Your Online Business Strategy for 2010

Copy and paste the following into your strategy docs for next year, and you’ll be the office hero.  Ha. But seriously - with the holidays and summer looming, your online strategy for next year is most likely to be low on the priorities list. Fortunately for you (and your business) we have created a pre-packaged list of what we see as the top four things your business should be planning for in the coming New Year.

Social Media - The thought of using the unpredictable phenomena that is social media to leverage your business strategy can be terrifying for some companies. Luckily for you, that is not what your strategy for 2010 should include. Your focus should be on using social media to determine where your strategy is going, not to leverage it. The way to achieve this is simple. Use social media to talk to your customers. By using social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook you can amass a network of customers and communicate with them online to both research and promote your brand. Customers can, and will, use your social networking outlets to leave both positive and negative feedback.  Both sorts of feedback give your business massive opportunities to strengthen your brand. Positive feedback gives your company priceless insight into where consumers find value in your product and the opportunity to capitalise this information directly into sales. Negative feedback gives you an opportunity to communicate with your dissatisfied customer, mediate the problem and ensure it never happens again, which will both strengthen your brand and earn you kudos with your now placated (and returning) customer. Social networking sites are also a great way to capitalise on viral marketing, provide your followers with a special deal or discount and watch your number of friends grow.

Email marketing - Your database is a valuable tool that your business would do well not to neglect. Using your database is a good method of extracting sales from people who are already known as customers, providing you do it well. Doing it well involves targeting your content to deliver each consumer something that is relevant to them in order to increase response rates and deliver sales. Even simple targeting such as name and location can make a big difference in producing sales from your current customers. After all, they have already shopped with you before, and providing it was a positive experience for them, an email letting them know about the 30% off everything – one day only sale in your store in the Westfield across the road from them might be sufficient encouragement for them to get the credit card out. However, if a customer in Dunedin receives an email informing them about a big sale in Albany starting at 12pm tomorrow, the next thing they receive from you will probably end up as junk mail. Name, gender and location are simple enough to collect from customers and can make all the difference when it comes to them responding to the deal or deleting the email.

Solid Platform - To ensure that your business is maximising profit from the very first New Years sale you need to make sure your online browsers are turning into buyers. Multiple factors cause consumers to browse but not buy, such as poor product display (i.e. not being able to see product detail clearly), a confusing checkout process and lack of promotions or deals. A well built webstore provides capabilities that solve these issues and encourage shoppers to complete their purchases online. Nicholas Jermyn Shirtmakers found their online sales increase by 1000% after upgrading to an optimised webstore. Nick Harris, Director of Nicholas Jermyn, largely credits this success to the new promotional and pricing capabilities and the user-friendly nature of the site which gives consumers high incentive to buy online. Nicholas Jermyn’s new webstore hit the ground running says Harris, “The difference has been noticeable from the moment we launched.  It is hard not to notice orders coming through at around ten times the volume”.  Examples of the capabilities that are enabling Nicholas Jermyn’s success include the ability to alter sleeve length or add a pocket, a sophisticated zoom tool that gives consumers an extremely clear idea of the product’s fabric, detail and colour, and an alarmingly simple checkout process. If your current site is not providing customers with enough incentive to encourage online purchasing then you are missing out on the opportunity that a first-rate webstore can provide to turn leads into sales.

Search Strategy - With all that in mind, what’s the point of having an exceptional webstore if no one can find it? Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Google AdWords provide search results and ads that match with users search terms, directing people who are looking for the type of products you sell towards your webstore. Using SEO ensures your webstore contains the right content in the right places so that Google can match peoples relevant search terms with your site, and list your webstore as high as possible in the search results list (increasing the click through rate). Google AdWords allows your business to choose keywords you see relevant to your webstores content, and when people search for these words your webstore will be advertised through either banner or text ads. Using these methods works just as well as a flashy window display to increase traffic to your webstore, and creates new customers out of people who are unfamiliar with your brand.

Social media, targeted emails, optimised webstores and search engine optimisation are all key elements for your online strategy which will create more revenue and bolster your success as a competitive e-commerce retailer.  A mix of both e-tailing trends and e-tailing fundamentals, these four necessary online strategies for your business in 2010 will surely give you something to mull over while you are eating, drinking and being merry...