Starting a business, regardless of its industry, means watching out for fierce competition. Even if your ecommerce business has incredibly unique offerings or services, it’s probably not the first company of its kind to enter into the market. Ecommerce businesses will have plenty of direct competitors to watch out for, many of which may be covered in their business plan. There may even be indirect competition in the form of businesses that later prove to have a competitive edge.

Staying one step ahead of the competition doesn’t mean you should ignore them. On the contrary, your ecommerce business should be mindful of everything the competition does well—and what they flop at, too. Keep one eye on the prize for small business success and the other eye diligently monitoring competitors with these tips.

1. Read industry reports.

Before you can conduct a deep dive into companies competing with your business, you’ll need to have a thorough understanding of your own industry. Do you run a consultancy where you advise businesses on their corporate culture? Check out the strategic planning guides provided by Gartner. Read their special reports that may illuminate trends in your industry, such as “Five Things Inclusive Leaders Do Differently.” You may also find additional forecast and insight information through market research company Forrester.

One of the best ways you can stand out and remain ahead of the competition is to understand your industry, inside and out. Know what’s trending and buzzworthy and how your ecommerce business can contribute to that conversation.

2. Monitor their social media accounts.

This is a bit more strategic than popping onto the competition’s Facebook page, scrolling quickly, and leaving. You should be able to thoroughly study their social pages and come away from each one with key takeaways about aspects they are successful in and where they are making mistakes. Take the following into consideration as you monitor a competitor’s social media accounts:

• Where is the competition at on social? Examine the platforms that your competitor is visibly at and where they do not have a presence. Remember that no business, including your own, needs to be on every social platform if the market isn’t there. However, it may be beneficial for your ecommerce business to jump on emerging social platforms other competitors are not on yet, like TikTok, where a relevant audience may discover and learn more about your offerings.
• What is the competition posting? Is their content fun and creative, or professional and instructional? How often do they post? What kind of media is it, from video to photos?
• How does the competition engage with their audience? You may find some companies don’t respond back to their fans, or use a canned response when they do. Use what you’ve learned to establish an engagement strategy for how to reply to fans in a timely, thoughtful manner.

3. Read their online reviews.

Chances are high that competing companies have Yelp and Glassdoor accounts. These pages can give you a closer look into the competition’s internal process. Are customers satisfied with their experience at this business? Do the employees enjoy working there?

Take notes about what customers and employees like and dislike about the business. While your own ecommerce company should always be able to differentiate itself from the crowd, you’ll have a better understanding of how your offerings and team can provide an experience to these customers that the competition cannot.

When it comes to preparing an online store for holiday shoppers, emphasis is typically placed on marketing and graphic design. As brick-and-mortar shop owners erect holiday decorations and up local advertising efforts to entice shoppers, ecommerce business owners focus on displaying seasonal site graphics and boosting digital advertising to achieve similar results.

A storefront’s overall look and the campaigns that drive people to it are definite highlights of the holiday season for all retailers. But online retailers face a unique requirement of also ensuring that their digital storefronts are in working order for online shoppers—often in higher quantities than they’ve experienced previously. If you run an ecommerce site, start early and prepare the mechanics of your online store for the holiday season now.

Step 1: Augment Your Site Performance

As the internet expands, performance remains key to a site’s overall success. Here are a few ways to ensure that your ecommerce site’s performance is up to par for the holiday season:

1. Ensure a Quality Mobile Experience

The mobile shopping trend is growing quickly—in fact, 59% of shoppers cite mobile shopping as an important factor when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from. To ensure a quality mobile experience, make certain that the mobile version of your site runs as smoothly as—if not better than—your desktop site. Adopt a responsive design theme for your ecommerce site if you haven’t already, or look to use an ecommerce platform that builds for mobile experiences first.

2. Prepare for a Traffic Increase

Holiday shopping means that a significant portion of the population is shopping for similar products at the same time, which equates to a major influx in online visitors or most ecommerce stores. Verify that your site has the ability to keep up with a traffic spike and won’t be negatively impacted. To prepare for a site traffic increase, opt for managed cloud hosting through a reputable ecommerce platform.

3. Check Your Load Speed

As page load time increases from 1 to 3 seconds, the probability of bounce increases 32%. Check your load speed to ensure that your site is loading as quickly as possible so you can avoid alienating impatient customers. There are a few ways you can improve your site speed:

• Compressing files—especially images—for quicker rendering
• Auditing plugins, and removing those that are no longer needed for your site
• Using a robust Content Delivery Network (CDN) to spread out the load on servers

Step 2: Review Your Checkout Experience

Frictionless checkout is vital to ensuring a smooth shopping experience that leads to purchase. Here are some aspects of your checkout experience to review in preparation for the holidays:

1. Offer Multiple Payment Methods

Overall, shoppers are much more willing to purchase when presented with a variety of payment options—in fact, 42% of customers will not complete a purchase if their preferred payment method is not available. Offer a variety of payment methods—including debit/credit cards, wallet payments, buy now/pay later options, and more—to meet your customers where they are. If you are limited in what you can offer, prioritize which payment methods you will offer based on research into your target audience’s preferences.

2. Analyze Security Measures

Not only is a security breach bad for your company’s reputation—it’s also a major issue for your customers themselves. Make sure you have adequate security measures in place so that your customers’ personal information or payment data can’t be stolen by online hackers. Purchasing an SSL certificate for your site and using a PCI-certified solution for running credit cards will help you tighten up your security in time for the holidays.

3. Expand Abandoned Cart Messaging

Abandoned carts are an inevitable issue for ecommerce businesses, but they are even more difficult to accept when your audience is in a more shopping-inclined mood. Expand any abandoned cart messaging you already have in place and tailor it to the holiday season to make it more relevant. Follow-up emails, exit intent pop-ups featuring discounts, and browser notifications are all great ways to remind shoppers to purchase from you before it’s too late.

Step 3: Consider Your User Experience

Customers with purchase intent can be easily deterred by an unsatisfactory user experience. Here are a few areas of your user experience to consider so you can keep customers happy:

1. Clarify Shipping & Return Policies

Since the customers you will be catering to are shopping for specific holidays, they will definitely want to know if they’ll receive their purchases by specific holiday dates. They will also want to know, should the item not work out for them, what their options are in terms of returns and exchanges. Make sure that your shipping process and return policy are both outlined clearly and can be found easily on your website to avoid customer objections.

2. Increase Digital Support

Despite your best efforts, customers will inevitably have questions, but answering them doesn’t necessarily need to involve a robust customer service team. Add chatbots to your site to answer frequently asked questions in the form of an actual person to save on live resources. You can also use a FAQs landing page, help center, instructional product videos, or other assets so that customers can self-serve to get the information they need.

3. Make Contact Info Accessible

Some customers prefer a more hands-on approach to getting their questions resolved, and will want to hear answers from an actual employee. Others may just want to confirm that your business is real and legitimate before processing a payment they may not get back. Ensure that your business’s phone number, email address, and any other pertinent contact info is easy for them to find (and correct) so that you or your customer service team can address any concerns personally.

Final Thoughts

Don’t allow upgrading the structure of your ecommerce site to fall behind your other holiday preparation tasks. While doing so has a much less visible impact, it can make all the difference when it comes to holiday conversions and the success of your holiday campaigns.

How does one start a social media presence from the ground up? It’s likely a question few ecommerce businesses have had to ask themselves. That’s probably because they have — to some degree, already loosely created some sort of social media presence. An ecommerce business might have set up a business Facebook page, for instance, but posts and checks in periodically.

The good news is that if you don’t have a social media presence for your ecommerce business it is never too late to strategize and create one. Follow these tips to ensure you’re starting on the right foot if you’re revving up a social media presence from scratch.

I. Plan Before You Post

Before you begin posting content (or even making it) you need to establish a plan that outlines your goals. Here are a few key areas to consider when getting started:

Who is my target audience?

You will likely already know this, as it has been previously outlined in your business plan. Understanding your audience will better help you determine which social platforms to be active on and how to create engaging content specific to their needs.

Which social platforms should I have profiles on?

