DIY-ers have a huge opportunity to sell online. By creating something unique, they’re able to attract customers who are looking for that one-of-a-kind, handmade product. You’re not going to find too many uncommon craft items on Amazon. Tin foil, socks and electronics, sure.

But figuring out how you can put artistic skills to work can be a little bit tricky. What do you make? How can you offer something new and special? Something 500 others aren’t already promoting online.

Crafty types, take heart.

We’ve gathered 20 simple, low-cost DIY crafts that you can make and sell with minimal startup expenses. Even better: there’s no official training needed and certainly nothing requiring a professional sculptor’s skills.

Related: 10 Trending Product Ideas and Niches

Bath Bombs

Bath bombs have been rising since early 2015, and today, the market for these fizzing bathtub potions are more popular than ever before. Even more interesting: the materials that go into them are very inexpensive.

The few basic ingredients for these DIY crafts (baking soda, epsom salts, food coloring, to name a few) can be purchased in large quantities inexpensively — meaning high margins for you!

Video tutorial: How to make DIY bath bombs

Candles

Candles are DIY crafts that can be sold year-round. Since most people won’t splurge on quality candles for themselves, they make great gifts. With birthdays, anniversaries, and many holidays year round, you’ve always got a reason to keep customers coming back for more. By purchasing bulk wax and scented oils, you can create many different scent combinations in a variety of different sizes and shapes. And the really good news: You can launch a candle-making operation for under $100.

www.goinghometoroost.com

Step-by-step tutorial: Make your own soy candles

Pet Toys

The ASPCA estimates there are about 70-80 million dogs alone within the United States, and the APPA indicates that more than $60 billion is spent on the pet industry each year. Needless to say, people love their pets–and they’re happy to shell out some money to make them happy. You can tap into this massive market by creating handmade, eco-friendly toys for pets that are made from low-cost recycled materials. There are a lot of YouTube video tutorials for such DIY crafts.

www.lvlyblog.com

Step-by-step tutorial: DIY rope chew toy for dogs

Handmade Soap

More and more consumers want to incorporate safe, organic cleaning products into their daily lives. Capitalize on this movement by creating and marketing your own, made-from-scratch products, like hand soap. With minimal startup investment, you can purchase soap-making materials and start creating unique DIY crafts to sell within this market.

Like candles, every host or hostess, sister or uncle appreciates items that make them feel spoiled. With the amazing varieties of scents and dyes available, it’s easy to develop products for specific markets. In the United States, one woman makes a living using the spent grain from breweries to make soaps the brewery then brands and sells as keepsakes.

www.hgtv.com

Tutorial: DIY gemstone soap

Printed Throw Pillows

Did you know the home decor market brings in about $62.5 billion each year? It’s true. That’s why entering this segment of the marketplace makes a lot of sense — especially if you have a completely unique offering, like custom printed throw pillows. Personalized throw pillows allow shoppers and gift buyers to express their pride and identity. And you don’t need a screen printing shop to get started — you can do this at home.

Video tutorial: Printed throw pillows how-to

Resin Jewelry

Resin jewelry is simple to make, and a starter kit is relatively inexpensive. With a bit of patience and an eye for design, you can create beautiful, one-of-a-kind pieces to sell online. Plus, using clear resin, you can even offer photo-based jewelry creations that allow your customers to a favorite image into a treasured piece of jewelry.

www.brit.co

Tutorial: How to make resin jewelry

Customized Dinner Napkins or Hand Towels

For the home decorator that loves details, customized napkins or hand towels are an important design piece. With minimal sewing skills and a few low-cost materials, you can DIY beautiful table accents and customized creations for the world’s devoted home decorators. In just a few hours, you can create a large inventory of products and start selling right away.

www.abeautifulmess.com

Tutorial: Creating custom made dinner napkins

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Keychains

The keychain never goes out of style. Having long out-lived its practical purpose, today, dangling initials make it an identity piece, animals broadcast an animal lover and scenes from tourist attractions reveal the user as a traveler. Using materials like leather, canvas, plastic, or cloth, you can create keychains for customers with all kinds of interests and habits. Sell to both men and women, keeping your market large. Bonus: keychains’ small size ensure your materials go a long way.

www.sheknows.com

Step-by-step how-to: Make a DIY leather keychain

Also read: 11 Digital Product Ideas That Fit Almost Every Storefront

Tote Bags

Did you know that the average person uses about 425 plastic grocery bags a year? As more and more states strive to cut down on plastic bag use, tote bags are becoming more important than ever before. From the grocery store to the coffee shop, these versatile catch-alls have a huge market–and they’re extremely inexpensive to make. By offering a unique design or message on your tote bags, you can attract customers and differentiate yourself from competitors.

