Tactics for Newbie Online Store Owners [Tips From 18 Inventive Experts]

Hey there, fresh online store owners! Here at Prisync, we partner up with brilliant experts working at successful companies who help store owners such as yourself grow fast and profitably. These seasoned professionals witness the rise and fall of countless ecommerce stores each year. They have immense data. So, they’re the go-to source for strategic advice, especially if you have difficulty prioritizing tactics and tips you want to try.

If you’re ready, here’s what they have to say to new store owners!

Alexandra Badea | VP, EMEA Marketing at Verifone

If I could give first-time ecommerce store owners just one marketing tip, it would be to make selling internationally part of their go-to-market strategy.

First, why go global? In 2020, worldwide retail ecommerce sales amounted to $4.28 trillion US, and this figure is projected to grow to $5.4 trillion US in 2022. This steady growth makes global commerce less risky and thus a good option for new ecommerce players. Fast-growing markets in APAC or LATAM (which, inherently, have some of the greatest growth in ecommerce) represent some great opportunities for your new business to find customers and increase reach. Also, serving a wide and diverse range of audiences makes it easier to find/validate your product-market fit.

Once you’ve decided to go global, it’s important to segment your audience by each individual local market. So you can understand and cater to their specific characteristics and preferences. Localization is the key to successful international selling.

A successful localization strategy, however, usually needs to go way beyond mere translation. To fully engage with a local audience, you need to localize the entire experience. This includes everything from offering a selection of the country’s preferred payment methods and displaying taxes and billing in the preferred format to localizing shopper flows, shopper support, and date and time, as well as graphics.

No matter where you are in the world, scaling across your country’s borders is actually not that hard. The right ecommerce provider can help offload some of the challenging tasks like global payments or compliance so you can focus on your products. This strategy will definitely get you on the road to success.

Anna Dzehilevich | Product Growth Mentor 

Being an ecommerce store owner is super hard, especially when you are just starting.

Thanks to digital transformation there are plenty of ecommerce apps to simplify a lot of processes like online ads, invoices, and email marketing. But, to use a lot of tools in the beginning usually, it’s too expensive.

For this, there are daily deals websites like AppSumo where you can purchase online services at much lower prices. Such services allow you to save hundreds of dollars and invest saved costs in the development of your store.

Also, you need to pay attention to retargeting your customers. Only 2 to 3% of all your website visitors (at best) make a purchase on their first visit to your store. Retargeting helps you re-engage the rest. Tools like RetargetApp can help you to make this process frictionless and fast and save you the budget.

Charles Palleschi | President at Spark Shipping

For new store owners, I always recommend developing a testing mindset from the start and running as many tests as possible.

Anything from product descriptions, photos, marketing copy, etc. should always be tested, updated, and refined.

You need to get comfortable knowing that whatever you launch on day 1 will be less than perfect and you’ll be continuously improving each part of the business.

Andrada Vonhaz | Project Manager at Data Revolt Agency

Everything begins with content. Whether it’s a blog post, a social media post, a newsletter, a product description or an ad, everything must be clear, clean and connected.

Your future customers must know from a single glance what they should expect from your new store and your products and how they will improve their lives and solve their problems.

Find out the answers to the following 3 questions, keep them in mind and start working on your content:

1. What is your UVP (Unique Value Proposition)?
2. What is your tone of voice?
3. How can you be transparent and available to your customers?

Always remember to let your customers know you care for them, above all else. Your content is your mirror.

Natalya Bucuy | Content Writer and Digital Marketing Manager at LiveHelpNow and HelpSquad

Customer journeys start way before the purchase. However a customer’s personal interaction with a service or a product starts with unpackaging and onboarding. Packaging, delivery, and presentation matter. This is especially true when the entirety of a customer’s interaction with a company takes place online, as in the case of ecommerce.

Unboxing is exciting to the customer. Attractive, carefully packaged products show care and personalization.

The nature of online shopping means there is a moment of delay between the purchase and the arrival of the product for first-time customers. Take this critical moment to ensure efficient delivery and provide outstanding packaging to increase customer satisfaction and build your brand.

The same goes for onboarding processes for ecommerce customers who purchase services or SaaS products. Provide emails that deliver clear instructions, attractive files, personalized texts, and great communication to make the onboarding process stand out and become memorable. When customers feel the care that a company puts into customer interactions, they will feel more valued. That, in turn, boosts their overall satisfaction with the business.

Aida Kubatova | Content Writer 

If you are just starting to be an online store owner, my advice would be make sure you take into consideration a new rising market force while planning your marketing strategy. Yes, I’m talking about Gen Z. A lot of marketing effort goes to Millennials now. However, generation Z already makes up 40% of the number of U.S. consumers, and by 2026, Gen Ziers will surpass Millennials as the largest consumer base in the U.S.