Again, this will be contingent largely on your audience. A general rule of thumb is not to spread your ecommerce business too thin. Try to avoid creating profiles on every possible social media account. It’s unnecessary (and too much work to keep up with) if you know your audience is not there.

Will you need an editorial calendar?

This is a calendar that outlines the 'when', 'where' and 'how' of the content you’re posting. It helps keep you on track and organized.

How often will I post?

Create a schedule so you are able to stay consistent with the days and times you post content.

Define your social media goals.

Do you want to increase awareness of your products and services? Are you keen on becoming a thought leader in your industry? Part of planning for social media success means setting goals. Ideally, these should also be SMART goals — specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.

II. Define Your Voice

The voice and messaging behind your social media accounts is what will ultimately allow you to engage and build lasting relationships with your audience. How do you want to sound? Identifying and defining your voice often plays a significant role in the kind of content you create, too. Some ecommerce businesses create a voice that is down to earth and human. As a result, they’re often able to show fans glimpses behind the scenes, make jokes and highlight team members that make up the business.

III. Create Fully Fleshed Out Profiles

This includes photos, banner images, complete bios, links to landing or home pages and accurate contact information. Make sure that your profile is branded, so that customers are able to recognize your company when they view the account.

Fleshing out your profile does more than introduce you and what you do to the world. Using specific keywords and relevant hashtags in your bio or links to landing pages, for example, can help optimize your accounts for SEO purposes.

IV. Consider Hiring A Social Media Assistant

Everything I listed above is the absolute bare bones of social media prep for an ecommerce business. I haven’t gone into the details of creating content, engaging with and responding to questions, analytics or automation and scheduling tools. It is key that in addition to planning and creating social media profiles, you are able to keep up with them and their needs on a consistent basis.

Don’t panic if it starts to feel a bit overwhelming! You may want to consider hiring a social media assistant (or intern) to assist you. Having a social media assistant can be useful in engaging with fans and potential customers. Beyond keeping up with day-to-day duties, having hired help can help grow and expand your brand and online storefront. They can stay on top of trends on behalf of your ecommerce business, have a hand in your PR strategies and integrate inclusion of your social presence everywhere from your email bio to newsletter blasts for your customers.

Ensuring a positive user experience is vital to the success of any online store. Not only does it set your business apart from others in your industry; it is also often a customer’s deciding factor when they are deciding whether to purchase from your business or not.

To make improvements to your ecommerce site's user experience, you must first look into how your online store is already performing. Thankfully, there are a number of ways to determine what your UX strong points are, and which areas could use some work. Below, we explore a few different ways to determine the quality of UX your store is offering to shoppers.

Step 1: Research & Take Stock

When evaluating your user experience, the first thing you'll want to do is obtain a better understanding of UX by compiling the right resources and information. It's difficult to know your score if you don't know the rules of the game, which is why you’ll want to give yourself a good basis of knowledge to most accurately assess your website.

Don't limit your research to simply UX as a whole though—you'll also want to do some knowledge-gathering that’s specific to your business. The idea here is to distill the basics of your business into a document that you can reference when making improvements to your ecommerce website. Some questions you should ask:

• Who am I to my customers?
• What can I do for them?
• Why are my products/services valuable?

Additionally, be sure to check your competitors and see what they're doing. Go through a specific task on your ecommerce website (like searching for a product) and then go through the same task on your competitor’s site to see which has the easier workflow. Take note of what your competitors do differently and determine whether it's something you'd like to follow, or if you prefer your own method.

Overall, you'll want to get a good grasp of what user experience is, how it'll help your business, and some general best practices, all while getting to know your own brand and business inside and out. That way, when you approach your website, you can make the right judgments and know exactly what you're looking at.

Step 2: Delve Into Website Testing

Website testing is a great way to ascertain whether your online store is on the right track or could benefit from a refresh, and A/B testing is one of the easiest ways to determine what works and what doesn’t. There are a number of things you can test, but we’ll break down just a few of the most common website testing options below.

CTA Buttons

CTAs can be one of your most effective tools when trying to attract customers’ attention, so you'll want to do a few tests to make sure that your major CTAs are as potent as possible. From a design standpoint, try experimenting with button color and button size. Although your current CTA button color may match the design of your website, you may want to try a color that clashes with your theme so that it stands out more. When it comes to size, larger buttons tend to perform better; however, there is a limit to that rule, so always test it.

Another aspect of your CTA button you’ll want to test is the copy, as even minor changes in the wording of a CTA can yield very different results. Try testing more specific language, like "Buy Now" vs. "Add To Cart" on a product page, or more casual language, like "Order Information" vs. "Get More Info."

Pricing

Believe it or not, pricing is another aspect of the user experience that must be tested. Some might assume that a lower-priced item will sell better, but that's not necessarily the case—higher-priced items can sometimes outsell lower-priced products. Furthermore, customers chasing lower prices often don't exhibit brand loyalty, while customers who buy despite higher prices have put more thought into their purchase and are more likely to purchase again.

You'll also want to look at how prices are displayed—you could end up seeing a big difference between $4.99 versus $5.00 versus $4.50. There is quite a bit of psychology behind the concept of odd pricing, so look into how adjusting the price even slightly may improve your ability to convert shoppers.

Discounts & Promotions

How you state your discount or promotion can affect how attractive it'll appear to your customers. Think about how your discount will be presented visually—do you want to use mostly numerals (i.e. “2 for 1 deal”), or is it a more text-based promotion (i.e. “Now at half the price”)? You'll also want to decide whether to take a more specific angle with your campaign by including words like “semi-annual,” "spring cleaning," and "once in a lifetime."

Another important aspect of your discount or promotion is where you'll be promoting it on your site. Will it be on the front page within the slideshow in your hero section? Will it replace the hero completely? How about putting it in the header, or within a nav menu? Regardless, you'll want to test these different locations and see which ones are most effective with your customers.

Overall Layout

How your ecommerce website is laid out can make a big difference as to whether you find success or otherwise. In general, it’s safest to follow the rule of putting the pages customers want most often in the easiest-to-find places. But sometimes a page that seems important or accurately placed to you can seem counterintuitive to customers.

Try testing out where your navigation menus go, or switch up the order of the items listed in your menus and submenus. Also, consider whether business information like shipping and/or returns should be made visible in a banner, or whether they’re fine having their own page in the footer.

Copy

For any one thing you'd like to say, there are hundreds of different ways to say it. And because some words reach your audience better than others, you'll want to test your content before deciding on which version makes the final cut. Take a look at some of your big headlines, product descriptions, category descriptions, and any other important blocks of content on your site, and consider giving them a refresh to catch people’s eye.

If you're at a loss at where to start rewriting your content, try the Three Versions Exercise: write one version that's as plain and to-the-point as possible, another version that's off-the-wall, and a third version that strikes a happy medium between the two. There's a good chance that one of these versions will be close to what you're looking for, and by making some minor edits, you'll have copy that’s more likely to convert.

Security Seals

Although it's often thought to be a best practice to add your security badges and seals everywhere you can, you'll want to test this out as well. Your customers want your protection while shopping online, but in certain industries, they may not like being constantly reminded of it. In fact, some stores have actually seen conversion rates increase after removing their security seals.

How could that happen? Think about it this way: would you feel safer shopping at a typical department store, or a store that required three security checks before entering? Although it appears outwardly that the second store is doing more to keep you safe, it can be frightening for a customer, who might assume there have been some ugly security breaches in the past.

Step 3: Employ User Testing

It's always good to get feedback from a third party, and user testing helps you do just that. Not only is it giving you insight into what your customers are thinking, but it also provides the kind of feedback you can't get from website testing, like what the user's intention was in visiting your site, their feelings about your store design, and what obstacles (if any) kept them from completing their desired tasks.

Before delving into user testing, here are some things you should think about:

• What is your goal? Try to make this statement as simple as possible.
• Are you sure the question you're trying to answer with user testing can't be resolved by other means? If you can get the answers from other tests or analytics, don't use valuable user testing time to try and get them to articulate their behavior.
• How many responses do you want? You don't need an exact number, but a rough estimate is helpful in deciding when to stop running the test.
• Who is your target audience for your tests? Completely new visitors? Your loyal customers? Or a mixture of both?