Similar to other DIY crafts on this list, making a tote bag is not hard at all.

www.etsy.com

Tutorial: Make a polka dot canvas tote bag

Holiday Ornaments or Gift Tags

For many families, buying new holiday decor each year is a tradition. More, hand-crafted items reflect the care the gift giver takes and can be re-used year after year. Holiday ornaments are just the beginning. Many crafters build from this skill to create similar products like personalized gift tags, napkin holder embellishments, etc. that sell year-round.

The best part: If you’re using a medium like clay, you can make your products for next to nothing — and your profit margins will soar.

www.abeautifulmess.com

Tutorial: Make your own clay ornaments

Planters

Who doesn’t like plants? Put them in a pretty container, and you’ve just upgraded a space. Creating unique planters that speak to different tastes and styles can help shoppers achieve the look they’re going for at home and at work, Often you can build them with low cost raw materials and still make them look chic by incorporating the different designs from contemporary/modern to Victorian or Craftsman.

www.hometalk.com

Tutorial: Create your own concrete planters

Wall Art

Who says framed prints, posters or paintings have to dominate our walls? In 2012, production of arts and cultural goods added more than $698 billion to the US economy. That’s an industry to get into.

By sharing your quirky or lovely creations or by making personalized wall decor, you allow consumers to decorate their homes with pieces that are distinctly "them." See what you can create that’s unique, marketable, and missing from the current wall art marketplace.

www.hgtv.com

Tutorial: Custom string art wall decor

Magnets

Fun, cheerful magnets are an easy gift to give — and they’re extremely inexpensive to make. In fact, you can likely create these items for $0.01-0.03 per magnet. Grab some resin, magnets, and some images or drawings, and in a few hours you can make hundreds of magnets to sell online.

modpodgerocksblog.com

How-to: How To Find Trending Products To Sell Online

Also read: 10 Trending Product Ideas and Niches in 2017

Kid’s Toys

As of 2013, the average amount spent per child per year on toys within the US was about $371, according to Statista. That’s a decent chunk of change. By creating DIY crafts like toys for children of different ages, you can share your creations with little ones who will love your products for years to come. And you don’t have to be a manufacturer, either. With some cloth, paint, and stuffing, you can become the next master toymaker.

www.abeautifulmess.com

Tutorial: Create a DIY dollhouse pillow

Electronic Accessories

Look around, and you’ll notice that just about everyone has a smartphone or tablet within arm’s reach. Because we tote these expensive pieces of tech with us wherever we go, it makes sense that people are willing to invest in a decent carrying case or accessory to keep it safe. With a willingness to learn a bit of sewing, you can create cases for electronics that are both stylish and useful for a huge market of consumers.

In a climate where boring plastic boxes are everywhere, the "rougher," the better… or at least more unusual, natural and authentic.

www.skunkboyblog.com

Tutorial: Make your own leather iPad case

Ceramics

Ceramic may seem a sophisticated art form, but you can start with making a simple bowl. You will not necessarily need a wheel and expensive equipment for firing your products: consider beginning with just your hands and home oven instead. Again, many consumers interpret this rough look as authentic and interesting compared to the perfected bowls spun perfectly with centrifugal force.

By using acrylic paint, glitter, or even nail polish, you can turn your ceramic DIY crafts into a piece of art. It can be really effortless — watch the video to see how.

Rustic Wooden Designs

If the textures and grains of wood have always intrigued you, the rustic home decor niche could be for you. Since the goal is to keep natural objects in their original forms and hues as much as possible, beginners find making modifications and simple upgrades simple. Another advantage to this crafty path is that you can discover many of your raw materials at the junkyard or thrift store.

You’ll likely need a garage to get started though. That’s how one of Ecwid merchants took off her rustic home decor business. Read her story to learn a lot of helpful insights of the home decor industry.

Jess in her home-based studio, Woodstock Rustic

Dread Hair Extensions

Dreads come back in fashion every now and again. Why not adorn the nonconformists who wear them with lovely options? Get some wooden beads, wool, cotton, silk, pewter, fabrics, and you’re ready to go.

Blankets

If you can source a good cloth or yarn supplier, selling blankets can make you a lot of money. With the right plan, a blanket can look really high-end, even if it’s inexpensive to make.

