The ongoing health crisis turned industries across the globe upside down. For eCommerce, however, this shake-up has amounted to more good news than bad. Despite economic uncertainty, digital sales skyrocketed in 2020 as consumers quickly adopted online shopping habits. Meanwhile, brick-and-mortar stores are on a long road to recovery from months’ long closures and lockdowns.
The growth of eCommerce is a compelling reason for retailers to create their very own digital stores. If you want your eCommerce business to take advantage of a thriving market, make sure your team is not lacking these critical skills:
Marketing
Marketing is your first opportunity to create an impression with potential customers and connect with them. Without tactical strategies in place, it would be very difficult for people to know your business exists and impossible for you to make a profit.
That said, marketing is not a singular skill—there are many marketing skills to develop and apply. In any case, it’s important for eCommerce businesses to build a strong online presence. One way to do this is with content marketing, and blogs are a great example of content. Through blogs, you can solidify your branding, engage your customers, and demonstrate your industry knowledge. Blogs also allow you to do Search Engine Optimization (SEO), another marketing strategy that improves your ranking in search engines. The point of marketing is to drive traffic to your website to boost sales, which is your main goal as an eCommerce business.
Web fundamentals
Do you need to be an expert programmer to start an eCommerce business? The short answer is no. With a little web knowledge, you can build your own eCommerce page using website builders designed for digital selling. Some examples are Shopify, BigCommerce, and Wix. It’s easy enough to find an online crash course on how to build your own eCommerce page using these website builders.
However, hiring a professional website developer to create your own eCommerce platform gives you more freedom and flexibility. You can design your page to reflect your brand, control site features, and provide a more personalized customer experience.
Data analytics
Data is no longer optional for most businesses—this includes eCommerce. Gathering the right kind of information will give you an insight into what consumers want, what their behaviors are, and how you can cater to their needs.
That’s why you need an expert in data analytics in your team, at least if you want to improve your conversion rates. The data will reveal how effective specific elements in your store are in driving visitors to do what you want them to, which is to make a purchase. Understanding what to do with raw information is exactly why data experts are in high demand and online programs on data analytics are booming. Careers in data analytics span many different industries and today, the retail sector is among the main industries benefitting from professionals who can extract valuable insights from large amounts of data. Though you don’t need to be a data analyst yourself, your eCommerce business will definitely benefit from someone with this indispensable skill. A data analyst can help you solve problems and make recommendations that drive the success of your eCommerce business.
Empathy
Not all skills required to succeed in eCommerce are technical. You also need soft skills and if you can boil those down to one, it should be empathy. Empathy is, according to experts, the bridge between user experience, customer experience, and employee experience. As an eCommerce business, you need to put yourselves in the shoes of your stakeholders in order to come up with ways to address their pain points. How will your product solve their problem? How can you better their life in some way? However, this would not be possible if you neglect your employees. By catering to the needs of your employees too, they will be better prepared to meet the needs of your business’s users and customers.
Starting an eCommerce business is easy. Getting it to succeed in an already saturated market is the challenge. But if you develop and learn how to apply these skills within your team, you’ll have more chances of establishing a trusted name in the eCommerce industry.