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10 Vital Tips in Building an Omnichannel Strategy for Your Ecommerce Store

Omnichannel shopping plays a crucial role in both online and in-store experiences. In fact, 71% of in-store shoppers are now using their smartphones and other gadgets to look for products before buying something.

Thus, the omnichannel experience that you should offer should be top-notch.

It would be ideal if your customers can shop in your online store. They can connect with your company in several ways, know more about your products, and spread the word to others about your company. 

An omnichannel strategy is changing how you sell to your customers. That's because more and more people are engaging and purchasing from many channels than ever before. 

If you plan to sell more on various, here are nine tips that can help you develop a robust omnichannel strategy for your eCommerce store:

Customer Prioritization

When you create your own eCommerce site, it is imperative to always keep your customers in mind. Otherwise, it will be challenging for you to coax them to buy your products. And this can hurt your business' bottom line.

Being the very core of your business, you should spend some time getting to know your customers. Know what their needs, pain points, and preferences are. 

You should also research their preferred line of communications and how often you should reach out to them. That's because bombarding your customers with too many promotional messages can be disruptive.

Thus, it is vital to focus on customer support. Make it available across all your channels to enhance the customer experience. 

This also means getting to know your customers better no matter what kind of channel they use. They also will not worry about picking the wrong channel.

They can pick where they feel most comfortable using and get the right support if they need it. 

Mobile Optimization

For the most part, mobile devices are what drives an omnichannel strategy.

But keep in mind that omnichannel marketing also extends to both online and offline channels. Thus, you need to keep your eCommerce store and a website ready for different devices, especially mobile.

According to an eCommerce mobile trend report, 79% of smartphone users bought something using their smartphones over the last six months. 

When you optimize your mobile site, you will not be missing out on any prospective leads and sales. Why? Because it is easy for your customers to view, sign-up, or buy from your site. 

Customer Data Analysis and Personalization

Personalization is one of the crucial factors you should consider when building your omnichannel marketing strategy.

This is what allows your eCommerce business to deliver a consistent and continuous message. That's why you must look for a great landing page builder and build conversion-driven landing pages that help you capture leads. 

One of your primary goals is to deliver a seamless customer experience across all channels. Thus, it would help if you can fulfill your customers' needs.

You can do this by offering them exceptional content to keep them appreciated and valued by their favorite brand. 

Customer Purchase Behavior Mapping

In the omnichannel space, customer journeys and behaviors are relatively more complex. With several influencing factors, you can make purchases at any time of the day, whether in physical stores or online stores. 

This allows businesses to create sound marketing strategies as long as they consider various customer paths and influencers in different channels. 

Learning about the customer decision-making process is vital in creating an omnichannel strategy.

For instance, you need to know where the purchases are being made. Or you might want to know your best-selling products and the day when you generate the most sales. 

Getting insights from these essential questions allows you to map out a straightforward customer journey. This also allows you to understand their needs, preferences, and give the most relevant experience at the right time. 

Shoppable Posts

Shoppable posts are now popular on social media channels such as Facebook and Instagram. 

What this does is that users can check out your products straight on their feed. And then you can redirect them to your eCommerce site.

Thus, when you craft your social media posts, consider showcasing your products. And ensure that it will be easier for your followers to check out and buy it.

Strategic Multi-channel Marketing

Building an omnichannel strategy does not mean that you should jump to every single channel available out there.

You should be able to meet where your customer's demands are; that way, you will be investing in the channels that your customers use. 

According to a survey, Instagram is the go-to platform by 73% of Gen Z adults. Meanwhile, Facebook remains the top platform of choice for millennials, Gen Z adults, and boomers. 

Knowing your buyer's persona allows you to know which channels work best for your omnichannel campaign.

But it does not mean that you should not try other emerging platforms, either. Make sure that you always check your results so that you will know whether it is worth continuing. 

Great Marketing Stack

To launch a successful omnichannel campaign, it would help to have an excellent marketing stack. This allows you to be efficient in tracking your campaign and to see if you are reaching your goals.