While crocheting skills come in handy, there are many more ways to make a blanket than hooking — see an example in this video tutorial.

Lip Balm

Did you know that homemade lip balm only takes beeswax, coconut oil, vitamin E and a microwave? Most balms take you less than five minutes to create. Use this video to get started, but you can easily diverge from her recipes by changing up colors and containers.

Coasters

A drink coaster is one of easy products to make and sell online. There are a lot of materials to choose from: wood, cork, textiles, plastic, glass, and even concrete. You can make coasters minimalistic or elaborate, use photos or ornaments for decoration. Also, customizable coasters can be sold as souvenirs for special occasions, like birthdays, weddings, or corporate parties.

"Don’t put that there — use a coaster!" Thanks to paranoid mom’s all over the world, the coaster business is alive and well. And if you’re dipping your toes in the e-commerce soup for the first time, coasters are an easy way to get started. They’re available in a wide variety of materials (wood, cork, plastics, textiles, glass — even concrete), and you can design them to fit a myriad of aesthetics. To give your coaster business a leg-up, add customization for special occasions, like birthdays, weddings, or corporate parties.

Cute, sustainable coasters made from scraps of fabric (Image: @sharonhollanddesigns)

Tutorial: DIY Resin Beach Coasters

Notecards

If you’re searching for an inexpensive product with wide appeal, notecards could be the way to go. Paper and textiles are generally affordable, no special skills are required for production, and because it’s paper, it’s cheap and easy to ship. Try calligraphy, stamps, dried flowers, and even simple DIY prints from the internet to create beautiful cards for your store.

Floral designs are a popular style for notecards (Image: @typoflora)

Tutorial: Easy DIY Watercolor Prints

Milk Bath

Salts, oils, teas, jellies — bathtubs aren’t just for bubbles anymore. And one of the latest trends for pampering world-wearied skin — that’s also surprisingly easy to make at home — is the milk bath. Powdered milk, essential oils, baking soda, mineral salts, and occasionally dried flowers are all you’ll need to mix up a simple batch for your customers.

But before you start thinking about how to sell your product, take a few minutes to think through the packaging. Milk bath packaging should be waterproof (for obvious reasons) and stylish enough to communicate the experience. If you use simple mason jars, decorate them with labels or ribbons. The fancier your packaging, the more likely your products are to be purchased as gifts.

Use beautiful images to promote milk baths on social media (Image: Anita Austvika / Unsplash)

Tutorial: DIY Milk Bath Recipe (Lavender Rose & Oatmeal)

Headband

Headbands are great handmade products to sell online because they’re easy to make and fun to experiment on. Not sure how to make a headband? No problem. There are plenty of tutorials online, and some don’t even require sewing. If you’ve been looking for a no-sweat craft, headbands are a safe and stylish bet.

Tip: To attract sustainable shoppers, make headbands from upcycled materials.

Headbands for newborns (Image: etsy.com)

Tutorial: Upcycled No-Sew Knotted T-Shirt Headband

Cat Tent

When you’re thinking about easy products to make and sell online, cat tents don’t usually come to mind. But they should. A fairly niche product, cat tents are simple to make, need only a handful of materials, and require little-to-no special skills. For broader appeal, offer your customers customizable options, like tents in different sizes and colors or personalization for their pet’s name.

"Adventure tents" for cats from @tinkertradingco

Tutorial: DIY Cat Bed

DIY Crafts: Your Gateway to E-commerce

Whether you’ve been crafting for years or it’s something new you’d like to experiment with, these DIY project ideas offer some simple ideas that you can dive into right away. From toys to candles, the possibilities are endless: get inspired and start your e-commerce business with Ecwid. Today, consumers are moving away from mass-produced goods to those created with love by individual crafters.

Once you’ve made your crafts, be sure to check out these beginner business resources:

• What Your Business Plan Should Look Like: Sample
• Registering Your E-commerce Business: LLC or Corporation?

If you’ve got website traffic, it’s because you put in the work to make it happen. You found a good product. Set up your store. Figured out social media and search engines. And probably a whole lot more. And after all that hard work, you don’t want shoppers to leave your store empty-handed.

So what do you do when website traffic is growing, but your sales aren’t? Well my friend, you’ve come to the right place.

We’ve spent years studying product pages to understand what makes visitors convert, and we can’t wait to share that learning with you. Read on to discover simple product page changes you can make to improve your website conversion rate.

Struggling to get traffic to your store? Check out 12 ways to make your first sale for some pro-tips on driving website traffic.

