With more stores closing their doors and retailers now opting for an ecommerce strategy, adapting and optimising a business model for online trading is on everybody’s priority list. With the online world going through constant changes, keeping on top of trends, methods, marketing techniques and design is crucial in successful online trading. Here, Annie Everill, the Digital Marketing Executive at Imaginaire explains.
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Adapting a business model through the creation of an online ecommerce site is one of the easiest yet complex routes for a company to explore. There are endless softwares and methods to build an online website, with planning and designing being a large part of the whole process. Companies can also use external agencies such as Imaginaire to construct this element of a new business model. Crafting an e-commerce website takes a lot of thought and planning but can be extremely successful inline with the other strategies.
Selling through an existing marketplace
Using sites such as Ebay or Amazon to sell goods is an easy and effective way to optimise an existing business model. Eliminating the need to create a brand new website, these global marketplaces have the ability to reach consumers from all over the world whilst building a trustworthy company profile. There is also the opportunity to use local marketplaces such as Gumtree for small businesses in niche industries.
These marketplaces provide an alternative to a personal webpage or in addition to. These marketplaces are also beneficial in terms of customer reviews and business reputation.
Social media
Investing time, money and efforts into social media can help to both support and carry out online trading in a modern and creative way. Using social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn not only attracts customers on a global scale but also comes with a constant influx of updates and trending technology. By optimising a social media page through the use of hashtags, advertisements, location and content, a company has a greater chance of customer interaction.
Social media platforms such as Instagram also offer a new strategy for online trading specifically. Instagram Shopping works as a digital storefront, working through both real-time and pre-made posts for an interactive, visual shopping experience.
Paid Advertising
Pay-Per-Click is a form of paid advertising and is a quick and efficient way to generate clicks from the user. Although this method requires payment, it is a simple way to adapt a business model in terms of online trading. Instead of customers routing through the search results, PPC gives businesses the opportunity to pay for the top spots.
Another form of paid advertising which can be successful in terms of online trading is shopping ads. Shopping ads include detailed information about specific products that a company sells and are visible in the shopping tab instead of the web search results.
Tracking Data
With the creation of new online resources, tracking and analysing the success of them is vital for a new business model. Investing and learning about data and analysis will provide businesses with the facts behind the screen. Using systems such as google analytics provides information regarding who is interacting with a page, how long they’re on a site for, how many successful transactions are going through and where readers are switching off.
Tracking and taking note of this information is also beneficial in seeing what’s working and what isn’t. Especially important if a company is paying for a service, introducing tracking into a business model will offer a clear view of what needs changing or which method is worth investing in.
