Ecommerce essentials: How to sell online and grow your business

Now that your website is up and running, you may be wondering ‘what’s next’? There are plenty of key tasks that you’ll want to get started on right after launching your site to help it become a success. Here are a few carefully selected actions that will help you get you started on the right path.

Keep creating new content

Flocks of visitors might have viewed your website on launch day, but now it’s important that you find ways to keep them coming back. One of the best ways to do this is to add new content regularly to your site. Set up a blog and get into the habit of publishing items that impart your insights and wisdom in a useful, informative and interesting way.

Whenever you do add new content to your fledgeling website, include social share buttons so that your readers can share it with your friends. This could get your content into the hands of hundreds or maybe even thousands of more people.

Not only is it good for your readers but, frequently providing fresh content is favoured by search engines too! It can help you to become more visible on search engines like Google.

Engage with your audience

Whether you’re a new business starting from scratch or an established company that has had a complete rebranding, after you’ve launched your site, it’s an ideal time to start engaging with your audiences. This is a powerful way to understand more about your target customers, but it also helps to keep viewers hooked on your brand.

Include options to capture email addresses on your site, and create a newsletter to keep customers updated on your products or services. Give viewers a chance to provide feedback, whether on the website, your social media pages or both. Whenever you get audience feedback, make sure to start a dialogue with them. This builds a rapport that can help turn first-time customers into loyal and repeat ones.

Get statistics savvy

One of the key ways to understand how well your new website is doing is to analyse statistics and trends, including who is visiting your site. It’s important to be on top of key factors such as when the visitors are coming, how often and which pages they’re going to. This is all really useful information that can give you important clues about your audiences, what is working well (or not) on your site, and what potential changes you might need to make to improve things. In order to analyse these trends, get set up with Google Analytics.

Remember that this should never be a one-off activity. You should monitor your website’s progress regularly to help you really understand what the customer experience is like.

If you’re yet to launch your website, why not check out KitStart to see just how easy it is to create your own website.