Before Your Start: Understanding Conversions

A conversion is a specific customer action on your website that’s considered valuable to your business. For example, a click on the "Add to Cart" button, a subscription to your newsletter, or a completed purchase. So measuring conversions allows you to see how effective your product pages are at encouraging those desired actions.

In mathematical terms, the conversion rate is the number of desired actions on the webpage divided by the total number of visitors. So if your product page receives 100 visitors per day and 10 of them purchase the product, the conversion rate of that page would be 10%.

A conversion can refer to any action that contributes to the ultimate goal of your website — from adding products to completing a purchase — and site owners will generally identify several conversion factors to measure.

Conversion rates by traffic source according to a study of Episerver retail clients (1.3 billion unique shopping sessions across 159 unique retail and consumer brand websites)

To understand whether your product page needs improvement, measure its conversion rate against the average conversion rates for stores in your niche. To do that, you’ll need Google Analytics (the most popular free tool for tracking website data). If you’re an Ecwid merchant, you can check out our article to learn how to connect your Ecwid store to your Google Analytics account. If not, check out these instructions from Google Ads Help.

With Google Analytics reports, you’ll get information about your customers’ behavior, like how many people visited your store, how many of them completed a purchase, and if not, what pages they visited last before they left. With this information, you’ll be able to see what pages you can and should optimize to increase your overall conversion rate.

For another interesting look at your website performance, you can use tools like Hotjar to create a heat map, which is a graphical representation of where your visitors click, move, and scroll on your website.

Heatmaps show what page elements are clicked the most

Heat maps are great for understanding things, like:

• Which product photos visitors click the most
• How far down the page visitors scroll
• And whether or not visitors notice important details, like free shipping offers, security badges, and "Buy" buttons.

Understanding how visitors behave in your store and interact with product pages can offer valuable insight to improve conversion rates.

How to Increase Conversion Rates on Your Product Pages

On any product page, your goal is to provide customers with enough information to make an informed decision about purchasing your product. A product page should showcase your product, explain why it’s great, and provide evidence to back it up.

OneSpace’s infographic on the types of content that are most important to customers

Here are some key tips to keep in mind when creating a product page:

1. Set a competitive price

With the advent of browser plugins like Priceblink, online shoppers can compare prices from different stores in an instant. Knowing what similar or alternative products are selling for will help you set your prices competitively to increase conversion rates.

Of course, lower prices aren’t always the right answer. Underpricing your items can make your product more widely affordable, but it might also give the impression that your products are inferior to higher priced options. Conversely, higher prices can give the impression of better quality, but it can also deter thrifty shoppers looking for the best deal. So the most competitive price is the one that aligns most closely to what your target audience desires and expects.

To determine the right pricing strategy for your store:

• Define your target audience and develop customer profiles
• Study competitor prices
• Then test a variety of prices to choose a strategy that will allow you to position your store competitively while maintaining profitability.

To make things a little easier, take a look at some of the most common pricing trends. And remember to do your homework by checking in with your competition regularly.

More: 3 Bulletproof E-commerce Pricing Strategies to Consider for Your Online Store

2. State your value proposition

A value proposition is a summary of why people should buy your products and services over another. Your value proposition should be specific, memorable, and unique to you. In 1-2 short sentences, shoppers should be able to understand how your store differs from your competition and what makes your store the right choice for their specific needs.

Usually a value proposition is placed on the homepage of your website, like in your store description or reflected in your brand’s tagline. However, your product pages might also benefit from the inclusion of your value proposition. In your product description , you can explain what benefit your product provides to customers and why no one else can do that product or service quite like you. However you choose to say it, make sure it’s simple and concise.

A product name can also reflect a value proposition (Taylor Family Farm)

More: How to Create a Strong Value Proposition for Your Online Store

3. Include multiple high-quality images

The product picture is the first thing that catches shoppers’ attention. According to Clickz, it’s also the longest-viewed element on the page. People spend about 20% of their total time on product pages reviewing product images, so it’s important to invest max effort into acquiring great product photography.

When shopping online, customers can’t physically interact with a product, so product images are essential to determining if a certain product is right for their needs. Every product page should feature high quality and aesthetically pleasing images that showcase the product from a variety of different angles and in a variety of different use-cases.

If you’re new to product photography, check out our blogs on how to take beautiful product photos as well as how to avoid some of the most common product photography mistakes, like bad lighting and distracting backgrounds.

Focus-Fixers uses multiple images to showcase their products

More: Where to Find Models for Your Fashion Brand

4. Try 3D product pictures

A few high-quality images might be enough to give shoppers a general sense of your product, but that doesn’t mean that’s all you can —or even should — do.