When it comes to user testing, you have all the flexibility in the world. At its most basic, your test can be a simple compilation of questions emailed to a list. On the more advanced side, there are several user testing tools you can make use of. User testing is so flexible that tests can even be done in person; for example, buying a friend lunch and asking them to go through a couple of tasks on your online store.

When it comes to the exact questions you'll be asking, that depends on your goals. And if you're not quite settled on what you'll be looking at, here are a couple ideas:

• How easy is it for new customers to learn how to perform a task?
• Are customers able to complete their tasks?
• If not, what's stopping them?
• How quickly can a customer recover from making a mistake?
• How easy is it for a customer to remember how to do the task?
• Is your ecommerce site easy to read and understand?
• How difficult is it for a customer to find what they want?
• Is your site running fast enough for your customers?

Overall, user testing is an effective and flexible tool when it comes to getting user feedback on your UX, and should definitely be a part of your assessment arsenal.

Step 4: Examine Your Analytics

Analytics are a fantastic support for crafting great user experiences because they give you a screenshot of how customers are behaving in your store. Although analytics won't be able to describe exactly why your users do what they do on their own, they can put you in a better position to find out by giving you behavioral information.

If you haven't set up analytics on your ecommerce site, you'll want to get that started as soon as possible. It takes time for analytics to compile enough data so that its findings aren't skewed. With too small of a sample size, you risk greatly misreading your audience because of a couple of outliers. For those just starting out, Google Analytics is a good option, as it's free, easy to install, and can be used on anything from a tiny boutique shop to a massive corporate store.

If you already have your analytics set up, then you're ready to dive into the data. Here are a couple things to look at when checking your analytics, and why they're important.

Locate your most popular landing pages

First, use your analytics to figure out which of your pages or products are getting the most views. With the amount of traffic they're getting, these pages are probably doing something right. If the page has a high bounce rate (meaning customers are landing on that page, reading what's on it, and then leaving), the fact remains that it's still being visited a lot. Try to figure out how people keep ending up on this page—especially when it's not what they're looking for—or how you can entice them to look at other pages by adding internal links.

If the page has a low bounce rate and high traffic, on the other hand, then it's one of your top performers. Take a close look at what it's doing well, such as having well-written content, answering some very common questions, or just showcasing a very sought-after product. Either way, by looking at pages with the most views, you'll know what your big-ticket items are, and will be able to improve them accordingly.

List your most searched queries

Look into what your customers are most frequently searching for in your internal site search. This information is important not only because it further highlights popular products, but also because it can determine whether you'll want to make some user-friendly changes to your website. For example, if you see a topic that’s highly searched for, consider updating your FAQs so it includes the answer to that question.

As another example, say one of your most popular queries is "water bottle." You'd want to search for "water bottle" yourself and see what your results are. If your results aren't quite what they should be, consider optimizing your water bottles for that keyword, or looking into the way you organize your products and seeing whether there's room for improvement. Additionally, you’d want to decide whether to make water bottles a sub point in your navigation since they're so popular.

Identify peak activity times

Use your analytics to figure out when your ecommerce site is most active. As we all know, the internet never closes shop, so when your customers are most active may not be on a normal 9 to 5 schedule. For example, you may be based in the Pacific Northwest, but your store could be hugely popular in the Southeast, so you have to adjust for the time zone difference. This is especially pertinent if you have a large, international customer base.

There are several reasons why you'll want to know when your customers are most active, like when to launch a big discount. But most pertinently, it'll let you know when NOT to make big UX changes so you don’t risk frustrating shoppers in the middle of making a purchase.

Final Thoughts

Once you've done your research, conducted different forms of testing, and reviewed your analytics, you’ll have all the information you need to start improving your ecommerce website's UX. By following these steps along with commonly-accepted UX best practices, you will have a solid foundation on which you can build your user experience strategy.

Product photos are a critical portion of your ecommerce business; however, getting great, high-quality images can be costly. Some business owners opt to hire a professional photographer to handle it for them; others opt to save money by taking product photos themselves.

Wondering which product photography option would be best for your ecommerce business? We’ve broken down the pros and cons of each and detailed what you should look for if you decide to hire a professional. Read on for more insights.

Hiring a Photographer vs. Taking your Own Photos: Pros & Cons

There’s no shortage of talented photographers, so you shouldn’t have much trouble finding someone talented enough to handle this responsibility. Here are a few things to think about when considering hiring one for your product photography:

Pros of Hiring a Professional Product Photographer

• You won’t have to pay for expensive, high-quality camera and photo shoot equipment
• You won’t have to spend time learning photography skills and best practices
• You won’t have to spend hours photographing your products and can focus on other aspects of your business instead

Cons of Hiring a Professional Product Photographer

• You may not get exactly what you want
• The cost of a professional photographer can be high
• Depending on your photographer, you may not own the rights to your product images

Taking your own product photos, however, can provide the same high-quality product image boost as hiring a professional; however, this DIY option has its own downsides. Here are a few things to think about when considering being your own product photographer:

Pros of Handling Product Photography Yourself

• You know your products better than anyone and will know exactly what to highlight in your photos
• There will be no back-and-forth between you and a third party
• You’re in complete control of the branding and aesthetic of your product photos
• You’ll own full rights to your product photos

Cons of Handling Product Photography Yourself

• You’ll spend a lot of time learning the craft of photography and photo editing
• You’ll have to spend time practicing your photography skills before you conduct your own shoots
• You may need to buy a high quality camera and camera equipment, like a tripod, lighting, and different camera lenses
• If you don’t invest the proper time and resources, you may end up with product photos that look unprofessional

Only you know what is best—or most feasible—for your business, so let that be the greatest determining factor in your decision.

DIY Product Photography Considerations

So you’ve decided to shoot your own product photos—great! There are tons of helpful guides online that will help you get started. If you’re planning on splurging on a high-tech camera, check out this post for general DIY photography best practices. If you’re planning on using a smartphone to get the job done, check out our other posts on setting up your photo shoot space & basic editing techniques and how to take product photos with your smartphone.

Hiring a Professional Product Photographer Considerations

So you’ve decided to hire a professional photographer for your product photos—also great! A professional should be able to get you the images you need without forcing you to learn an entirely new skillset. Keep these important factors in mind when choosing which product photographer to hire for your ecommerce site.

Don’t just hire someone with a good camera.

It may be tempting to ask a friend with a nice camera and a photography hobby to take your photos for you. This can be convenient and cost-effective; however, you’ll miss out on the experience of someone who has worked at and perfected the specific type of photography you’re looking for—someone who has acquired extensive knowledge of what kinds of shots businesses typically like. Once you find a professional photographer, you’ll want to look at their portfolio to ensure that they take good photos and have experience taking product pictures specifically.

Work out rights to the photos upfront.

As we mentioned earlier, some photographers retain rights to the photos they’ve taken. Consider whether you are okay with this or would prefer that your company retains those rights instead. Discuss this with the photographer before you begin working with them to make sure you’re both on the same page and won’t have any conflicts later on.

Calculate the expected cost per photo for the photographer you choose.

It’s important to know how many photos you can expect to get from a session with the photographer you hire before the fact. Let them know how many finalized photos you want to have and ask them if they have a set pricing tier that includes that number. You can calculate their per-cost image by dividing their daily or hourly rate by the number of photos they can guarantee.

Ask about photo editing skills and whether they’re included.

Not all pictures come out perfectly the way they were snapped, and almost every photo could benefit from a little bit of retouching. Find out upfront whether your product photos will be edited by your photographer, as well as whether editing is included in the price they have quoted or is offered at an additional charge.

Determine the turnaround time.

Your photographer should be able to tell you how quickly they can get the completed images to you after the shoot. This is especially important if you have a planned product launch day, as you’ll want to make sure you have time to receive the photos and upload them into the correct places beforehand.

Look for a responsive photographer.