A marketing stack also lets you run your campaign without hassle.

Having a healthy mix of online and offline marketing tools allows you to have a more rounded marketing campaign. 

Here are some things that you should consider investing in:

  • A powerful and customizable landing page, website, and eCommerce store that you can integrate with other popular tools. 
  • An email marketing software that allows you to design, build, and track personalized campaigns for your eCommerce leads and customers. 
  • An analytics software and social media scheduling for easy management of your campaigns and tracking.
  • Posters on the ground displays and other helpful in-store experiences for offline marketing strategies. 

Multiple Marketplaces Presence

The main goal of omnichannel eCommerce is to be present anywhere and everywhere your customers exist. This includes being in a giant third-party marketplace like Amazon.

After all, a lot of people use this platform when starting their customer journey. Thus, putting your product in an online marketplace like Amazon helps you drive sales for your business and boost brand awareness. 

Boosting your brand awareness alone helps you drive in more traffic and leads to your site bringing in the customer journey in a full circle. 

For you to jumpstart your customer journey with Amazon, you need to go through their online set-up process. This allows you to integrate both your current shipping and ordering process. 

Creating a great customer experience is all about connecting with your customers in various touchpoints. Also, keep in mind that users do not usually buy during their first visit, and most of these early visits typically occur on Amazon. 

So, make sure to exert an effort to get your product and brand in front of your target audience. That way, you can bring your customer journey in a full circle. 

Keep Your Customer Data Secure

Omnichannel marketing is providing a streamlined customer experience across all channels. Hence, one of your main priorities is to keep your customer data secure. 

When customers provide you with their data, they expect you to keep it secured. Sensitive customer data includes delivery address, payment details, and contact details. 

Most of your customers will appreciate it if you can tailor all your promotions and content based on their needs and interests. 

In that sense, you should keep a database and CRMs secure. It would help if you also kept updating the tools and other software on your website.

It would help if you also were using the best security tools to ward of any malicious attacks on your site.

Multivariate Testing

Just like with anything, your omnichannel marketing strategy should get better as you use it over time. This is where A/B testing could come in handy.

What it does is that you can test various versions of an online store. For example, you can A/B test your checkout page, wherein one has a blue button, and the other is orange.

Through A/B testing, you will know which version of your checkout page can drive the most conversions. This will allow you to boost your conversion rate.

You always need to test various parts of your eCommerce website, so you will know which elements drive the most sales. When you regularly track and measure your data, you will find the perfect formula that fits you. 

Additionally, you need to re-audit and update the entire customer experience. Doing so, lets you get the most out of your omnichannel marketing strategy.

You can use a collaboration tool that lets you track your activity's progress. 

Final Thoughts

Creating an omnichannel strategy does not have to be time-consuming, expensive, or complicated. Taking advantage of the tips listed above can boost your leads and sales and drive customer loyalty.

Thus, you can achieve a customer-first experience for your business.

We encourage you to build an omnichannel strategy using the tips in this post and let us know how it has helped your business to succeed.

How To Build An Ecommerce Site With WordPress

You want to build an eCommerce website, and you want to know how you can build it with WordPress. You have come to the right place. In this straightforward, minimal guide, I will show you how to create your online store using WordPress in the simplest way possible.

I understand that you probably have an idea of why WordPress is a great choice for creating an eCommerce website. Maybe you don’t. Yet, we are not concerned with either of these scenarios. The goal of this article is simple: to guide you through creating an eCommerce website with WordPress. Once you are able to do that, you will see for yourself how easy it is, and you will understand the pros and cons of it by your own experience.

As it is truly said: the best way to learn is through doing. Let’s get straight to the point.

What You Need

There are 2 things you must have in order to create an eCommerce website with WordPress. 