The more customers can see of your product, the better. So blow your customers away with 360º product photography. Not only will 3D images let shoppers see your products from every possible angle, but they’ll also help you stand out from your competitors, which is essential to improving conversion rates.

5. Add cinemagraphs

Сinemagraphs are photos with one or more moving elements. The animated pictures have a surprise element which makes people stop and stare.

This cinemagraph highlights water-proofness of a jacket (Julien Douvier for Maje X K-Way)

Cinemagraphs aren’t a new trend — in fact, they’ve been around in some form or another since 2011 — but surprisingly, very few websites actually use them (probably because they don’t know how to get one). Now, they may look complicated, but don’t be intimidated: check out our blog to find out how to DIY your very own cinemagraph.

6. Add a product video

Videos are a helpful way to let customers experience your products before they buy. Videos are useful when you need to:

• Show products in action,
• Or educate customers on how to use a product.

Asos adds videos to their product pages

Consider Playtronica for a second. Playtronica sells unique products — playtrons — that allow customers to play music on any surface. If someone sees their products for the first time, they probably won’t know how to use them. So Playtronica uses video to demonstrate to customers exactly what their products do and how they work. Without a great video to communicate the unique benefits of their products, it would be difficult for Playtronica to sell their unique products successfully.

7. Make prices more attractive

Nothing drives sales quite like a deal. So here are some tips on how to use sales — or the appearance of one — to increase conversion rates in your store.

• Set sale prices. Even a small discount can positively influence customers’ decisions to buy. In Ecwid stores, products with sale prices get a special label to immediately lure customers’ eyes, which in turn, helps to increase your website conversion rate.
  

  
  Just Saiyan Gear makes their sale prices more prominent with a contrasting label
  

• Create bulk discounts — Let’s say you sell a product for $10. With bulk discounts, if a customer buys five items, you might drop the price per item to $9. So the more they buy, the more they save. Win-win.
• Allow installment payments — Installment payments are particularly effective if you sell expensive products that can be difficult to afford outright. Maybe you sell handmade wooden chairs for $400 a piece. A lump $400 payment might be too much for some shoppers, but an option to make four monthly payments of $100 could be just the right incentive to get that purchase over the line.
• Set up a currency converter if you sell to multiple countries. If foreign shoppers can see prices in their native currency, it will be much easier for that shopper to make an informed purchase decision quickly.

8. Display the number of products in stock

Create scarcity and make your products more desirable by displaying an inventory level indicator on your product pages. Bonus: you won’t have to deliver the bad news to customers when a product runs out just as they’re about to buy.

Miu Mau shows the number of items in stock under the price

9. Show shipping options

If your shipping is fast and/or free, don’t neglect to shout it from the rooftops on your product pages.

Messages like, "Order before 3:00 pm, and get it tomorrow," can go a long way toward encouraging shoppers to convert.

And if you’ve got a free shipping offer, you can add a special icon to your product page to make sure shoppers don’t miss it when they’re browsing. Install this free app to set up a free shipping icon for your Ecwid store.

A free shipping icon on a DAK’s Spices product page

10. Add live chat to your store

Does live chat increase conversion rates? Yes, and experts agree.

Shoppers ask an avalanche of questions about products, shipping, payment, and more. The easier you are to contact, and the faster you can respond, the more trustworthy you’ll appear as a seller. And that trust can have a direct impact on a shopper’s decision to purchase.

Add live chat to your website to let customers message you right from your product pages and get answers in real-time to the questions affecting their likeliness to convert. The fastest way to add live chat to an Ecwid store is by connecting your store to Facebook Messenger:

• Messenger is one of the most popular global messaging apps, which means most shoppers will already know how to use it.
• Conversations are saved in Facebook Messenger’s inbox, so you won’t miss important messages if you’re offline when a customer reaches out to you.
• And you can even add Facebook Messenger live chat to your store in just a couple of clicks.

Customers can see the message button under the product description

11. Provide the right personalization options

When talking with our support team about ways to increase conversion rate, they told us a story about an Ecwid merchant who reached out to their team because his store didn’t have any sales. He was selling shoes, and while he could see traffic was coming in, he wasn’t getting any real conversions. Upon further investigation, the support team discovered that his product pages didn’t have an option to select shoe size. Interested customers were leaving his website because he hadn’t set up customization options.