When working on a project like this, you want a photographer who’s a true professional—someone who returns your calls and emails promptly so that you’re not waiting around for days when you need to ask a question or schedule an appointment. If a prospective photographer isn’t getting back to you quickly, take it as a warning sign and move on to someone who will.

In Conclusion

For most businesses, product images are one of the most important aspects driving whether a shopper will convert or not. For this reason, making sure you are able to obtain the best product photos for your business is a must.

Email newsletters have become the cornerstone of many great content marketing campaigns. These regularly distributed communications are used by businesses to share interesting content related to the company itself and the industry it falls under with current and potential customers. Despite their popularity and importance in maintaining brand recall and authority, it’s surprising how many bad examples show up in our inboxes every week. Below, we cover how to create and deliver an effective email newsletter.

1. Know Your Audience

The first step you’ll want to take is to define your audience. This is critical to creating relevant messages that they will actually be interested in receiving and reading. If you have a variety of customers with different interests, desires, or decision stages, consider creating separate newsletters for each. You can always reuse content across these newsletters, but each one should be tailored to the specific needs of its audience.

2. Create a Schedule

Once you know who you’re trying to reach, you can decide on a schedule—not just when you’ll send, but how often. If you’re just getting started, plan for once a month and then reassess your schedule after a few newsletters have gone out. If your monthly newsletters are too long, try breaking them up into weekly or bi-weekly sends. If you don’t have enough time or content for a weekly newsletter, try sending one out monthly.

Once you find a schedule that works best for you and your customers, be consistent. If you can, send your newsletter out on the same days and at the same times so your customers know when to expect them. The “best day” and “best time” can vary by audience demographics and industry type, so test a few options as you start out and monitor the results to determine what will work best for your business.

3. Choose a Delivery Method

Once you know the who and the when, it’s time to figure out how to send your newsletter. Most ecommerce platforms partner with a variety of email marketing services that make creating lists and sending newsletters easy. (Volusion merchants enjoy a newsletter feature built into their ecommerce platform!) If you are looking for a newsletter tool, here are a few popular options:

• Klaviyo: This tool lets you deliver amazing experiences across email and other owned channels. Pricing varies based on your list size.
• Campaign Monitor: This tool offers straightforward email marketing and automation tools with free templates and complete customization. Pricing starts at $9/month.
• HubSpot: This tool allows you to easily create, personalize, and optimize marketing emails. HubSpot offers a free option with advanced features starting at $45/mo.

4. Invest in Your Design

The best way to ensure that an opened email actually gets read is by delivering the content using an attractive design that is easy to read through. Many email marketing platforms offer free or affordable design templates that can help you create a great-looking newsletter. Just make sure to not go over-the-top with your design—when in doubt, simpler is always better.

5. Create Great Content

The first step of content planning is to make sure you’re creating something worth sending, reading, and sharing. Some great content examples include new product announcements, interesting customer stories, how-to videos, photo galleries, or anything you feel like sharing. The key here is to avoid the hard sell—focus more on interacting and sharing, and less on selling. Nobody wants blatant sales pitches in their inbox every week, and they’ll respond by unsubscribing.

If you’ve created separate lists or interest groups, honor them. Keep your content on topic and to the point. You can repurpose content from your website, blog, or social media pages,but make sure it’s meaningful to that audience—don’t just add things to add them.

Lastly, remember that you don’t have to create all of the content yourself. If you read a great article from an industry resource or get an interesting story from a customer, share that in your newsletter. Just make sure you maintain a balance between creation and curation—many readers will be turned off if all of your content comes from somewhere else.

6. Promote & Share

If you do all the preceding steps right, your email list should grow consistently and organically over time. But that doesn’t mean you have to sit around and wait for it—you can promote it yourself to increase readership. Place a prominent callout on your site inviting visitors to sign up for your newsletter with a brief description so users know what to expect. You can also include a link in your order confirmation pages or emails to invite customers to sign up. Within the newsletter itself, be sure to include links that let subscribers share articles and posts with their friends through social media and email.

7. Measure & Refine

How will you know how your newsletter is performing if you don’t measure its results? Use statistics like open rates, clicks, and bounce rate to figure out what’s working and what isn’t.

• Open Rates: You can use this metric to determine the best days and times to send you newsletters. If more users are opening your emails in the afternoons than mornings or evenings, try to time your communications for maximum effect. This can also help you determine whether your subject lines are effective or should be adjusted. Low open rates could also indicate that you are hitting spam filters instead of inboxes.
• Clicks: Include links to different pages or products throughout your newsletter, then track which ones are clicked the most. This will help you understand which types of content, topics, and messages get the most response. If you find that certain topics are shared and opened more, consider creating more content around those topics.
• Bounce Rates: This metric can help you identify potential problems with your email list. If a lot of emails are bouncing, it means that your customer list may contain a lot of old email addresses or that your subscribe function is being abused by bots.

Final Thoughts

Whether you already have an email newsletter in circulation or you’re just getting started, these strategies will help you create emails that your customers will be excited to open, read, and share. Test different send times, content, and promotional measures to find the best combination and render your newsletter a success.

The current estimated number of ecommerce sites active across the globe rests somewhere between 12-24 million. Clearly, competition is fierce when it comes to selling products online—and no matter how niche your product offerings may be, there are still other online stores competing with you for the business of your target audience. To help position your store as the top choice for all consumers, consider setting prices for your products and services using a competitive pricing strategy.

How do you develop a competitive pricing strategy?

Business owners who adopt a competitive pricing approach examine the way their competition is pricing their products when making decisions about how to price their own. Keeping tabs on your competition is a great way to ensure you know what actions to take to come out on top, and focusing on their pricing—along with what they are able to provide for that pricing—can be extremely beneficial when it comes to winning over shoppers.

If the products in question are too similar or identical, this technique can lead to price drop wars between businesses. However, when approached strategically, this does not have to be the case—offering the lowest price doesn’t have to be the thing that gives your product a competitive edge. Considering adopting a competitive pricing strategy? Read on for a few steps you should take and tips you should incorporate into your strategy.

1. Research your competition—from broad to niche.

Your first step is, of course, research. If you sell a fairly broad product like fishing poles, you can easily determine which large stores and smaller, well-known companies customers may pass you over for. But if you sell something more niche, like luxury cat bowties emblazoned with a custom family crest, you aren’t likely to have any direct competitors.

However, remember that there are always alternatives to your products that customers can choose. In the example above, for instance, you could look at businesses selling regular cat bowties, cat costumes, cat collars, or anything else that might work as a substitute for your product. Even though they may seem completely different, knowing all of your customers’ alternatives will give you more insight into how you can position your product as the best option.

2. Consider how your products compare to competitors’ products.

Next, look at your products in comparison to the products of your competitors. How similar are they? What are their major differences? Most importantly, what are their drawbacks? Once you note these characteristics, you can get to the important question: how can you position your products as “better” so you can charge a higher price that people will be willing to pay?

3. Remember to look at the big picture.

In the world of ecommerce, the product’s list price isn’t the end of the experience when it comes to cost. Shipping costs, possible return costs, timeliness of delivery, and quality of packaging all play a role in the overall value of the experience a customer is receiving as well. Consider ALL the costs your competitors’ customers would have to pay to get an idea of the overall experience buying from a competitor’s store.

How can you offer customers a better value without hurting your bottom line?

The easiest option when applying competitive pricing is to simply offer a lower one and hope that your customers are price-conscious above all else. However, you don’t have to approach it this way and negatively impact your bottom line. With the research you’ve gathered above, you can focus on creating and conveying an overall experience that is unmatched by competitors—and worth the price. Here are a few actions you can take to make this work.

1. Highlight how your product is superior to competitors’.

If your products are made from higher-quality materials, are sustainable, come with necessary accessories, etc., make sure that this information is displayed prominently and repeated throughout your site. Even if your product is priced higher, building this type of value will make it seem worth the extra cost. If your competitor’s product has a similar characteristic to yours but doesn’t mention it explicitly, your brand will come out ahead because you’ve confirmed for sure that yours does include it.