So what can you do to get their attention to your brand? We all know that Gen Z is the most politically active, environmentally conscious generation and they always stand for what they believe in. They love content that has mixed cultures and races, small and big sizes, natural skin and hair, and less Photoshop.

So if you want to focus your marketing strategy on Gen Ziers, here are my suggestions on what you can do. Establish clear values and mission of your brand (like Apple supporting LGBTQ+ and showing it to their audience). Second, try to be socially conscious and promote it (like Pangaia brand does). Work with micro-influencers, as Gen Ziers see them as their virtual friends and trusted source of information.

And of course, create more video content, especially on TikTok (TikTok by itself deserves a lot of attention for ecommerce marketing). And remember, generation Z has $44 billion in buying power. However, when you count their influence on parent and home purchases, their real spending power is closer to $200 billion. So, don’t miss a chance to sell them your products and services.

Robert Rand | Director of Partnerships & Alliances at JetRails

Make sure that your website is loading quickly.

Slow loading speeds hurt conversion rates of traffic into sales, but that’s not all. Page loading speeds are also a part of the Google Ads algorithms as well as being an SEO ranking factor. If you haven’t optimized your site to load quickly, your marketing team will be starting off with a disadvantage.

Make sure that your web developers and web host are working together so that your site loads as fast as possible.

Martins Groza | Head of SEO at Kilo Health

Product catalog category pages need to conform to a structure that is optimized for user experience, which often makes them less than ideal for SEO. When trying to rank for high-difficulty keywords, consider creating dedicated landing pages in addition to your catalog category page. This can help you to have more room for content catered to the needs of SEO.

Dhruv Mehta | SEO Specialist at Vestra Inet

Optimize your site for mobile-friendliness.

Imagine you are on your way to work and you realize that it is your friend’s anniversary. You haven’t gifted her anything yet. So you simply take your phone out, go over to some site that delivers gifts, and have a gorgeous bouquet delivered to your friend.

This happens to us almost every day – some of us may even browse ecommerce websites because we are bored! Now give this a thought: what would you prefer? A site that is optimized for your mobile phone, or a site that you have to access through your phone browser? Obviously, you would prefer the former because it’s just that much simpler!

What could be better than to be available at the fingertips of your customers? There is a good chance that most of your customers are smartphone users. As such, not having a mobile-friendly version of your site can really cost you a lot of business! Sure, people can still access your site on the phone browser – however, this may ruin the experience completely. After all, the site wasn’t optimized to be used on such a small screen.

If you feel this is not an investment that is worth it, then just remember that even though you yourself aren’t doing it, your competitors are. Today’s customers are very demanding – and it’s crucial that you do everything to meet their demands.

Andriy Zapisotskyi | Mentor at Startup Wise Guys

Starting from day one – take care of your email deliverability for all your transactional and marketing email sequences. Deliverability is the number one metric you should focus on for email marketing success. A high spam score of your emails will lead to unwilling situations. Your customers will miss your order confirmations, abandoned cart messages, or new product emails if they land in spam folders. This will result in less purchase conversions and lower trust to your brand.

Sanya Aru | Content Marketer

Lucrative giveaways and contests on social platforms not only boost your social traffic, they also tend to attract more eyes. Since you’re new in the market, your biggest challenge will be to build your product identity while attracting a targeted audience. Giveaways just make it easier for your target audience to remember your product and brand. And, initially, that is the most you need.

Cenk Bayraktar | Head of Online Marketing at MultiBase GmbH

Become more competitive and differentiate! As long as you don’t have an exclusive monopoly, competition is everything and differentiation is the key to success. Ecommerce growth has exploded and led to a lot of new online store owners.

Being a “me-too” store owner won’t work in a highly competitive market. Therefore, creating a competitive advantage is key when selling online. It all comes down to your unique selling proposition. Differentiation can be implemented in different ways: think about storytelling, your product or even through a multi-carrier shipping strategy.

Shipping is often seen as a pain point, but nowadays, it can definitely set you apart from your competitors. Do they only offer standard delivery? Differentiate yourself by offering express- or nominated day delivery for instance. One-third of European shoppers are willing to pay extra shipping costs if they can choose a specific day or time for delivery.

This shows that flexible shipping is of great importance, even if it comes at a higher price. Carriers have different strengths and it is impossible for one carrier to meet all of your and your clients’ needs.