If you sell products that offer a variety of configurations, make sure to include that in your products’ pages by offering customers the ability to customize their purchase, for example choosing the size, color, pattern, or material. If you’re on an Ecwid store, you can set this up easily with the help of options and variations.

Don’t forget to add pictures of your various options to your product pages. For example, if you sell t-shirts in multiple colors, make sure you show your customers what those t-shirts looks like in each color. Don’t leave anything to the imagination. The more informed your customer is, the more likely they’ll be to convert.

The Little Boat House provides a variety of options to make every purchase feel special

12. Add evidence

One of the ways to increase conversion rate on a product page is to demonstrate that your store is trustworthy. Buying online can be scary because it’s impossible to interact with a product before placing an order. So it’s your job to make your customers feel secure while they shop. To do that, customers need to know that the products they’re buying are high quality and easy to return. Here are some elements that will help to communicate that:

• return & refund policy
• warranty period
• product certificates and quality labels, bestseller marks
• safety precautions
• reviews, testimonials, and case studies
• FAQ

Cakesafe’s evidence in their product description

13. Add emotions

A while back, researchers analyzed case studies from 1,400 of the most successful advertising campaigns over the last 30 years. They compared two types of campaigns: those that relied on emotional appeals and those that relied on rational information. What they found is that the campaigns that relied purely on emotion performed twice as well as those based purely on rational information.

Creative copy in a product description on Fenty Beauty

We’re all only human. And as much as we like to pretend that we make all our decisions logically, more often than not, emotion plays a bigger part than we’d care to admit. So it’s important to make your product page appeal to emotions as well as logic. Opt for lively pictures and words that make customers react: laugh, be surprised, pause to think, etc. If you use pop-ups or banners, this applies to those too.

Informal and emotional language on a banner from Too Cool for School

14. Test different page layouts

The design of your product page also plays a role in conversions. For example, a wide layout may discourage customers, while contrasting elements can attract interest (that’s why call-to-action buttons should use colors that contrast with your website background).

One of the most popular frameworks for designing a web page is the "F"-pattern. The "F"-pattern of web-design is based on the fact that users tend to read content in an "F"-pattern when browsing a web page. While this pattern is a great starting point, don’t forget to test multiple layouts to find the design that best resonates with your specific audience.

Heatmaps from user eyetracking studies by Nielsen Norman Group

15. Use images of people

Fun fact: According to Instagram researchers, pictures with faces are 38% more likely to receive likes than photos without faces, based on a study of more than 1 million Instagram photos. More interestingly, the number, age, and gender of the faces in the photos didn’t impact the likelihood of receiving likes. So, when it comes time to add images to your product pages, opt for photos with people.

Now, this is probably obvious if you sell clothes or fashion accessories, but other stores can benefit from this insight as well. Showing how people interact with your products can also help educate customers on your products’ use-cases.

Sephora uses pictures with people to show how products look in real life

16. Offer more payment methods

One of the most important steps to improving conversion rates online is making the purchase process easier for your customers. While some shoppers prefer to pay with a card, others might use PayPal. If you’re not sure how your various customer segments like to pay for purchases online, it might be a good idea to set up a quick poll. The more you know about your customers’ preferences, the better equipped you’ll be to create a product page that increases conversions.

Pro tip: Don’t wait until checkout to show your customers your payment options. Add icons or messages about popular payment systems like PayPal and Afterpay or logos for bank cards like Visa and Mastercard. And if you add payment options in Ecwid, some icons will display on your product pages automatically.

Les Fermes Valens displays payment options on each product page

17. Keep it simple

It’s common advice, but one far too many websites fail to apply: keep it simple. In a brick-and-mortar store, shoppers can usually find their way to the products and cash register fairly easily (hopefully). It’s when things get complicated that people start to head for the parking lot. Online stores should strive for a similarly intuitive experience.

Too many ads, too many buttons, too many steps to place an order and your customer’s attention will ultimately be drawn away from the purchase you’re trying so desperately to get them to make. If you want to improve your website conversion rate, don’t distract customers with anything but what you need to get them through the checkout process.

Too many distractions can ultimately confuse customers

Upgrade Product Pages to Increase Conversion Rate

Following this guide will clear a path between your customers and their purchase. You’ll likely see an increase in time spent on page in addition to growth in those all important conversions.

If after implementing this guide, you still haven’t seen an increase in conversions, you may need to attract higher quality website traffic, i.e. an audience that actually needs your stuff. Make conversion-optimization an ongoing process, but don’t tie yourself to what you’ve read here. Keep testing and finding what works for your store, and with a little determination — and maybe a few cups of coffee — you’ll be on your way to improving conversion rates in no time.

