Back to New-Business Basics with Ecommerce Shopping Cart Software |
Posted: October 4, 2017 |
If you’ve been selling products online for a year or two, or several years, and find that your sales chart or graph indicates a levelling-off in activity, you might want to go back to new-business basics. This doesn’t mean starting over, from scratch, but it will involve retracing some of the early footsteps you took when the idea was to start a small business. Chances are good you didn’t just select your product or create one, then start telling people about it, to discover in a few months that money was rolling in. This might be the experience of a select few companies, two or three fortunate individuals who invented a “mousetrap” that was truly better than anything anyone had seen before. But, for the vast majority of entrepreneurs and business owners, this is an attractive idea that doesn’t reflect reality. The path to long-term success begins with a business plan, something that’s honest and specific. Naturally, you’ll need a good name. But you’ll also need some outstanding software and a great website to compete in what has become a fast-paced, global economy. The idea of going back to basics might wall involve selecting a new shopping cart software. If you’ve been selling online and sales have slowed to a crawl, or your goals are not being reached in a reasonable amount of time, take a much closer look at your online presence before you start pointing the finger at former customers or unspecified market conditions. You may not have to spend a lot of money on new equipment or change your inventory, only to find that the people “out there” don’t want the new “you.” What you do need is a new partner, professionals who have worked in this field and understand how to help businesses, new and old, make the correct decisions from the start. Don’t make the mistake some business owners make and become nostalgic, pining for the days when you hung your first dollar on the wall to mark the beginning of a successful enterprise. Looking back doesn’t deliver success. Business owners who will continue to deliver products and services over the long term understand that adjustments and changes of direction are often the answer to company rejuvenation. A New Store?With this preliminary information in hand, you can make the decision to reinvent your store. You may be able to accomplish your goal of “turning things around” by bringing a new “partner” on board. This doesn’t have to be an individual, a real person. In fact, it probably shouldn’t be. What you might want to do is visit Shopping Cart Elite. If you haven’t put enough emphasis on after-sale support, for example, you might see your new software as a way to build stronger relationships with each customer. This can lead to positive reviews and recommendations that help grow your business-customer list. Approach your new software tools with the idea that every business is a service business, even if you sell physical products of a dozen varieties. Your company grows because you offer, and deliver, outstanding customer service. You should go back to the new-business basic of providing support before, during, and after the sale.
Use the capabilities provided to take the first step after payment is received: Stay in touch. Say “thank you” in some way – email, snail mail, telephone. After you thank the recent customer, invite them to get in touch to ask questions or to talk about concerns they may have. One of the most effective ways to do this is often seen on a restaurant sign. “If you don’t like us, tell us. If you do like us, tell others.” When you work with top-shelf software such as Shopping Cart Elite, you’ll find this process doesn’t have to involve a lot of time or expense. Almost every customer-relations task has been provided for and automated, so you deliver unmatched customer service with minimal effort. More Thoughts on RelationshipsYou can make efficient use of email or a newsletter in electronic form to maintain consistent contact with your customers. Even one page of ideas and notes on sale prices, discounts etc. can make all the difference in your sales activity. As you browse the Shopping Cart Elite website, focus on the ways this software handles all of the back-end duties that would otherwise occupy so much of your time. If you’ve been one of those business owners who didn’t respond to customer questions and inquiries because it caused you too much stress, you’re in luck. You must handle complaints and questions consistently and as quickly as possible. With the great software you’ve chosen, you can handle this essential job with automation. You can customize your plan to fit one situation or several dozen situations, making sure each customer is treated with the respect they deserve. If resolving a customer issue involves refunds or giving them a discount on future purchases, most of this can be accomplished without handwritten notes and personal telephone calls. But, if you want to take these additional steps, do so. Just so you understand that a successful, online operation can be virtually “hands off.” Some ExamplesHere are a few examples of how detailed your Shopping Cart Elite Software can be. You can set up gift registry, just as you’ve seen in some brick-and-mortar stores in your area. Maintain an extensive list of desired gift items, while also tracking the number of items purchased from this list and who made the purchase. This registry can be forwarded to family members and friends, with addresses for shipping the gift before or after an event. It’s possible to establish guidelines that allow your friends and family members to locate your registry, searchable by event date or name. Online shoppers can also engage in social questions and answers with verified buyers from the past. This gives them answers in real time, solving numerous issues and answering specific questions to extend customer contact and build trust between your regular/past customers and people who are currently new prospects. Questions can be emailed to your previous customers automatically. If a reply doesn’t follow in a reasonable amount of time, the store owner is emailed within 24 hours. This is a magnificent tool for converting shopper inquiries into new sales. If you’ve spend five minutes online, for any reason, you know what a “pop up” is. They are often a problem for the individual who wants to spend some time shopping or researching information online. But, within the enterprise shopping cart software you’ll be using, you will find smart popups help you connect with visitors with messages specific to the individual. The message might be about where the shopper is from, if they’ve found you for the first time, the page they’ve navigated to, even how much time they spent on that page. You can put them in a selling-campaign status when they tag a product after reading about it, for example. If they spend additional time on something specific, you can even assign them a score, with an eye to future business. Smart popups are an excellent way to handle customer questions, analyze the answers, get valuable feedback, and set an action in motion, basing that action on a specific visitor interests. Automatic Quotes?To begin wrapping up the back-to-basics idea, you’ll benefit from the auto-quote tools within Shopping Cart Elite. If a shopper wants price information or a quote on a specific item, they would like to have it immediately, if not sooner! It’s necessary to keep prices hidden at certain times, especially if you need additional information from a potential customer before you can calculate a specific price for their situation. You might also need to keep prices hidden to protect your business from competitor spying. Rather than keep a visitor waiting, the auto-quote capability enters the information and generates special pricing/quotes automatically. The customer will also be emailed this information, along with a link to checkout and auto-login information. Again, the idea of operating your successful online business with minimal input enters the picture. Wrapping it UpWhen you’ve taken all the necessary steps along this software path, you should arrive at the point where a selected product is ready to be delivered. Shopping Cart Elite addresses this part of the process with such tools as smart packing, which includes an offer of a competitive shipping rate to the customer. You can also arrange batch shipping from within the software, so you don’t have to navigate to a third-party program to print shipping labels. Take a few minutes to learn more about the efficient shipping tools as you browse the site. Read about smart shipping, which can reduce or eliminate shipping mistakes, establish a workflow so that each essential step is in place and used. The client can be notified at each stage as well. This software also has a printer component so labels are created automatically when the order is processed. As mentioned before, as you learn about this outstanding software, you’ll find the developers have thought of everything!
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