1. Domain Name and Web Hosting:

A domain name is your website’s address; for example, amazon.com is a domain name of Amazon’s online store. The domain name you choose speaks for the identity of your online store. So make sure that it aligns with your company. You can register for a domain name through domain registration services online. Google Domains is one such service. You will usually need to pay annual charges for your domain.

Web hosting is absolutely essential, as this is where your WordPress installation will stay and your eCommerce website as well.

It is important to note that you need a reliable and fast web hosting provider for eCommerce sites. Slow sites repel customers, and unreliable hosting will bring disastrous downtime that will ruin your online business.

Maintenance is another crucial aspect you should consider. Website maintenance is often not easy, and the frequent need for maintenance will leave you busy in technical stuff, which is not your area of expertise.

For these two reasons, I highly recommend managed Wordpress hosting. This type of hosting specializes in hosting eCommerce sites of WordPress and is very reliable. You will witness faster speed than any other kind of hosting. Managed Wordpress hosts offer maintenance services and guaranteed uptime for your website. These benefits do not exist with shared hosting.

Once you have a domain name and web hosting, then we can move to the next required thing.

2. WordPress Installation

To create a website with WordPress, you need to install WordPress first.

How do you do that?

If you have a managed AbanteCart host, then WordPress installation is a breeze. A click is all you need to install WordPress, and you are ready to go.

Due to the popularity of WordPress, many web hosts offer ‘one-click WordPress installation.’ This is the easiest way to have WordPress.

In case your web host does not provide WordPress installation, you can manually download the latest copy of WordPress from the official WordPress website. You need to upload this file to your web hosting account. Follow the instructions of your hosting provider to get this right.

Now that you have WordPress, you are ready for the final ingredient. Whatever you sell — physical products or digital downloads — you can be up and running with AbanteCart WordPress plugin. For instance, you only need to install AbanteCart. You’ll find some guide here

Final Words

This is it. There isn’t any coding involved anywhere. Everything is completely customizable, and you are all set in no time. You can always find plugins to add extra functionalities to your store.

Of course, it takes some time to add products, images, to see if everything is working, to attract customers, and start generating revenue. It does take work, and it’s worth it. The good news is that you can start all of these on your own and see that you can create an amazing eCommerce site with WordPress. All it takes is a little courage to learn by doing. I hope this tutorial helped you to get started. Cheers!

Author Bio

Dipraj Zagade is an author and prolific content writer. He loves to write about technology, marketing, and copywriting. He is a kind individual who loves to appreciate the beauty in life. You can connect with him on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Online Tools and Services to Boost Your Solopreneur Business

As a solopreneur, you’re likely used to working independently and juggling all aspects of your business without help from others — particularly if you’re a freelance writer, graphic designer, bookkeeper, or social media manager. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t utilize a few tools and helps if you’re struggling to keep up with your workload or need assistance growing your solopreneur business.

To explore some of the different online tools and services that can help to boost solopreneur businesses, read on!

Freelance Professionals

Regardless of the solopreneur business you’re running, several types of freelancers can help to take your business to the next level and handle the projects and tasks you may not have the time or skills to tackle on your own — including your marketing and cybersecurity needs. As AbanteCart says on its website, several of these freelancers include cyber security consultants, link building specialists, social media managers, and lead generation specialists.

Cyber security consultants can help to protect you and your business from data breaches and other security threats — while link builders, social media managers, and lead generation specialists can help to boost your online presence and grow your audience. Other tasks to consider outsourcing could include things like bookkeeping, social media management, customer service and transcription.

If you’re ready to outsource some or all of your marketing, writing, cybersecurity, or website development needs, you can find the help you need using the following types of websites:

  • Freelancing platforms like Upwork and Fiverr
  • Portfolio websites such as GitHub and Behance
  • Social media platforms like LinkedIn and Meetup

Online Tools and Systems

Even if you choose to hire one or more freelancers to assist you with your business needs, online tools and systems can help you to tackle everything from invoicing and payments to designing graphics for your website, blog, and social media pages. With affordable financial software systems like Wave, for instance, you can create invoices and track your business income and expenses — while graphic design programs like Canva can be used to create flyers, brochures, social media graphics, and more.