Customers asking to buy now and pay later? No wuckas! Afterpay approved merchants can now accept payments in their Ecwid E-commerce store with Afterpay.

One of our most requested payment integrations, Afterpay, is a buy now, pay later solution that’s earned a reputation among innovators in the Southern Hemisphere and beyond. This booming startup originated in Australia where it boasts 6.1 million active customers globally, including healthy operations in New Zealand, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

If you’re ready to offer a buy now, pay later for your customers, we’re pleased to say that the wait is over. Introducing Afterpay.

Afterpay Is More than a Payment Option

Afterpay isn’t like most payment products.

Benefits for Afterpay customers:

• Customers can pay for their orders in four fortnightly payments.
• No additional fees if paid on time.
• Customers can enjoy instant approval and shipment.

Afterpay on the Ecwid store’s checkout page

For merchants, Afterpay transactions work the same as any other payment provider. Merchants fees start at 6%+ .30 per transaction + GST for every transaction made via Afterpay. And the best part, merchants receive payment upfront (less Afterpay’s fees), whilst Afterpay continues the payment cycle with the customer, making Afterpay a convenient payment option for both customers and merchants alike.

Customers get the option to pay for their purchases in instalments while getting their item up-front, and the merchants enjoy up-front settlement. The freedom that Afterpay provides can help to support incremental growth for Merchants through loyal customers, higher conversions and bigger carts.

Ecwid splits the price into four instalments on the product page when Afterpay is connected

Afterpay has grown to prominence in Australia and is expanding fast in the US and the UK, winning FinTech Organisation of the Year two years in a row! After a barrage of requests to integrate the famed new platform with Ecwid, it’s safe to say that Afterpay is poised to be one of the next big things in the world of online payments.

How to Add Afterpay to Ecwid

First, you’ll need to create a retailer account with Afterpay if you haven’t already:

1. Complete your Merchant Enquiry Form.
2. Afterpay will verify your business and send you a link to their onboarding portal where you will sign a Merchant Agreement with Afterpay.
3. Afterpay will conduct its compliance checks.
4. Your application is approved and passed to their integrations team.

Next, you’ll need to set up Afterpay in your Ecwid store:

1. Open the Payment tab in your Ecwid control panel.
2. Select "Afterpay" from featured payment options or find it in the "Other payment options" drop-down (depending on your store-country).
3. On the setup screen, add your Afterpay account credentials (Merchant ID and Secret Key — you can find these in Settings →  Integrations in your Afterpay account.)
4. Save your changes.

Afterpay setup in Ecwid Control panel → Payment

Keep Your Payment Options Flexible

Afterpay has transaction limits meaning customers can’t use it for purchases under $10 and over $1,000.

While Afterpay may be the preferred payment option for your Ecwid store, you can offer customers additional options for purchases outside the Afterpay transaction limits.

Afterpay can also adjust the transaction limits individually for your store.

Simply follow the steps above to set up Afterpay and you’ll be able to find your transaction limits on the setup page of your Ecwid store.

Connect more ways to get paid to ensure that every customer can complete checkout regardless of their order value. With over fifty integrated payment options for your Ecwid store, you’ve got plenty of choices.

This year, we wrapped up a special gift for our Ecwid Merchants: introducing the Ecwid Gift Card tool. Now you can sell gift cards in your Ecwid store out of the box! No third party apps required. Set up gift cards once, and Ecwid will automatically generate a unique digital card for each of your gift card buyers to use on purchases throughout your store.

And did we mention it’s fast? Set-up your gift cards in less than 10 minutes, and help your customers take the stress out of holiday shopping.

Read on to find out everything you need to get started.

When You Should Offer Gift Cards

Always. All the time. Forever. Selling gift cards is a great way to stimulate growth and reduce costs for your business:

• Grow sales. Not only are gift-cards the single most requested gift, but 59% of gift card recipients will actually spend more than the amount on their gift card, according to Blackhawk Network research.
• Reduce returns. Sixty-three percent of shoppers display interest in receiving a gift card in exchange for a returned retail item. That’s good news for you as a merchant. By offering gift cards, you ensure that spent money stays in your business, even if a specific item gets returned.
• Cut expenses. $1 billion in gift cards go unused every year, which means some gift cards you sell will never get redeemed, and you’ll still get paid.
• Reduce lost sales. When you run out of inventory on a hot item, you can close the sale by offering a gift card to redeem when the item is back in stock.

