Which e-Commerce Channels Are Best For Your Business?
Which e-Commerce Channels Are Best For Your Business?
Today everyone wants to advertise as well as sell their products online. Gone are the days of traditional forms of marketing and selling. The saturation of the internet has grown to a new height, and thus, every business and brand is focusing on leveraging the benefits of eCommerce.
If you want to focus on growing your business and take it to new heights of success, you need to use different eCommerce channels. Incorporating a properly planned eCommerce strategy can help you in boosting your business growth.
This article will provide you with information about different eCommerce channels that can help you fuel your business profits and growth.
How to choose the best eCommerce channel?
Before you look into the different options to choose the best eCommerce channel, you need to have a proper idea about the objective of your business, as well as a long-term goal for your business. Without knowing about your goals and objectives, you can’t filter out the best eCommerce channels. There is no one size fit for all kinds of eCommerce channels. The choice of eCommerce is dependent on the type of business you are pursuing and what your objective.
Before looking out for the perfect eCommerce channels for your business or brand, get an answer to the following questions:
- What is the objective of your business?
- Why do you need an eCommerce channel?
- Do you think the eCommerce channel will help you boost your business growth?
- What are the results you are expecting from an eCommerce channel?
When you focus on the ultimate result, it becomes quite easy to choose the ideal channel for you. But if you don’t have an idea about the objectives, goals, and strategies to be followed while looking for an eCommerce channel, the task becomes challenging. eCommerce channels are not a one-step solution to every business’s needs. While some businesses use an eCommerce channel to reach their target audience and customers, other channels can be used to spark interest in the shoppers and audience. Thus, knowing about your objective becomes quite relevant in these cases.
In addition to this, to get ahead with your competitors and to make an online presence and continuous interaction with your audience, you can’t rely on a single eCommerce channel. Instead, you need to have multiple channels so that you can use all of them for your maximum benefit and growth of your business.
So, let’s get started:
Search engines:
If you want to get the attention of the audience who are looking for the products or services you are offering, search engines can be the best eCommerce channel. With the use of search engines, you will be visible to the audience who are searching for you on the Internet. Famous search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are offering different amazing advertising possibilities that can help you target the audience. You can easily advertise your products through Google ads, image ads, and product listings. The search engine is one of the most important eCommerce channels that you can use to advertise almost any kind of product or service. The search engine channels can also be used as a push marketing strategy via display ads that are available in Google ads.
Online marketplace:
One of the most renowned and useful eCommerce channels is the online marketplace. Many customers today are looking at the online marketplace for products and services they require. According to statistics, 44% of the shoppers in the USA, are purchasing products of their choice from an online marketplace. Thus, you can’t ignore this eCommerce channel, if you want to boost your sales and business. The online marketplace allows customers to sit at their place and order their product from the comfort of their home. They can look at tons of products at a particular time, and they don’t have to move an inch from their home. An online marketplace also helps the business to keep control of the product information as well as price. While online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay are very famous these days, they are not useful for all kinds of products. Thus, before you choose them as your eCommerce channel, have a proper idea if you will be able to get profit through this channel. In addition to this, you can look at your competitors if they are also advertising and selling their product through these channels. In addition to the online marketplace, there are mobile market places that cater to the needs of shoppers who shop through mobile platforms.
Comparison shopping engines
If you are charging a competitive price for the product and price plays a key role for the consumers, then they can land on the comparison shopping engines. This allows the shoppers to compare the similar products along with their prices and choose the product that is offering a great deal. In this engine, the retailers must showcase their products alongside similar products sold by other sellers. The shoppers can take a look at all the products and prices. If you want to increase the conversion rates, you must keep a close watch on the competitors pricing and make necessary changes to your product pricing.
Email marketing:
While this eCommerce channel may seem outdated, this is one of the best eCommerce channels that you can use to advertise and sell your products. Email marketing is one of the best channels to target existing customers or to capture the audience who are interested in your product. By using email marketing, you can send different messages to your customers depending upon their purchase behaviour, habits, and needs. For example, if you know the birthdate of your customer, you can send them a birthday message along with better deals and discounts on your product. You can even use a different email marketing campaign based on different upcoming events and festivals. All these strategies mostly work with people who are interested in looking at their emails, and they take these emails seriously.
Retargeting networks:
Many shoppers add different products or services into their cart, but they don’t shop. There can be multiple reasons for the customer to leave the cart and the website. One of the most common reasons can be that the customer was distracted, or he/she didn’t have money at that time. Thus, in all these cases, retargeting networks can work as a boon for your business and sales. Retargeting allows you to target those customers who have previously visited your website, had a look at your product or services, but they didn’t make a purchase. There are different retargeting networks like AdRoll or criteo, that can be used to retarget the customers that you thought were never going to return to your website.
Social Networks:
Today the maximum number of your customers is available online. And if you are choosing your customers in your local market, you are following the wrong path, my friend. It is very important to follow the trends. Posting lucrative ads daily can be very beneficial for your business and sales. You can target your customers based on their behaviour, lifestyle, and demography. In this digital age, nothing works better than advertisement through social media platforms. You can use different platforms to target different types of customers. Some of the most famous social platforms include Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
If you are still not clear about which eCommerce channel will be best for your business, you need to ask yourself the following questions to make the right choice.
Affiliate networks
These networks act as an intermediate between the publishers and advertisers. The affiliate publisher can be a blog, site, shopping directory or a price comparison engine. With the help of an affiliate network, you can access multiple sites and channels. This network is chosen by the retailers to gain traffic from different sources, gain potential customer and sales. This network enables the advertisers to submit their product feed to a central platform from where the publishers can pick the products that they want to promote on their sites. There is a small fee that is given to the publisher if the lead is generated from their site.
Various eCommerce channels that fit your business
There are numerous eCommerce channels, and not all channels work the same way for all businesses. Examining each aspect of all eCommerce channels can be quite a challenging task, and it may take years to get the perfect strategy. Thus, focus primarily on your business goal and the kind of audience you are targeting. This will give you an overall idea about which channels will be best suited for your business.
- 1.
Who is your target audience, and which platform are they using the most?
For example, if your business niche is related to fashion and makeup, and your target audience is youth, you need to advertise your product on Instagram. But if your target audience is a bit older generation, you can market your product through Facebook or email marketing. - 2.
Where are your competitors?
In every business, it is very important to know about your customers and their strategies. Thus, try to know different types of eCommerce channels used by your competitors. - 3.
What is your budget?
It is very important to know about your budget so that you can plan your strategy as per your budget. - 4.
What are the resources available and the time frame?
Text ads need fewer resources as compared to video ads. In addition to it, the preparation of text ad and graphic designing takes less time as compared to preparing video ads. Thus, it is very important to know about your budget limit, time limit, as well as the resources available.
Once you get a proper answer to all these questions, you can get the perfect eCommerce channel for your business.
Work with new channels and come up with a product feed
Once you have narrowed down your choice for best eCommerce channels, it’s time to test the efficiency and efficacy of those channels. List a few of your products and advertise them at the channel to know the result. If you find the result to be beneficial for your business, you can list more inventories to be sold. Thus, it is very important to try and test the efficiency of the channels so that you don’t lose your time and money.
It is very important to keep pace with the competition in this digitally active world. If you haven’t tried and tested any particular eCommerce channels yet, it’s time to try them for your business. Millions of businesses have grown their business by using eCommerce channels. Start growing your business with eCommerce channels.
