Why eCommerce is easier than you think

Making online, payments and the platforms work for you

People love to buy stuff online. According to the ‘2019 eCommerce Industry Report’ issued by Australia Post, more than 73% of Aussie households shopped online in 2018, spending a staggering $27.5 billion. That’s an increase of 24.4% from the previous year. Who wouldn’t want a piece of this pie?

So let’s take a look at what makes a solid eCommerce strategy and the things you can do to boost your chances of converting online.

What makes a great eCommerce site?

The best eCommerce sites have a few characteristics in common, which all relate to the user experience. Here are some of the key things that make for a great online store:

· Designed well. By this, we don’t mean that all eCommerce sites should look the same. Rather, the web design should be intuitive and reflect your brand. A site selling high-end fashion should look very different to one selling discount vitamins.
· Make it easy to find things. The navigation menu should categorise products in a logical way, but you should also use filters and a search function to help people find what they’re looking for.
· Mobile responsive. It’s estimated about half of all web traffic comes from mobile devices. If your site gets mangled on mobile, you’ll frustrate and ultimately lose your customers.
· Perks like free shipping and returns. With so much competition out there, you need to make sure your online store offers the same – if not better – service than others.
· Good mix of online payment options. Customers who can’t pay using their preferred method might jump over to your competitor’s site instead. Provide popular payment options so you don’t lose them at the last hurdle.

Choosing the best eCommerce platform

If you’re new to the retail game or you’ve never quite got around to setting up an online store, then there’s never been a better time to get started with eCommerce.

eCommerce platforms like WooCommerce, Magento, and PrestaShop have loads of templates that include shopping cart solutions – so you can easily sell, ship, and manage your products. You don’t need any coding skills to build a basic site on one of these platforms. Basic computer literacy and a few YouTube tutorials should do the trick.

Otherwise, you could enlist the help of a web developer, who would have the skills to create a more bespoke site to reflect your brand and your business needs.

Enhance your site to boost sales

Setting up your eCommerce site is the easy part. The real work comes in making sure your site content appeals to your target audience.

The first job here is product photography. Good quality photos will help you sell. And making sure that all the photos are similarly themed is important, too – just to smooth the user experience as they browse your site.

Then, you’ll need to write an enticing description about each product, making sure you weave in some search-friendly keywords.

Generating eCommerce interest

With a beautiful new site ready to go, how do you generate traffic? There are a couple of simple things you can do here.

Social media is a big one. It helps you connect with your customers on their turf and, when done right, it’s a great way to pull people in. Brush up on our social media marketing tips for small business if you’re after some pointers here.

SEO (that’s search engine optimisation) is another thing to keep in mind. This is all about your search ranking on Google^™ – a site with good SEO will appear higher on Google search results than one with poor SEO. Google’s guide to SEO lists everything you need to do here. If it all looks too hard, there are SEO experts out there who can help.

Simplify reconciliation for both instore and online

When you combine your Tyro EFTPOS with Tyro eCommerce, you’ll receive your online and in-store transaction processing, reporting and reconciliation together.

Tyro eCommerce supports the major payment schemes and connects with popular shopping carts which makes setting up and taking payments even easier.

Ready to go? Get started with Tyro today. 

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