2. Emphasize how your overall experience transcends competitors’.

Do you offer faster shipping? Gift-worthy packaging? Courier delivery for locals? Specialized packaging to ensure no breakage? Make this clear so that your customers know how great of an experience you are offering altogether—again, if your competitors offer the same perks but don’t mention them, you’re already giving yourself a leg up. This is also a good place to emphasize a competitive return policy as well—since some products simply cannot be evaluated fully without being examined by hand, it helps to be a little generous here.

3. Consider how your shipping costs relate to your product costs.

Shipping cost is a common culprit when it comes to diagnosing abandoned carts, so you’ll want to find a way to either lower your costs or justify higher costs. Additionally, consider how your average product costs compares to your typical shipping rate—if a popular product is $25 but costs $10 to ship, many customers will balk at paying that much. Here are a few things you can do to avoid shipping-based objections at checkout:

• Free Shipping: If you can, offer free shipping and build the shipping costs into your product prices. This may seem like a great way to lose money, but 79% of US consumers say that free shipping would make them more likely to shop online—thanks in part to the rise of Amazon’s fast and free shipping.
• Threshold Free Shipping: If you can’t offer free shipping on every order, consider offering free shipping at a certain threshold (for example, with a $100+ purchase). This has the added benefit of potentially increasing average order values as customers add more to their carts to avoid shipping charges.
• Date-Based Shipping Costs: Some customers are willing to pay more for quicker delivery, while others don’t care how soon their orders arrive. Offer different shipping rates for different delivery dates—if you can offer free shipping on the slowest delivery timeframe, that will help convert shoppers.
• Justifying Costs: If you must charge higher shipping costs due to extenuating circumstances, tell your customers why—do your products require “fragile” packaging? Refrigeration? An overseas trek? Sometimes, context is all it takes to show people that a little extra care is worth their money.

Final Thoughts

Adopting a competitive pricing strategy is the best way to ensure that you’re losing fewer sales to your competitors. By building value into your overall shopping experience, you can even convince customers to order from you despite charging more than your competition. While you may need to eat some costs to adjust your shipping rates to appeal to more shoppers, remember that gaining a repeat or referral-happy customer will offset that cost quickly.

Everyone is attracted to a deal, no matter how large or small. By incorporating coupons and discounts into your overall marketing and pricing strategies, you’re already appealing to the minds of shoppers. But offering discounts to remain competitive without considering customer behavior, as well as the effect on your business, will only set you up for diminished returns.

To take your strategy to the next level, you must consider how your customers view discounts and offers from a higher level. Read on to learn more about how your customers’ behavior is impacted by your willingness to offer discounts, as well as the most common types of discounts—and how you can make them work best for your business.

How Discounts Affect Consumer Behavior

Beyond simply appealing to the notion of helping shoppers save money, discounts also have an affect on how consumers interact with your products and brand. Here are a few ways lower prices can impact your customers and their actions:

Discounts Create Happiness

In a simple, broad sense, saving money makes people happier—a concept supported by a Claremont Graduate University study conducted with Coupons.com. Any time you can offer your customers the opportunity to save more money than the perceived worth of a product, they experience a boost in oxytocin levels. This in turn can create a positive association with your brand when customers recall it later, as they will associate the positive feeling they experienced with your business itself.

Discounts Assume Consumers Trust You

Consumers overwhelmingly trust that any discount offered by a business is a legitimate reduction of the original price. In other words, you could technically raise the price of an item by 20%, then turn around and offer a 20% discount, but consumers rarely consider this possibility. This assumed trust in your business and the discounts it offers creates a feeling of excitement towards your offer. However, be careful not to exploit this sense of trust by offering shady deals to increase your bottom line.

Discounts Reduce the Propensity to Shop Around

Studies show that the offering of a coupon or discount can dissuade consumers from searching for the same product elsewhere. This is because discounts create a sense of urgency to purchase, which distracts shoppers from looking for other options. The impact of disincentivizing external deal-seeking is particularly important for the online business industry, in which price comparison shopping is rampant thanks to the wide availability of competitors in the digital space.

Discounts Create a Sense of Urgency

Discounts entice shoppers to purchase sooner. This can be attributed in part to the idea of scarcity, wherein consumers understand that there aren’t always discounts available to help them save money. Additionally, Psychology Today points out that “anticipatory regret” (regret from missing out on the deal) is also a huge urgency driver when it comes to promotions. Urgency is a critical element in moving customers past the purchase threshold, and can be aided with specific wording in your marketing communications.

Discounts Become Expected of Your Brand

One downside to coupons and discounts is that they train consumers to expect them when making a purchase from you. This expectation often prevents shoppers from purchasing items at regular price from your business, and encourages them to look for competitor discounts. In the realm of ecommerce, this expectation is becoming increasingly true with free shipping promotions. To help prevent customers from only purchasing with a discount, it’s recommended that you be strategic with the type and timing of your discount campaigns.

How Discounts Are Presented Change Perceived Value

In a general sense, the success of discounts relies on one common theme: shoppers don’t like to do math. Instead of crunching numbers, they’ll focus on particular figures in a discount or promotion and draw their conclusions based on that amount.

Consider this example: without doing the math, which of the following do you think represents the biggest percentage discount?

1. $200 off a $999 TV
2. A $35 pair of sunglasses, marked down from $50
3. Buy one shirt for $60, get the second for 50% off

If you selected B, congratulations—you’ve successfully maneuvered through some craftily-worded discounts to find the best deal. If you picked another answer, don’t worry—most of your customers are doing the same thing. In fact, clever marketers depend on this consumer behavior to increase sales.

Looking at option C, most consumers will focus on the 50% off figure, as opposed to doing a basic calculation to see that they’re really saving just 25% on the total purchase. Because of this, shoppers feel that they’re getting a better deal than they actually are.

The main takeaway is this: although the primary rule of economics states that consumers will act in the most rational, self-benefiting way, the way discounts are presented have a major effect on purchase behavior.

Different Types of Discounts

Now that you understand the effects that discounts have on customer behavior, you can begin planning how to make those behaviors work to your advantage. Before you begin experimenting with different tactics, however, you should familiarize yourself with the most common discount types, summarized below:

• Dollar or Percentage Off: This standard discount type is the most widely used, simply offering a reduction on the original price, such as $25 off or 20% off. These discounts can be placed on specific products or applied to an entire order.
• BOGO: Short for “Buy One, Get One,” this discount type prompts customers to purchase additional items to qualify for the deal. Examples of BOGO include “Buy One, Get One Free” or “Buy One, Get 50% Off the Next Item.”
• Tiered Threshold Discounts: These discounts encourage shoppers to increase their order value to a specific threshold to receive a discount—for example, “Purchase 4 items, get the 5th free” or “Get 15% off your purchase when you spend $150.”
• Rebates: A rebate is an amount that’s returned or refunded to customers after their initial purchase. Often used for large-ticket items, the most common form is a mail-in rebate. An example of this would be listing a price as “$349.99 after rebate.”
• Free Shipping: Increasingly popular among online business owners, free shipping fully removes the shipping cost associated with any order from the customers. To make up for costs, many merchants offer free shipping over a certain order amount, such as $49.
• Bundling: These discounts occur when businesses offer a reduced price for buying specific items together—for example, “Save $10 when you add any canvas over 16 inches to your Custom Paint Set order.”
• Free gift with purchase: Typically offered at a certain price threshold for an order, this offer incentivizes customers to purchase by offering a predetermined item for free. This item can be anything from a sample of one of your products to a branded coffee mug.

