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After the pandemic’s beginning, there has been a significant uprise in the number of online businesses. In other words, we are in the middle of another e-commerce boom. But, of course, the future holds much more to it, so we’d have to wait and see.

For this reason, your ideal year to grow your online store should be this year. However, many who start an online business might not be so sure of what are the right steps to growing it.

Let’s find out more in this article to see how you can grow your online business in 2022.

10 Tips for growing your online store this year

• Measure your brand perception

Have you ever wondered what your customers may think of your brand? Well, you need to always consider it since brand perception is a crucial element.

Brand perception measurement clearly defines what consumers think about your brand, so once they see your product or service, their brand perception will show how they feel about it. But, of course, it’s more than an opinion; this is all formed by your brand messaging, branding, and what others say about you.

Brand perception affects the type of customers you attract, the prices you can ask for, and the partnerships you can build with other brands, such as where your product is sold.

Brand perception is important in growing your online store, so it’s not something you should leave behind.

• Create an SEO strategy

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SEO is always the golden part of any online business. Why? Because customers are endlessly seeking new solutions to optimize their products or service entirely. Optimizing your product listings for voice- and text-based searches is always important.

Especially if you have product videos, optimizing them for user searches is essential. So, it’s time to utilize your thumbnails and transcripts to perfect video SEO.

Additionally, in order to increase your domain’s authority (DA) on your website, you need to create organic backlinks. These SEO efforts will keep your brand fresh in the customer’s mind.

Nowadays, every marketplace has its own requirements for setting the best SEO practices you need to optimize.

• Start a side hustle e-commerce business

Starting an e-commerce side business is your greatest advantage when setting up an online store. So, are you a person who likes working nine to five? And you are concerned about doing something after your work hours?

E-commerce businesses are one of the most common online businesses. In fact, there are an estimated 15-20 million e-commerce businesses worldwide. However, if you start one, always make sure to choose the right niche.

To identify your ideal niche, you can always use Google Trends to find out which are the trending niches. Each country has different trending niches, so it’s important to see which ones are trending in your area.

E-commerce business is becoming even more popular after the beginning of the pandemic. Also, someday, we might even see an increase in e-commerce stores in the upcoming years. Nevertheless, here are a few ideas you can carry out to help spark a new idea for your online e-commerce business:

• Start dropshipping
• Offer coaching services
• Offer freelance writing services
• Sell trending products or services
• Offer social media management services
• Provide marketing services

• Leverage your social media channels

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Everybody now knows what social media is. In fact, reports show that users spend an average of 145 minutes per day on social media apps. Therefore, marketing your products and brand on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn help increase your online brand awareness and potentially bring more traffic to your website.

Let’s not forget that social media offers all sorts of communication. There are nearly five billion social media users in the world. So this means you can reach many users and even integrate your online store with platforms to allow customers to purchase directly from your social media channels without having to visit the website now.

• Content

The building block of an online store is the quality of its content. But unfortunately, this part is where many online business owners stagger. To be more sure of delivering high-quality content, your best option is to develop a content strategy. It’s considered one of the most effective ways to drive sales and stay concerned about content.

Your content is what answers pressing questions and solves issues that help increase traffic levels. Over time, high-quality content brings in good traffic and attracts more of it. Your fully optimized website will work harder to convert visitors into long-term customers. However, even those who choose not to become your customers will still know you are a valuable resource, so it’s never anything bad.

• Personalized automation

Automations aren’t anything new in the online world, but they are becoming mandatory for your customers. In fact, more than 90% of customers claim they want to interact with a brand that is more aware of their personal preferences than those that aren’t. Furthermore, users like it when you know what they want, so personalized automation can do it without taking up much of your time.

Here’s how you can take advantage of it:

• Automate transaction emails from your online store. There are popular plugins such as WooCommerce that can help you do this.
• Send out “Thank you” emails. They have a 350% higher open rate than regular emails.
• You can use other email platforms to send out special offers to your customers, such as coupon codes and more.

• Use the power of AI

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Artificial Intelligence is coming a long way and going beyond chatbots. For example, AI and machine learning are personalizing shopping experiences, making more innovative product recommendations via emails, and enhancing predictive search functions on your site.

In short, AI makes shopping experiences better and easier, making them proceed to the checkout phase much faster. Additionally, the AI can work for you like the amazon marketplace seller. There are plenty of hot pricing tools out there. These tools help adjust prices following consumer demand.

Large marketplaces such as Alibaba, Amazon, Shopify all use AI to analyze visitor data. This way, they create personalized recommendations and recommend new products and services. So, for example, if you search on Amazon, you’ll notice that Amazon will start recommending new items over time.

• Show social proof on your site

A powerful source of proof for brand building is social proof. If potential customers read good reviews about your online business, they’ll consider working with you in the future. In addition, 92% of consumers said they trust word of mouth (asking family members and friends) regarding decisions.

Word-of-mouth is still the king when it comes to making decisions on the type of purchases you have to make. You can refer to yourself, for instance; if you read good reviews, you’ll more likely trust a company more, right?

Customers can trust reviews and save hours of research based on which brand they choose to work with. User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful tool and encourages customers to post about their experiences with your brand on social media, product pages, and your website.

• Provide top-notch customer services

If there’s one service your business will get remembered for, it’s your customer service. Excellent customer service includes you stepping in immediately when the user faces any problems. This will increase retention rates more than retaining users who never faced any issues.

Hence, investing in customer service is one of the best investments you can make for your brand. Also, it enhances the shopping experience, both pre-and post-purchase. How you handle replacements and returns will say a lot about your business, influencing brand perception. So, be there for the customer, and they’ll be there for you too!

• Influencer marketing

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Have you heard about influencers? We’re sure you have, but do you know how much impact they have on a business if you hire the right one? Depending on the size of your online business, you can hire small influencers in part of your niche to help you get started or get your momentum going.

After all, smaller influencers might have a more engaged audience compared to celebrities and VIPs.

Wrapping it all up

This was all about how to grow your online store this year. Hopefully, you have many new ideas after reading this article. Online stores are the new trend and will most likely be the new standard in the future. However, it’s mandatory for us to adapt to it.

The online world keeps evolving each day, so it’s now your chance to take advantage of it!

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• Source: Plato Data Intelligence: Platodata.ai