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To sell anything in this world, you need to be in the right place at the right time. But there’s more to it than that.
Look at some of the most successful businesses in the world. They don’t just sit back and wait for customers to stumble across them through chance – they proactively go out of their way to seek new audiences and build their brand, in most cases on a global scale.
What does any of that mean for an eCommerce business owner like you? Well, it’s simple really – if you want to give yourself the best possible chance of long-term success, you need to ensure your store is in the right place and constantly looking to grow its audience.
Magento 2 is that place. It’s the latest update to the hugely popular Magento platform and unleashes a whole new treasure trove of riches for eCommerce businesses to tap into. With the demand for online shopping growing every day and sales estimated to hit over a quarter of a trillion pounds in 2020, sitting idly by on an outdated platform and hoping for the best just isn’t going to work – especially in the digital world where your competitors can leave you trailing behind them in a matter of months.
If you’re keen to enjoy long-term success, it’s vital that you work towards solving the challenges and taking advantage of the opportunities that present themselves – and Magento 2 is the perfect platform to do so. Here’s why.
Content
A potentially strange one to start off with, especially as there are a wealth of other elements that can affect the performance of an eCommerce store, but the quality of content can be the difference between success and failure.
No matter how incredible your site is, customers will never be able to touch or pick up your product – a clear disadvantage over your traditional high street store. To make up for this, your content has got to serve two purposes – to inform and to sell.
90% of customers in the UK have abandoned a purchase because of poor product descriptions or misleading content.
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Magento 2 makes content editing easy thanks to its simple-to-use admin panel, allowing you to do more than ever before with your content. Optimise this better than your competitors and not only will your chances of conversion increase, you may benefit from better rankings of Google results pages.
Take the time to create compelling, detailed product descriptions and you’ll be rewarded with more purchases – the job is done.
Omnichannel
A now-infamous buzzword as we move into 2018, there is still some weight behind the actual ideal of an omnichannel presence in eCommerce.
In simple terms, the definition of omnichannel from an online store perspective is that you sell your products through several different channels, all of which offer the same experience. Your store should be fully focused on delivering a fantastic shopping experience for every single customer, regardless of which device they are using.
Magento 2 is perfect here as it’s built entirely around this mentality. Providing an identical service across desktop, tablet and mobile devices is definitely a challenge, but Magento 2 is constructed around a responsive framework that makes adapting the design of your store for various devices much easier than other platforms.
There is definitely the potential for some difficulties here in terms of keeping your offering consistent across several devices, but the rewards are there too. Research shows that multichannel shoppers generally shop more regularly and spend up to three times more compared to single-channel customers.
Magento 2 allows you to push your store to where your customers are, delivering them consistency and reliability across whichever channel they choose to use.
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Mobile
This leads us nicely on to mobile performance. It’s now been some time since mobile users overtook desktop users, and Google has more recently backed this change by rolling out its mobile-first indexing.
And you can be sure shopping on smartphones isn’t going away anytime soon. Nearly 75% of all internet use in 2017 was from a mobile device, with the average adult now spending at least 3 hours per day on their phone – scary stuff when you think about it.
However, this is where you can take advantage of those extra eyeballs and get them on your products. Magento 2 is keen to help here too, with its improved functionality and responsiveness aiding both SEO and UX. Simply put, move your site onto Magento 2 and you’re almost certain to see faster page load speeds, reduced downtime and higher rankings on Google.
Subscriptions
Success in the eCommerce world is as much about convenience as anything else. Customers like security and predictability when it comes to purchasing common everyday items – they don’t want a surprise or to be caught short at the worst possible time.
It’s the public’s continued embracement of convenience that has seen a huge surge in the popularity of subscription-based services, mainly thanks to their ability to consistently deliver high-quality products to customers in their own homes at an affordable price. People don’t want to be dashing out to the shops in the rain at the last minute because they forgot to buy razor blades or pet food – why do that when it can just magically appear at your doorstep each week?
It might be the case that you’re thinking a subscription service just wouldn’t work for your store, but anything that is regularly utilised or consumed could have legs in this area. Magento 2 sets you up to win, allowing you to integrate simple-yet-crucial elements that the modern-day consumer has come to expect.
Services like making payments via PayPal, receiving newsletter updates via marketing automation software like DotMailer and getting in touch with customer services via interactive chat functions are almost expected by many customers in 2018. Thankfully, Magento 2 has been designed with both the present and the future in mind – you can fully embed all of these services with specially-designed integrations created just for Magento.
Get your customers onside and they’re much more likely to not only spend money at your store but keep coming back for more.
Shipping
The way product delivery works these days is a far cry from how things used to be pre-internet shopping. Customers not only expect delivery to be free (88% of UK shoppers want to ship at no extra cost), but this kind of deal also encourages them to spend more on products.
As an eCommerce retailer, your ultimate goal should be to deliver a straightforward shopping experience that makes buying from your store enjoyable – borderline addictive.
Magento 2 allows you to fully customise your shipping rates to suit the demands of your business. If free delivery isn’t something that is viable for your store, you can still charge for it. The freedom of the Magento 2 platform and its huge range of plugins make it uniquely customisable – something that your customers could eventually pick up on and keep coming back just for the specific things that your site offers.
If you and your direct competitor are both offering the same exact product at the same exact price, but the competitor site is offering free delivery, chances are consumers will be aware of this and go with the cheaper delivery option. Fine margins like this can make or break a successful eCommerce store.
Summary
Magento 2 offers a plethora of options when it comes to improving your sales figures and growing your customer base. Choosing to move onto this platform not only gives you the power to adapt to an ever-changing online marketplace, but it also gives customers with the confidence to spend their money with you.
Bring all of these elements together and it’s likely you’ll find a new audience that is waiting for a store just like yours. It’s filling these niche areas that can move you ahead of your direct competitors and give you the edge in the long-term. Put your products out there on Magento 2 and you’ll be increasing your bottom line in no time.