Making Discounts Work for Your Business

You’ve considered the psychology behind discounts and the type(s) of discounts you’d like to offer. Now it’s time to plan your discount, offer, or promotion from start to finish. Make sure you include these action items in your workflow as you prepare for launch:

1. Have a goal in mind: Offering a coupon or discount without purpose is guaranteed to end poorly. Are you trying to increase sales during a slow month? Promote a new product? Generate excitement around a less-popular product category? The more pointed your purpose for offering a discount, the more strategic you can be about how you offer it.
2. Examine the cost: Don’t forget that discounts can easily eat into your profit margins. For this reason, crunch the numbers internally before launching or testing any type of discount campaign so that you know what you can comfortably afford to offer, or how much of a hit you’re willing to take.
3. Consider any necessary restrictions: Make sure all of your offer details—including any exceptions to your offer—are easy for customers to identify. Restrictions can include expiration dates, dollar amount thresholds, excluded products, and more. Adding more detail will help you avoid possible conflict later.
4. Test your offer against others: The easiest way to determine which discounts will work best for your business is by testing different types against each other. A/B testing will show you whether variant A—your first type of deal—performs better than variant B—your second type of deal—so that you can plan future discounts with relevant data.
5. Analyze results: Once the window for your offer is complete, make sure you look back on how successful it was. How many customers used the discount code? How many products within a discounted category did you sell? In some cases, you will hit the mark and see many sales; in others, you’ll need to examine factors that may have contributed to low performance, like insufficient marketing or simple disinterest.

In Conclusion

Now that you have a better understanding of how discounts impact your specific audience, you’ll be in much better shape to plan for your campaigns to boost sales and customer engagement. All it takes is a little math and a bigger appreciation for the power that discounts have over your customers’ minds.

With the multitude of payment options available today, it can be difficult to keep track of all the ways shoppers can fulfill payment obligations to online businesses. At the time of this article, some of the most popular (and up-and-coming) methods shoppers use to pay for goods and services online include:

• Traditional Debit and Credit Cards (like Visa, MasterCard, and Discover)
• Digital Wallets (like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Venmo)
• Buy Now, Pay Later options (like Affirm’s installment payments and PayPal Credit)
• Cryptocurrencies (like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana)

Many online business owners assume that choosing one payment gateway or payment provider is all they need to do to open a functional ecommerce business. While this approach certainly works for some businesses, it doesn’t always make them successful or able to grow their customer base beyond existing loyal customers. Here are a few reasons why offering more than one method to pay for products online is essential for ecommerce businesses looking to scale.

Modern customers expect it, and your competitors offer it (or will).

According to research by Stripe, 85% of online customers state they would stop a purchase if their favorite payment method wasn’t available. Since each customer has their own unique preferences, businesses that only offer one method of payment are likely to inadvertently prevent or put off some shoppers from purchasing altogether.

Businesses can remain competitive by starting to offer additional payment methods now (if they don’t already) to give themselves a leg up on the competition. Many businesses are already on top of making sure their customers can pay a few different ways, but those who don’t now will no doubt add more payment methods in the future to keep up within their industries.

Smartphone sales are growing, as is ecommerce overall.

Ecommerce has been growing at an exponential pace lately, in part due to the global coronavirus pandemic reducing the accessibility and perceived safety of visiting brick-and-mortar storefronts. In addition to desktop-based sales, online purchases made via smartphone are increasing as well—Oberlo recently reported that nearly three out of every four dollars spent on online purchases today is done so through a mobile device.

While shoppers can use more traditional payment methods when shopping on their smartphones, other mobile-only payment methods are growing in popularity. For example, while Venmo was initially only used by individuals to pay their friends directly, U.S.-based businesses can now enable Venmo on their online storefronts so that mobile shoppers can use a payment method they have easy access to on their device.

It reduces dependency on a single payment provider.

When businesses only rely on one or two payment providers for their entire business operation, they run the risk of becoming inoperational if their chosen payment provider experiences issues. Even the largest and most secure services are susceptible to outages, as we have seen in recent years.

By offering several payment options across multiple payment providers, businesses can avoid a complete inability to process sales if one of their payment providers experiences an outage or issue. With several options available to them, shoppers who are unable to use the payment method experiencing an outage can choose a different payment method and move forward with their purchase.

More payment options lead to more paying customers.

Overall, offering multiple payment options to shoppers provides positive outcomes for both businesses and their customers.

For shoppers, being met with more than one payment option at the time of checkout offers several advantages:

• Convenience: Most shoppers have one preferred payment method they use when purchasing online. By accepting multiple payment methods, businesses are more likely to meet each shopper’s preferred payment method head-on, offering a valuable sense of convenience that shoppers appreciate.
• Affordability: Using some payment methods can be more costly than others—service fees associated with credit cards and the burden of paying for big-ticket items all at once can make online purchases seem less affordable. Offering additional options, such as wallet payments and installment payments, can help counter this concern.
• Security: Some shoppers are more comfortable with the security features of certain payment methods over others. By offering a variety of payment options, businesses expand the possibility of meeting the security standards that make each shopper feel more comfortable with making a purchase.

As shoppers encounter these advantages at checkout, businesses can experience advantages of their own as a direct result:

• Increased Conversions: A wider range of options can result in higher conversion rates as shoppers are easily able to use their preferred payment methods rather than moving money around or signing up for new services.
• Decreased Abandonment: With their preferred payment method available, shoppers experience fewer objections to making a purchase immediately, which can lead to decreased abandoned carts.
• Customer Loyalty: Shoppers who know they can pay the way they want are more likely to return and make additional purchases from stores that make the payment process easy, resulting in more loyal, repeat customers.

Interested in adding additional payment methods to your Volusion store? Check out our informative page about Volusion Payments Powered by Stripe and our expanded integration with PayPal that includes a variety of payment methods—including Buy Now Pay Later options, PayPal Wallet, debit and credit cards, Venmo, and more—all available to Volusion merchants.

Are you tired of spending countless hours researching your competitors? Do you struggle to create engaging social media posts that stand out from the crowd? Look no further than AI-powered tools like ChatGPT to streamline your business strategy. From identifying competitors and analyzing their products to finding influencers and creating engaging social media posts, AI can do it all… for free!  

In this blog post, we'll explore how AI can help you with competitive analysis, proofreading or editing, discovering pain points, connecting with influencers, and getting out of a social media slump. Get ready to take your business to the next level with the power of AI.

Competitive Analysis

Avoid spending hours of research to figure out what your competitors are doing by letting AI do the work for you. First, ask ChatGPT to provide you with a list of competitors in your industry (even within a certain geographic location, if that’s important to you). From there, you can find out why customers like or dislike a brand or a specific product. AI can also help you analyze pricing structures and strategies to ensure you’re setting yours competitively.

Prompt: Identify a list of competitors in [your industry] and analyze their products, pricing, and unique selling points of each.

Proofreading or Editing

While grammar correcting tools like autocorrect are dependable for basic editing, AI goes the extra mile by transforming your words to have an entirely new tone and purpose. Say you have a return policy that lacks personality. You can use AI to breathe new life into that and other typically boring pieces of content on your site. If writing isn’t your strong suit, you can start with a few key points and let AI edit it to your heart’s desire.  

Prompt: Take the following return policy and rewrite it to be more relaxed and friendly.

Discover Pain Points

Reviews are an essential part of any good ecommerce strategy. Social proof that your products are worth the hype can outweigh even the most compelling product descriptions. If your store has garnered a significant number of reviews, you can use AI to track down the exact pain points your product or service alleviates. Take this information and infuse it into your website, product descriptions, social copy, email content, and more.  

Prompt: Identify customer pain points by analyzing recent online reviews of [your business URL or product/service]

Connect with Influencers

Use AI to find influencers in your industry and narrow them down  based on criteria like engagement rate, followers, and relevance to your brand. When you’re ready to go all in, request collaborations using this list of free influencer marketing tools. These partnerships have been proven to reach far more potential customers than traditional marketing channels alone. When you’ve got your collaboration in place, be sure to  monitor and measure the results of your campaigns and optimize them for better results.

Prompt: Identify influencers in [your industry] and suggest ideas for collaboration.

Get Out of a Social Media Slump

According to SocialPilot, more than 160 million businesses use Facebook to interact with their customers. To stand out of the hundreds of social media posts your customers are seeing everyday is no small feat. Craft a basic social media post and let AI do the rest. You’d be surprised how many new ideas it can suggest – some you may have not thought of before.

