The COVID-19 crisis has changed the entire reach of retail selling. With a steady increase in number of virus transmissions, shoppers are hesitant to shop at a physical store and are moving to online selling platforms for their purchases. This has seen a spurt in the volume of sales in online Storefronts, with both major and minor eCommerce sites seeing a good increase in traffic and conversions. For merchants who do not have an online Storefront, here are a few tips and reasons for you to start selling online during COVID-19.
Why is it essential to start selling online during COVID-19?
Necessary Statistics on US Online Sales in 2020
With state-imposed lockdowns, many of us Americans have chosen to purchase products online rather at local stores. This has seen a huge rise in eCommerce traffic and conversions. A research study by Digital Commerce indicates that leading eCommerce giant Amazon saw an increase in traffic by 28.1% in July 2020, when compared to February 2020, and had a cumulative 8.7% growth when compared to the past year.
Also, shoppers in the USA have spent $347.26 Billion in online purchases during the first six months of 2020, which is a jump of 30.1% from online sales during the same time last year. eCommerce sales were 20.8% in Q2 of 2020, against 14.7% in the second quarter of 2019 and 16.2% in the first quarter of 2020. This shows that the trend is clearly in favor of online shopping-when compared to shopping at physical stores.
With such a growing trend for eCommerce shopping, any business needs to have an online shopping Marketplace so that you can effectively tap the huge online demand for a wide range of products, as the number of sales through retail channels are comparatively lesser and unpredictable.
How to start selling online?
If you have an existing online presence with a business website, but do not have an eCommerce platform for online sales, now is the time to invest in an eCommerce development plan to get your product online. You can choose from popular online selling platforms such as Magento, Shopify, and WooCommerce to create an online storefront from where you can easily manage your inventory and orders, along with being able to communicate with your customers. eCommerce platforms can rapidly get your products online and the exact data and business information you would like to showcase online. You can have an eCommerce development firm take care of building your online store, and can easily manage your inventory and orders from the back-end.
If you don’t have a web presence, now is the best time and opportunity to get started. You can easily have your website built from scratch, and showcase your products for online shoppers to buy them from your store. Below are a few essential tips for you to start selling online during COVID-19.
- Have a matching domain name for your online store, and getting customers to know that you are setting-up an online storefront.
- Invest in a good hosting platform for your website and product data to be available online. We strongly recommend a hosting provider that offers special packages for eCommerce websites along with a CDN (Content Delivery Network), so that you can be assured of faster website loading speeds for your online store.
- Have a good choice of an eCommerce platform from the options mentioned above to have an online presence that speaks about your business and showcases your products online.
- Invest in good SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques to help generate customers to your website from online and local searches.
- Have a sound Social Media Marketing (SMM) strategy so that you can share your products on Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms and also have an open channel of communication with your prospective and current customers.
How can Exinent help?
If you are interested to start selling online during COVID 19, we at Exinent are here to help. We have been into eCommerce development and support services for the past decade and have hundreds of delightful clients who have taken advantage of our custom eCommerce website development service. We focus on creating online success stories with a robust, secure, scalable, and customized online shopping platform that would help you get customers across various online platforms to your store. Feel free to Contact Us; now is the time for your business to get online and noticed!