Do you feel very comfortable browsing a creative online store that made up with best online business ideas? The answer depends on how well they implement their creative business ideas into the online store to make it user-friendly. No doubt, the feeling of comfort can be easily accompanied by a very well designed online store for user experience. So, if you want to create an online store for your own, you must keep in mind to make it simple and user-friendly as much as possible.
Now, shopping trends have been changed a lot. Many consumers want to buy stuff from home. Here the opportunities automatically open its door for many of us to meet those needs. Launching a creative online store can be the best options to attract those customers who love to browse the internet to buy products. To be successful in your online business, you must apply some business strategies. The feeling of pleasure may come to a pleasant interface for customers when someone offered free shipping or gift cards from their online store. This little initiative also generates a feeling of care among the consumer’s mind.
It is easy to distinguish a mediocre online shop from a quality one, but … what makes an online store successful?
In this post, I will highlight some of the best practices that will make your customers happy and you know that a happy customer will love to buy your products or services!
7 online business ideas to create a successful online store
In below we will highlight the 7 best business ideas to decorate your online store towards your potential customers. Remember these steps are very crucial when you intend to do business in an online platform. The success of an online store depends on how well you implement and organize those best online business ideas that you have on your mind.
Let’s explore…
# 1 – A picture is worth a thousand words
If you take a look throughout the internet, you will see what stands out most are the images. Humans are beings get attracted by the visual effects in many aspects of life, including browsing web pages. The statistics emphasize that images are powerful tools to keep visitors “hooked” to a website to surf more.
Many customers emphasize that quality images of a product are more important than reviews or product information. Therefore it is very important not to despise the value of the images to attract the customers.
What tips can I give you here?
- Do not use generic images from Google or any other place;
- Use original images, either from the product’s primer, the official page or your own photographs (I will say this one is best);
- When you take photographs, think that the product is the star, it takes care of the lighting and the details;
- Use images proportional to the page (always keep the aspect ratio) and a high resolution with good compression.
A page like H&M provides multiple images from different angles in each product. So customers get the complete views of the products to determine whether they meet their need or not.
# 2 – Details absolutely everything about the product
While photographs or images of the products are essential for running a successful online store, but they will not complete the necessary impact to get the customer to buy it. You must go beyond the exposure of the product. What else can you do?
There are many ways you can bring the product to life and also more information to the potential customer. To more on that, you can make some positive reviews of them through online videos. It will show the customers the various dimensions of the products and the accessories that come with it.
Always remember, the more information the client has, the more security it will ensure while buying the products or services. It is one of the best effective ways to influence the customer’s mind.
# 3 – Do not lose the client
When you design the user interface of your creative online store, you have to access the best online business ideas to gain success. Best ways to achieve it is putting you in the customer’s shoes and try hard to imitate their online browsing experience. In navigation, many times visitors want to go back to check the previous products and if they do not have visible information to do it, they will probably get tired and leave your page.
It is quite normal when someone browsing in extensive product catalogs. We often see after going through many filters the user wishes to return to a previous state. These links are like breadcrumbs that users follow to go back in their browsing and thus they will be able to make the purchase process faster.
# 4 – Simplify navigation menus
Many successful online stores have many categories or subpages in their web pages to make those navigation processes quite comfortable. They apply some creative online business ideas when developing the web pages for their online store. And in the process of not losing the visitor, they summarize the menus in more essential categories that are then deployed.
For example, a hobby product sales site can have a simple menu with 8 categories.
However, when choosing the category Aircraft we can see a display of everything it contains (without needing access to it)
# 5 – Power searches with filters
These filters will help your potential customers to find what they are looking for in the fastest possible way.
For example, if a customer visits a site such as eBay and needs the ordering products to be ship worldwide and it has to cost less than $18. Those are the key elements for driving your creative online business ideas into a successful online store. You have to read your customer’s mind to survive in the market. This idea can be easily implemented with the left sidebar.