Prompt: Create an engaging post around the launch of my new product [describe product or include URL] geared towards [your target audience]

Conclusion

It's important to remember that AI is a powerful tool, but it's only as good as the input you provide it. So, if you want to get the most accurate results, try to be as specific as possible with your prompts. Don't be afraid to regenerate results to find the best fit for your needs! Keep in mind that AI tools are constantly evolving, so you might see different results across different platforms. With all that being said, what prompts are you most excited to try out first and why? Create your free ChatGPT account here and get to experimenting!

Whether you are trying to save money or just embracing a DIY approach, taking product photos yourself can work just as well as hiring a photographer. And once you have set the stage and taken your shots, you may be tempted to call it a day and consider your work done. However, while your physical setup and camera settings might make for good photos, editing your photos post-shoot can catapult them from “good” to “great.” Here’s how to edit your product photos once you’re done with your photography session.

Find a photo editing software

Before you can start editing your photos, you need to find a platform on which to work. In general, computer-based editing programs tend to provide the most capabilities. Below are a few of the best desktop photo editing programs:

• Adobe Photoshop: Photoshop has (and probably always will be) the gold standard of photo manipulation apps—with the price tag to prove it. It’s capable of basic editing tasks such as color adjustment and exposure enhancement, and it can also do major tweaks like background removal, graphic design, and a whole lot more.
• Gimp: This open-source image editor is compatible with various platforms, including Windows, Mac, and Linux. Like Photoshop, it features layers, filters, and masks, and it has useful tools like saturation slider, auto white balance, and healing tool. Its interface may feel clunkier than standard photo editing apps, but it gets the job done.
• PhotoScape X: This tool is perfect for beginners who don’t want to deal with an app that has a steep learning curve since the interface is easy to use and understand. It has all the features one would expect in a powerful platform, including an intuitive editor, batch editing, collage maker, background remover, brushes, filters, and special effects.
• Canva: Canva has become a popular online software for business owners and creators. It has a variety of tools, content templates, and photo editing features. It's a great photo editing tool for beginners or store owners who are using it to create compelling graphics and ads. Some of our favorite editing tools are the Background Remover, Vibrance, and the ability to add a drop shadow element below your product.

While photo editing on a desktop or laptop is ideal, smartphone editing has come a long way and can be a viable alternative. Here are a few great smartphone photo editing apps:

• VSCO: Though it was recently part of an Instagram aesthetic craze, this app is still the go-to for a lot of photographers. Besides the filters it has become known for, VSCO has additional image editing tools that allow for a lot of precision while still being intuitive and easy to use. (Available on Apple and Android phones.)
• Adobe Lightroom: This is a slightly scaled-down version of the desktop app. It isn’t quite as intuitive to use as VSCO and doesn’t have as many filters available, but the precision is fantastic, which is perfect for detail-oriented photographers. (Available on Apple, Android, and Windows phones.)
• Snapseed: Similar to Lightroom, Snapseed allows for a few more specialized tweaks. One great feature is the “healing” tool, where you can easily remove scratches. However, if you don’t want to fiddle with all those details, you may want to stick with something easier. (Available on Apple, Android, and Windows phones.)
  

Play around with your settings

Once you’re in your photo editing program and have uploaded your images, there are a few basic settings you should be aware of. Adjusting these settings on your photos is what will really make your product photos look professional and compelling. The most important things to pay attention to include:

• Background removal: If there is a lot going on in the background of your image that takes away from the product, consider removing the background completely. Product images tend to look best against  white background, but that may not always be possible during your shoot—editing this afterward will give you a similar effect.
• Brightness: This refers to how much light is present in your photographs. Increasing the brightness will make both light and dark areas lighter, and decreasing it will make both the light and dark areas darker. Increasing the brightness of your image will hide any imperfections and give it an attractive glow.
• Contrast: This refers to the difference between lighter colors and darker colors in a photo. Higher contrast makes images appear more dramatic, while lower contrast makes them look softer. Increasing the contrast in your product photos will help your product pop against the background.
• Cropping: Make sure your product is in the absolute center of any product photos you plan on using on your site. If the top of the image has more empty space than the bottom does, cut the image so that an equal amount of empty space appears both above and below the image.
• Exposure: Similar to brightness, exposure refers to how much light is in an image; however, it does not affect the darker areas of an image in the same way. Increasing the exposure will make your lighter areas lighter, but leave the darker areas the same as they were before making adjustments.
• Saturation: This refers to the intensity of the color visible in the image. We don’t suggest playing around with this too much unless you experienced lighting issues during your shoot—changing the appearance of the color too much might give customers a different expectation of what the product looks like.
• Sharpness: This refers to how clear your image looks. Sharp images have extremely detailed contrast and texture, giving the subject a more lifelike quality overall. Increasing the sharpness of your image will help highlight the intricate aspects of your product and improve image quality.
• White Balance: White balance adjusts the colors of your image so that they appear the most natural. The vast majority of cameras will automatically adjust the white balance as you are taking photos, but sometimes your camera doesn’t get it right. Playing with this scale to get the most natural colors in your image is a quick and easy fix.

Note: For product photos specifically, we do not suggest using a filter of any kind. Product photos are meant to show the product as it is, and filters can skew the appearance too much to provide an accurate representation.

Don't overdo it

The most important thing to remember when editing your product photos is not to over edit—remember that less is more. The point of editing is to make a photograph look its best, but not to change it completely or make the product look better than it does in real life. The worst thing you can do to a product photo is edit it to the point that it looks like a Snapchat filter was used. And the more you stare at and make adjustments to your image, the farther from the actual product it will look. Begin by opening an image and playing around with many of the settings to see how they will change your image, and then revert back to the original image before you begin your actual photo editing.

Final Thoughts

By making adjustments to your product photos after you have taken them, you can improve both the overall appearance of your product through the camera lens and make your business appear more professional. As long as your product photos look great and are an accurate portrayal of your products, your sales and return rates are sure to improve.

We love to hear stories about Volusion merchants and their unique journeys in the ecommerce industry, so we’re sharing them here for you to enjoy as well. Read on to learn how Jim and Marcia Larson have found success with utilizing Volusion’s Ecommerce Solution for their three online stores (via Jim and Marcia Larson, Founders of Donor-Recognitions, Just Award Medals, and Just Braille Signs).

What inspired you to start your online store?

Around 2005, my wife Marcia and I opened an awards store located in a small strip mall. One day, a customer walked in wanting two bowling trophies. He had a limited budget of $5 each, and took over an hour of Marcia’s time before declaring, “I think instead of giving out trophies, I’m going to give each of the winners a five dollar bill instead!” I looked at Marcia afterwards in frustration and exclaimed “there’s got to be a better way to sell our product.” We hired a person to build an ecommerce store for us, but after 6 months, he was unable to execute and deliver anything close to a functional store. That’s when we took a look at Volusion, and gave it a try. Sales at JustAwardMedals.com increased steadily, as did our product offerings and manufacturing capabilities, resulting in us building two more Volusion e-commerce stores; JustBrailleSigns.com (ADA Braille Signs) and Donor-Recognitions.com (Donor Recognition Trees and Metal Plaques.) Currently, our products are manufactured in our 25,000 square foot facility and sold exclusively through our three Volusion stores.

What is your favorite part of running an ecommerce business?

What can be better than securing orders on weekends, or at night time while you’re sleeping! With the activation of our ecommerce stores, our brand and marketing reach expanded overnight from local to national. Not to mention, the process of obtaining an order, payment processing, customer communication, and order fulfillment became automated and much more efficient.

What do you like most about Volusion’s ecommerce solution?

The Volusion platform is very user friendly. I was able to create a Volusion ecommerce store myself with little technical knowledge or development experience. This saved us in upfront costs, but also saved us in ongoing maintenance costs like adding products and price changes all during a time when our relatively new business needed to save money. As time went on, our websites needed a refresh with more professional design and custom applications. We were able to afford a third-party developer and/or Volusion’s in-house services, Grow With Studio to assist. When seeking such outside services, buyers must beware! This is why we chose Volusion on our last redesign for Donor-Recognitions.com. We trust Volusion and figured there’s nobody better to work on a Volusion platform than Volusion themselves.

What is the best business advice you’ve ever received?

The success of a business is not always dependent on a great product, unique service or original idea, but rather, success can be achieved from great management of the business itself, even with an ordinary product or service.