Of course, your options don’t end there. Various project management systems, email marketing tools, and online scheduling systems are also available to solopreneurs — including Todoist, Asana, MailChimp, ContactOut and Calendly. Essentially, whatever your computer task happens to be, there is almost certainly a software solution that can help automate it.

Business Formation Services

If you’re just starting out as a solopreneur, inexpensive online services are available to assist you in selecting a business structure, filing the necessary paperwork with your state of residence, and launching your new solopreneur business as quickly and seamlessly as possible. While you could certainly get your business up and running on your own, these online services can help to take some of the hassle out of the process.

How you structure your business will determine your tax obligations, personal liability, and more — so it’s important to consider your options carefully and seek assistance if you need it. As a solopreneur, your best options will typically include structuring your business as a sole proprietorship, limited liability company (LLC), or an S Corporation (S Corp).

The Bottom Line

Whether you’ve been working on your own for years or you’re just getting your startup up established, help is available to you at any stage of your business lifecycle. From hiring freelance professionals to assist you in marketing your business and protecting it from security threats, being a solopreneur doesn’t mean you have to go at it alone. Thanks to helpful online tools and services, there’s simply no need to wear more hats than you can handle.

Small Businesses: Manage Today, 
Plan for Tomorrow

The smart approach to business today is different - and more elusive - than it has ever been before. COVID-19 restrictions have rocked every industry. As a result, many small businesses have been pushed into figuring out their eCommerce plan. This may be a stressful change for some, but there’s a lot of good that can come from it, as well. Here’s how to embrace the transition and find success through - and after - the pandemic:

Get Your Bearings

Before you can figure out how to make the most of this moment, you need to accept and adjust to it. Many small business owners have been so busy adapting that they haven’t given themselves time to reflect. However, that time spent in reflection is absolutely crucial for moving forward. Designate a specific time each day to journal or practice a meditation designed for small business owners. This will give your mind space to fully process your business’s current state.

You should also set aside time in your day for research and continued learning. The market is changing rapidly right now, and you need to stay well-informed to keep up. Whether it’s updates on ecommerce business and statistics or business news in general, find and follow trustworthy sources to make sure you have all the info you need to nurture your business through this moment.

Evaluate Changes You’ve Made

At this point, your company has already started to adapt. You may have enhanced your eCommerce presence, or boosted your online marketing. Perhaps you started a delivery service or have implemented a curbside pickup service. These gut-check changes may have helped you get over the initial COVID-19 hump, but it’s important to look at them critically, as some may not serve you well in the long run.

For example, say you expanded your delivery fleet. Eventually, traditional shopping will be safe again. When that happens, will your fleet still be profitable, or will you be sinking money into infrastructure you won’t actually use? Something like curbside pickup, which requires fewer resources, might be easier to phase out down the line.

Pay close attention to any business decisions you’ve made since the pandemic began. If a change isn’t serving your business, you have to be decisive about whether it’s worth clinging to. Don’t fall prey to the sunk cost fallacy: decisions aren’t right just because you’ve already made them, and the savvy business owner knows how to recognize - and fix - mistakes.

Looking Down the Road

On the other hand, some changes may actually carry you into the future. For example, setting up an online shop through a platform like AbanteCart allows you to expand your customer base as far as you’re willing to ship items. And digital marketing efforts, especially targeted advertising, will get your service or products seen by exactly the people who need it most.

However, creating an online business isn’t enough. Once you have it, you have to use it, and use it well. Inventory tracking mishaps, poor user experience, low social media engagement, and other online mistakes can do more harm to your business than good. If you have the budget for it, consider hiring a dedicated individual or team to oversee your digital efforts.

The pandemic is changing the way we do business, and companies have to keep up. What you do now will absolutely define your company’s future. By staying informed and looking critically at the changes that are - and aren’t - helping your business thrive, you can be a post-COVID success story.