Become A Successful Online Entrepreneur With These Tips & Hacks

Debarpita Sen
Shiprocket
Published in
5 min readSep 17, 2020

It’s imperative for all those business minds who want to explore the digital selling space to know the tips and hacks to become a successful online entrepreneur. Sellers who set up their online stores have complete control over their customers’ experiences. Whether product placement or highlighting a sale, online store owners can use their website to connect with their customers directly.

It might get a bit overwhelming for beginners who may not know where to start curating their online shop. To get you started right away with your online store and for attracting customers, here are some tips for creating a successful online business-

Create An Engaging Website

It doesn’t matter if you have the best product possible in your niche and the best customer service on top of that — if your store’s web design is lousy, your online business presence is doomed.

According to studies, nearly 93% of buyers consider visual appearance the most critical factor when purchasing. Design elements should interest visitors, such as using full-width images and avoiding distraction with minimal text.

With Shiprocket Social, you can get started with your desired website right now, and that too absolutely FREE! No coding is required — you can create your online store in less than a minute. All you need to do is simply sign up, list your products for free, and start selling.

Sign Up For a Free Website Here.

A Great About Us Page

If a visitor visits your “About Us” page, that means they are already interested in you and are giving you a chance to prove to him or her that your product is the best. What you need to do is spell out what you are, what you do, and, most importantly, what you offer to the customers. All testimonials, achievements, and social media handles must be included in the About Us section.

Make sure you don’t waste this opportunity as it may lead to gaining a customer. Your contact information should be clear and easy to find on your about page and throughout your website. Be sure to mention your:

  • Contact email
  • Address
  • Social media channels

Invest In Offering Excellent Customer Support

Your consumers need to know they will have support after they purchase if required. You can provide them with a live-chat feature that works 24*7. If you don’t have the resources to offer round-the-clock support, you should still provide some service type to help people during working hours. Here are a few actionable tips for providing excellent online support:

  • Offer support at all stages of the shopping experience to encourage new buyers to make their first purchase and returning customers to continue making purchases.
  • Make your customer support features, whether that’s a contact number or a chatbox, visible from the homepage so that buyers are aware of those services.

Engage With Customers In Social Media

The best platforms to sell online are the ones that allow you to interact with your customers frequently. Social media is an excellent example of being one of the best marketplaces online. You must start selling on Facebook, Instagram, etc. because your customers can connect with you directly through personal chats. They can raise a dispute and get it solved via a dedicated customer support team in lesser time than some other online marketplace.

Therefore, as a successful online entrepreneur — you must take care of the people who are consuming your product.

Run SEO-Driven Blogs

Running a blog is an opportunity to generate more store traffic. Posts that contain SEO keywords and contain useful information for consumers are likely to rank high in search engine results. Blog posts that rank well and encourage people to visit your site are stepping stones to people visiting your product pages and completing purchases. Here are a few actionable tips for creating a store blog:

  • Use SEO tools such as SEM Rush to measure the monthly search volume and keyword difficulty of keywords. Keywords with high monthly search volumes and high difficulty ratings will be more challenging to rank for.
  • Use Google Analytics to track the page views of your blog posts. Consider past posts that received high numbers of views when planning future content.

Offer Free Shipping

Thanks to Amazon Prime, free shipping is now an expectation of online shoppers. The added cost of standard shipping can easily dissuade buyers today from completing their purchase at checkout. Sellers who can afford free shipping should provide the service if they aren’t already incentivizing investments.

While the upfront cost of providing free shipping may hurt at first, many merchants see a greater return with increased purchases after offering the policy. To make sure customers are noticing your generous policy, highlight on your online store that you offer free shipping, as Thrive Market does in the photo above on their home page.

Here are a few actionable tips for attracting buyers with your shipping policy.

  • Offer free shipping to lower the overall cost of your item for buyers and incentivize the purchase.
  • Highlight the ‘free shipping’ offers throughout your online store, so buyers are motivated to keep shopping.

Here is how you can offer free shipping to your customers.

Keep An Eye On Your Competitors

Last but not least, it is vital to know what your competitors are up to. Customers browse through online stores looking for the lowest prices and the best overall shopping experiences. To keep buyers attracted, you should identify similar shops to your business that you can compare against. Are these stores offering 60-day or 30-day return policies? Do they offer free shipping or only paid options? Figuring out what makes competitors more advantageous enables sellers to determine what they need to change their business to keep returning customers loyal and attract new buyers.

Here are a few actionable tips for assessing your competition:

  • Search for products like yours on significant marketplaces, not only on other online stores. Platforms like Amazon and Flipkart are excellent indicators of competitive pricing rates for your products and industry. Use their qualities as a benchmark for your prices to attract more buyers.
  • Consider the design of competitors’ sites, not just their product offerings. Note how it might be more user-friendly than your store and how it might be attracting buyers.

Online stores give sellers complete autonomy over the customers’ experiences. Instead of following a marketplace’s policies, a seller can set up their online shop using Shiprocket Social and start selling right away. Keep in mind the strategies mentioned above, and you will indeed witness a growth in your entrepreneurial journey soon.

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Debarpita Sen
Shiprocket

eCommerce Trends Follower | Marketing Specialist at Shiprocket | Journalist-turned-Content-Marketer