What does the future hold for your business?

Without our Volusion stores, we would not be nearly as successful as we are today. The beauty of ecommerce is the more you put into it, the more you get back. As more competitors compete with us and often mimic our own online stores’ content and products, it's crucial that we stay ahead of the game, and making digital marketing a priority has never been more important than it is now. Along with this, we will continue to follow the advice that we can’t always rely on a unique product or service to keep us successful, but instead, ensure success through great management which includes happy employees, fantastic customer service, perfect price points, and wonderful third-party partners.

Thank you to Jim and Marcia Larson for telling us about their journey with Donor-Recognitions, Just Award Medals, and Just Braille Signs! Be sure to check out their online stores and all they have to offer.

We love to hear stories about Volusion merchants and their unique journeys in the ecommerce industry, so we’re sharing them here for you to enjoy as well. Read on to learn how Clear the Air, Inc. Online Store has found success (via Danielle Zidek, Owner of Clear the Air, Inc.).

What inspired you to start your online store?

Clear the Air, Inc. was founded with a mission to provide high-quality air filters that improve the indoor air quality of homes and offices for people with asthma and allergies. As a fellow sufferer, I understand the importance of avoiding triggers and maintaining clean air, whether at home or at work. Our filters are designed to reduce allergens and provide the cleanest air possible, ensuring a healthy living and working environment for you and your family or colleagues.

What is your favorite part of running an ecommerce business?

Our company values the ability to connect with a wide audience and provide our customers with a seamless online ordering experience. We recognize the convenience of online shopping and aim to cater to our customers' needs by offering them the option to order from the comfort of their homes. We understand that many customers prefer to order online as it enables them to conveniently check their size and browse our products at their leisure. By embracing the benefits of e-commerce, we aim to offer a convenient, efficient and user-friendly shopping experience for all our customers.

What do you like most about Volusion’s ecommerce solution?

We greatly appreciate Volusion’s ecommerce solution for its ease of use and responsiveness. Volusion’s tech support is readily available and helpful, responding promptly to any issues we encounter. In addition, we refreshed our site recently with the help of Grow With Studio, which has been a tremendous asset to our business. Overall, Volusion’s user-friendly interface, responsive tech support, and partnership with Grow With Studio make it an excellent ecommerce solution for businesses of all sizes.

What is the best business advice you’ve ever received?

The best advice I have ever received is that providing quality customer service is the most important aspect of running a successful business. At Clear the Air, Inc., we strive to make the customer feel like we are helping them choose the best option for their needs, rather than the most expensive option. Our goal is to provide excellent service that meets our customers’ needs and exceeds their expectations.

What does the future hold for your business?

As our business continues to grow, we have identified a need to expand our commercial presence in the market. We have observed that our commercial customers have been benefiting from our competitive pricing solutions and streamlined ordering process, setting us apart from our competitors. With this in mind, we have planned to expand our marketing efforts to specifically target this segment of customers, and offer them even greater value and convenience.

Thank you to Danielle Zidek for telling us about Clear the Air Inc.’s journey! You can check out everything she has to offer at cleartheairinc.com.

We love to hear stories about Volusion merchants and their unique journeys in the ecommerce industry, so we’re sharing them here for you to enjoy as well. Read on to learn how Bathroom Place’s online store has found success (via Juan Valero and Daniela White).

What inspired you to start your online store?

The main idea behind the creation of the online store was to scale our Florida-based brick-and-mortar locations. Thanks to our online store, we can now ship orders within the contiguous United States. Additionally, we wanted to be able to showcase our product lines to local clients who wanted to browse our selection from the comfort of their homes.

What is your favorite part of running an ecommerce business?

Our online store allows us to market to a much wider audience. We’re glad that it has the ability to run 24/7 without geographical boundaries or specific hours of operation.

What do you like most about Volusion’s ecommerce solution?

We love Volusion’s sleek dashboard, which makes it easy to run our store. From accepting credit card payments to adding new products, Volusion’s platform is easy to use and allows us to dedicate more time to customer service.

What is the best business advice you’ve ever received?

Be flexible and quick to adapt. Listen to your customers and create products that truly solve their problems. Invest more of the money you make back into your own brand and in yourself by learning new skills and trends to stay ahead of the competition.

What does the future hold for your business?

We will continue to focus on providing an outstanding customer experience and on our commitment to bring our clients the latest trends in bathroom design. We are dedicated to producing high-quality bathroom furniture and fixtures. We believe in offering original designs at affordable prices without ever compromising quality and functionality.

Thank you to Juan and Daniela for telling us about Bathroom Place’s journey! You can check out everything they have to offer at bathroomplace.com.

How do you ensure that every sales and marketing initiative your business implements has a direct revenue result, while still providing value to your customers?

Getting it right can be a balancing act. But when you take the time to put together a plan that incorporates the bigger picture of your business objectives and goals—and how you’re defining success to reach those goals—there is potential for everything to come together in the end.

If you’re looking for a way to get started planning ecommerce revenue initiatives, read on to find some high-level steps and best practices for small online businesses who are looking for revenue growth ideas to implement.

Steps to Plan Initiatives That Drive Revenue

1. Understand Your Business’s Position
2. Attract New Customers
3. Expand Opportunities With Your Current Customers
4. Retain Your Existing Customers

Step 1: Understand Your Business’s Position

Your first step, if you haven’t done so already (or in a long while), should be to gain a full understanding of your competitors, the market landscape, and your own business. Write down answers to the following questions to get a good sense of where you are and where you would like to be:

• What differentiates you from your competition?
• What benefits do your product(s) or solution(s) provide to your customers?
• What are your revenue goals?
• How is this broken out by revenue streams?

With these foundational understandings in place, you can begin planning your revenue-driving initiatives.

Step 2: Attract New Customers

You’ll first want to determine where your growth will come from. Can you expand your market reach? Is there an untapped vertical that you can target? Do you have a new product or solution coming out that you can promote? If your answer is yes to any of these questions, you can create segmented campaigns to reach these specific audiences.

Consider creating a list of keywords associated with your business, solution, or product. What are commonly searched phrases your customers may be typing into Google when searching for your products? You can then create a targeted campaign using Google Ads.

If you’re not sure where to start, consider setting aside a small monthly budget to outsource this task. There are so many options out there, from contractors to agencies to corporations, that can manage your ad spend. But be sure to do your research, because the budget requirements range drastically.

Alternatively, you can simply sign up for a Google Ads account and follow the steps to create a simple search campaign. Start testing out campaign creation by utilizing content you already have—sometimes this is the best way to get started and see what type of audience you can start attracting.

Creating a simple calendar with these ads campaigns along with your email campaigns will make a big difference. Such a calendar can keep you organized by giving you target dates to stay accountable and see if your efforts are making a difference in your revenue targets.

Step 3: Expand Opportunities With Your Current Customers

Next, consider your existing customer base. Look over your product reviews, talk to your customer service representatives, and ask yourself the following questions about your customers:

• Are they finding success/happiness with your solution or product?
• Do your products solve their problems?
• Is there something else you can provide to them? (For example, do you have another product that they don’t know about yet?)
• Are they taking advantage of everything your business has to offer? And if not, what additional monetization opportunities can you create for them to realize?

It may also help to send out a feedback survey so that you can get accurate information directly from the source.

Step 4: Retain Your Existing Customers

By expanding opportunities with your current customer base and ensuring that you understand your customer’s needs as described above, you’re already ahead of the game when it comes to retaining your customers. But what else can you do to keep your customers happy and coming back to your store? Consider these great initiatives if you haven’t already:

• Create or expand a rewards/loyalty program where your customers earn points for every dollar they spend.
• Start a referral program where you reward your customers for telling their friends and family about you.
• Consider testing coupon promo codes or limited promotion windows to drive business from your loyal customers.

Final Thoughts

This plan isn’t foolproof, and it’s not anything new and awe-inspiring. But following these suggestions to understand your position, attract new shoppers, grow current customer spend, and retain your customer base should help you develop successful revenue-driving initiatives.