# 6 – Describe the product in a detailed and understandable way
There are more demanding clients now than ever. And selling products over the online store is much difficult than a traditional business platform. You must put all the necessary detail for the products you are about to sale. Remember, many sales can be lost by not detailing the product specification accordingly. If the product you sell has no description in the cover and is imported from other countries, you have to make the effort and translate the manual by writing it in the best possible way (please do not use the Google translator!).
If a product is not described with all its details and not translated or it is noted that it is translated by software then there is a high probability of losing customer satisfaction. The customers may think it gives you little importance and may end up with a disappointment. Be careful about these little things when you are trying to sell products with your online store.
See how Amazon has applied their creative online business ideas with its Dot Echo product and this is just a portion of the product description, which includes videos, comparative tables, etc.
# 7 – Histories and suggestions
Nowadays, all successful online stores seek to offer the visitor a personalized experience and the good part is, you can achieve your goal by offering a history of the searches that carried out.
Another modern feature in a creative online store is they can able to track customer purchases anonymously and based on the profile of each suggests products, they can develop their sales strategy. The idea of “related products” means the customers who bought this product may also be interested in other products related to that. This business idea is not something new and will help you to get more sales.
Bonus ideas: Customer Reviews
For buying or using products, we all get influenced by other users. And it’s a good thing for you to develop your creative online business ideas as you know how your potential customers get influenced. Word of mouth and the opinions of others are very important for many old and modern customers.
Now they do not have trust in official reviews of the products and you must take this seriously. So what can you put to build trust over the customers? Here is the key… you can generate reviews of real customers who have already purchased the products from your online store will definitely achieve a much greater impact. You can put a review section right underneath of the products.
Getting customer reviews will definitely help you to build trust and loyalty to your online store and the products. I do not recommend that they be moderate (you will have seen that in any store they tend to moderate), being able to demonstrate honesty to the buyers. Keep in mind that negative reviews are often the image of the transparency of a store.
Some creative business ideas to follow
Of course, there are much more creative business ideas that you can offer to own a successful online store.
Let’s see some last ideas:
Offer promotion and discounts:
Many customers are attracted to the products when they see promotion or discounts are going on either by season or by a special event. Try to do this kind of promotional activities more often and you will be able to attract more and more customers. Sometimes you can offer to them buy one get one free or even discounts for the second or third unit or bulk purchases are also highly appreciated by potential customers.
Free shipping:
There are many online customers leave the products pages when they see at checkout the shipping rates are too high. You should keep it as low as possible to attract these customers. If possible you can also offer free shipping through certain conditions. Some other options including “one-day shipping” or “priority fast shipping”, etc. can be very helpful. Don’t let your customer go away just because of that shipping procedure.
Payment options:
To have a variety of payment method for an online store is always appreciated. Try to arrange the payment options as much as possible to gain sales in online. Nowadays, not only credit or debit cards are used, there are PayPal or even cryptocurrencies such as BitCoin are also viable methods of payment of goods or services. Now we have seen gateways such as Apple Pay or Amazon Pay are also coming in the market to make those online payments quite comfortably. There are many great alternatives payment method you will find to attract the attention of many of your customers.
Shipping options:
Logistics is essential for a creative online store. The more alternative you have for your customer, the more they will be interested in that and for your store. But security is the key to maintain this kind of shipment process. You must select the best parcel options to distribute your products. In addition, the parcel should be reached to the customer’s hand on time. This will gain your store reputation with the customer’s experience.
Affiliate programs and referrals:
This is a very effective concept for doing online business. You can develop many creative business ideas for your online store using this concept. You can try to invest in affiliate programs that can attract new clients through your loyal customers. To do that you can offer them a certain deal or reward and also points for referring your products to other customers or promoting the store.
Ending with a positive thought…
These were the 7 creative online business ideas that I thought will be best to make a creative online store. Selling products and services in the online store can be very challenging, almost as challenging as selling products in a physical store. The only way to be successful is to keep up with the latest industry practices, without forgetting the relationship with the client. Achieving an optimal user experience through an online store which is pleasing to the eye and build with unique features, will not only make new sales but also make previous customers return.
