prices do they have? What is their website like? All of these things are important to know.

By knowing your competitors’ strong points, you can determine what you need to change about your business to retain customers and attract new buyers. And by knowing their weaknesses, you can know what areas you can capitalize on. 

Scan through marketplaces as well as other online stores to compare product prices.  Venues like Amazon and eBay can provide you with a good benchmark for what pricing you should follow for your offerings. Also consider the design of competitors’ sites as it will help you understand where your site might be lacking, so you can improve and attract new buyers. 

10. Make your customers feel involved in your brand; get them talking 

Engaging with customers doesn’t just make the whole experience with your brand more personalized, but also more relatable for future customers. When potential customers visit your online stores, they want to see something that speaks to them on a personal level.

It helps them visualize themselves using your product; whatever it may be. For example, NYX Cosmetics is a widely popular cosmetics brand. Although they have physical stores as well, their social media is loaded with images of customers wearing their products. This makes their brand very unique. 

nyx cosmetics page

Source: Nyx Cosmetics 

Encourage your customers to share their purchases on social media and don’t stop at that; also create a hashtag they can use to be featured on your website. By doing this, you can create relatable content for your audience that can be featured on your social channels.

Such content is always rewarding for the business as it allows customers to see that you put an active effort into maintaining customer relationships and enhancing their experience with your products. 

Another great way to engage with your customers is to include personalized notes with each purchase to add that personal touch that can go a long way for your brand. Of course, this will only be possible for as long as you’re managing a small number of orders each day. When orders get too many, it becomes hard to add notes to each order.

However, there are many other things you can do to make your customers feel special and valued. This personal touch can also come from giving customers a coupon code or voucher for their next purchase with your brand; it helps show that you value your customers and want them to return to your brand in the future.

Curate Your Store for More Conversions

You have complete autonomy over what your store looks like, and how you display your products to your customers. By knowing what your competition is doing, you can set your store in a way that appeals to your audience, and results in higher conversions. 

By following the strategies outlined in this guide, you can become more aware of how customers perceive every store element and apply that knowledge to create a successful online store. Curating an online store that matches buyers’ wants and needs is key to a successful business.

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