Consumers want to have a choice. A multi-carrier shipping strategy can help you not only to stand out from your competitors but also meet the needs of the high demands. As a result it will be part of a good customer experience which eventually can lead to more profit and repeat purchases.

Rohan Mendiratta | Growth Consultant at SaaS Invaders

You don’t want to abandon the customers in return for abandoning their carts, do you? Recovering abandoned carts will not only bring you more sales. But, it will also help you gain the trust of your customers because by sending a follow-up abandoned cart email, you are showing that you are awake to their buying needs.

While there are many ways to keep your subscribers engaged, the one thing that we have always noticed that ensures that you don’t leave any money on the table is recovering abandoned carts.

70% of customers come close to purchasing but simply give up for some reason or no particular reason at all. Getting them back is a great way to get more sales, and it’s far easier than converting new subscribers.

Ensure that the key elements of an abandoned cart email, i.e., subject line, engaging content, product image, Call to Action, and a striking layout, are included. Choose an email service provider that is ideally suited for sending catchy emails to customers who have abandoned their carts. At an affordable cost, you will be amazed at the results.

Augustin Prot | Co-founder and CEO at Weglot

Cross-border ecommerce saw exponential growth in 2020, with cross-border sales increasing by 35% in 2020, (in comparison with 2019). It was clear that with the shift to purchasing online, consumers also became more comfortable with shopping internationally.

Allowing people to purchase goods in their own language is a must if you’re looking to conquer international customers. Translating your ecommerce store allows your new customers to comfortably navigate your ecommerce store and ultimately improve your conversion rate.

But it’s also wise to look further than just the words on your website to help encourage sales from foreign markets. Such as adapting imagery and of course multilingual SEO to improve your visibility.

Turker Yigitalp | Marketing Manager at Prisync

When you’re a new store owner, acquisition channels might seem tempting to invest & would bring the joy of victory in a short span of time, but the wars are costly thus retention is the stronghold you should build your empire around.

Some traditional retention channels are owned channels like e-mail, push & sms. But did you know paid search only makes up 2% of marketing efforts directed to customer retention even though there is a perfect tool to include your marketing arsenal, remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA)? Google’s case study shows it can lead to a 161% conversion rate and 22% overall sales increase.

Rodney Laws | Ecommerce Platforms

Focus on a few key marketing channels.

Marketing is essential for building up brand awareness and attracting new customers to your ecommerce store. It’s something we often talk about in our reviews and blogs at ecommerce platforms. But when you’re coming up with a plan it needs to be achievable, especially if you only have a small team.

Do thorough research into the channels and platforms that your target customers are using and focus your efforts on those. For example, you don’t need to be on every single social media platform — just set up accounts on the key ones that your customers and competitors are using. Post updates and engage with your audience on a regular basis to build up your following.

It’s important to be consistent and coherent with your marketing — if you try to cover too many channels, you’ll struggle to stay on top of it.

Ekaterina Kopylova | Marketing Manager at Tovie Al

When you’re a new store owner, you might have a hard time prioritizing your tasks, and site analytics may seem of secondary importance at first glance. It’s definitely not.

Once your new store is live and taking first orders, it is the right time to set up site search analytics, or if your site search app provides analytics, start using it straight away.

The reason for that is your site searchers are the only users who tell you exactly what they need – the queries they enter in the search box can give you ideas on what products should be promoted.

What’s more, keeping an eye on the customer product searching behavior can also help you literally speak with your audience the same language. The words your visitors use to describe the product they are looking for can be used, for example, in ads and other marketing efforts.

According to the CXL research, nearly 6 in 10 ecommerce store owners don’t use site search data. Many don’t use site search data because their site search doesn’t allow this or they are not sure how to do it. That’s a lot of missed opportunities to run more optimized marketing campaigns.

So, what we recommend is rather than running campaigns based on your gut feeling, use the site search data your ecommerce site generates. This way you make your campaigns more targeted and as a result, you’ll see a higher ROI.

If you want to dig deeper and learn more about how you can make the most out of site search, read our article about site search analytics.

Laura Bernardes | Content Marketing Coordinator at Hedgehog Digital Brasil

Studies show that 56% of consumers always read up to 4 reviews before buying online. Additionally, they tend to believe more in another customer review than an expert review.

People want to make sure that others have had a good experience with that product when shopping online. So always ask your audience to leave reviews after buying. You can even encourage this with discount coupons for upcoming purchases.

Reviews can also help with your Google rankings. Once the bots read your page, they will better understand what it is about and what position it should stay in.

Closing words

So, you’ve come so far. Which idea these experts gave you inspired you the most? Tell us in the comments section! Also, tell us your unique tips that worked for you so well, and how new store owners can use it to their benefit!