The world of eCommerce is both hard and easy. You are not the only one with a unique product line – there would be many others keeping the same inventory and offering them at almost the same price.
While there certainly is an endless potential as to what businesses can do, inclusive of creating a fun interface, connect with potential customers and partners, engage audience in compelling content, and so on – it is applicable to all who have bought an eCommerce domain and want to make a mark.
For eCommerce businesses, there are several ecommerce strategies that come together to guarantee success – 24×7 customer service, product vendor, social marketing, etc. however, to stay alive in this industry, one of the most important things is to have a clear and updated competitor analysis. You need to know what other sellers are up to and how you can outsmart them with your offerings. It’s true that both of your end products are the same, but it is the convenience, presentation and marketing that can make all the difference.
Here are some things that you need to understand about your competitor:
#1 Understand Website Interface
An eCommerce website is the face of the business. People know the brand by the logo, by the design of the product catalog, by the shopping cart experience, by the payment gateway interface and similar elements. A good user interface and website optimization can help to boost revenue of ecommerce business. As such, a successful store needs to present all the necessary information in a smooth and fluent manner.
This includes things like product title, product features, pricing, associated services, seller information, warranty period, areas that it can be shipped to, payment options, ongoing offers, etc. all of this gives a complete picture of the product and your dedication in making life easier for the end user. One more thing here to be notice is that if your eCommerce business doesn’t have mobile application then try to build responsive eCommerce website so users can use it easily in mobile as well.
#2 Price Monitoring & Analysis
It’s only human to want more! When it comes to pricing, the more the discount/cut; the better it is. As such, customers will always prefer a shopping platform that offers the lowest prices. The modern day customer is knowledgeable enough to research through several platforms before finally ordering a product.
As such, you need to understand the pricing specs that your competitors are offering and do a better job. For price monitoring and product analysis eCommerce businesses can try DataCrops pricing intelligence tool for better competitive analysis and monitoring.
#3 Analyze organic/paid traffic & Backlinks
While search engines like Google have integrated strict content policies, eCommerce stores largely rely on paid advertisements for a substantial part of their traffic and revenue. As an entrepreneur you should understand how each of your marketing investment is contributing towards traffic generation. A great tool in this respect would be using SEMRush, helping you get a clear idea about organic/paid traffic and Ahrefs for backlink checks.
#4 Subscribe Newsletter & Blogs
Consistently watching your competitor’s newsletter and blog will help you to define your content and email marketing strategies. Just subscribe competitor’s newsletter and blog to understand their campaign; it will give better idea about their content marketing strategies. After analyzing the success of their campaign, you can include or exclude specific ideas which have better ROI.
This will also helps eCommerce businesses to build email list and marketing via visitor’s subscription. If you have email marketing budget, you can even get help from professional prospect list building agencies like aMarketForce. By hiring agency, you can divert your energy on other important areas of your eCommerce business. Newsletters and blogs are a great way to market new products and offers. Also, you get to know the people who are following you and create a marketing strategy.
#5 Set Google Alerts
Google Alerts is a great tool to keep yourself updated to your competitor’s activity. Herein, you get to know the latest strategy they are working upon and their offers and discounts on the same product you are selling.
#6 Become their customer
A great way to know how your competitor is interacting/communication/pitching/networking among its customers is to become a customer yourself. You would be getting all the offers, newsletters they are churning out and as a result will be able to come out with a better strategy to attract audiences.
#7 Watch social media activities
“Like” your competitor’s Facebook page and you get to know about all their updates and things they have been working upon. Join their social group to stay tuned to the discussions and feedback of the competitor’s customer base. As such, you will be able to know their competitive advantages and limitations and work upon your own marketing. This strategy also allows you to find target audiences. Effective eCommerce marketing can help to improve organic traffic as well as customers.
#8 Trend and Sentiment analysis
Studying the customer behavior is very important to be able to sell a product. If your niche market base demands an update in design/style/features, you got to integrate it into your products. As an entrepreneur, if you are able to match your product sentiment with that of the customer, you are immediately popular and share the bigger chunk of the market. Looking into your competitor’s strategies will give a clearer picture of the standard you need to work upon.
#9 Do Surveys
Lastly, but not the least, surveys can be a highly benefiting process in understanding your customer, meeting them and create awareness about your brand. This way, you don’t just make sure that customers get to know about a brand that is taking into account the customer preferences but also raise curiosity and deviate some traffic into your website.
It’s quite hard to survive in a purely competitive market as an online eCommerce business. While you are getting exposed to a global customer base, your competitors too are beyond geographical barriers.