How to Create a Gift Card

To set up gift cards, go to Control panel → Catalog → Gift Cards. This feature is available on all Ecwid premium pricing plans. A small commission will be applied to merchants for sold gift cards based on pricing plan:

• Venture — 2%
• Business — 1%
• Unlimited — 0%

Default gift card setup

From here, you can create your gift card immediately if you’re content with the default settings. Otherwise, you can customize your gift card by changing its name, amounts, or image that will be used in the storefront; simply click "Change Settings" to get started.

The following fields can be customized:

• Amounts: Add several gift card amounts to give your customers a variety of options. You’ll see three standard options provided in your default store currency: change these amounts, add more, or both. Offering flexible gift card values will help you close more sales by providing more options to suit your customers’ budgets (customers aren’t currently able to set their own amounts).
• Card name: You can give your card any title, but remember to keep it clear and concise for customers and search engines.

•  
• Image: Ecwid provides a default image that you may choose to change to align to brand guidelines or seasonal aesthetics. The easiest way to design your gift card is to use free online tools like Canva. Many of these tools offer free templates that can be customized to fit your vision without any design skills.

  
  A default gift card image

•  
• Card description: Ecwid provides a default description that can be customized at your discretion. If you decide to customize your description, use this space to briefly describe the terms of your gift cards — expiration dates, payment terms, what can be purchased with a gift card, etc).

  When you’re done, add a meta description in the SEO tab of the gift card setup section to optimize your gift card page for search engines. Think how customers would search for your gift card on Google and use those keywords, for example:

•  
• Expiration: By default, your gift card will be set to "Never Expires," so make sure you’ve made any necessary updates before enabling your gift card.

  Note that laws in different countries may vary, and you should confirm the laws in your area before altering this setting. For example, in the US, gift certificates and store gift cards can’t expire for five years, according to the Federal Credit CARD Act of 2009. If you decide to change the expiration period, that change will only apply to cards sold after the change was made.

•  

Things you don’t need to worry about when selling gift cards:

• Tax: Gift cards themselves aren’t taxable, so a customer doesn’t pay taxes when they purchase a gift card. Instead, taxes only apply when someone uses their gift card to shop in your store.
• Shipping: Gift cards are an e-good that’s delivered by email, so shipping is disabled by default.

When you’ve finished customizing your card or decided you’re content with the default settings, click to preview your card, and then save it. On your storefront, you can find your card in your product catalog (in the category of your choice) or by using a special link in the footer (if you’ve selected to display it there).

Add gift cards to your footer menu in one click

The footer icon in the storefront

Terms of use

• You can only add one gift card per Ecwid store, but you’re free to set as many values as you like within that one card.
• Some payment providers, like WePay, may not allow selling gift cards on their gateways. Check your payment provider’s terms before launching your gift card, and connect additional payment options if necessary (like PayPal).
• Per Facebook’s Terms of Use, gift cards cannot be exported to Facebook or Instagram.
• Customer cannot pay with a gift card if their order contains another gift card.
• Store discounts will not apply to gift cards. Gift cards can only be sold at their par value.

Learn more in the Ecwid Help Center.

How Customers Can Use Gift Cards

When a customer purchases a gift card in your store, they’ll get an email with a unique code. This email will act as their gift card and should be shared with the gift card recipient.

An email with a gift card code

To use their gift card, the recipient will need to enter their unique code at checkout:

Applying gift card at checkout

Card balance

When the recipient of the gift card places an order using their card balance, there are two possible scenarios:

• Order total is less-than or equal-to the card balance: The card owner won’t have to make any additional payments, and any unused gift card balance will be available for their next order.
• Order total exceeds the card balance: The card owner will need to pay for the remainder of their purchase using one of the payment options available in your store.

A purchase under the gift card balance/a purchase over the gift card balance

What’s Next: How to Sell More Gift Cards

So now you know how to set-up your gift cards. Here are some tips to make them more visible to your customers:

• Select to display the link to your gift card in the footer, so it remains visible while customers are browsing your store.
• Use the "Buy Now" button to add your gift card anywhere on your website (sidebar, homepage, blog posts, etc.), or partner with another store and add your gift card to their partner website.

  
  Ecwid’s "Buy Now" Button

• Provide a link to your gift card in your email templates / newsletter.
• Tell your social media followers that you’re offering gift cards.
• Add a reminder at checkout for customers who didn’t notice your gift card in the storefront.
• Promote your gift cards as a last-minute gift idea right before the holidays.

Ready to get started? 🎁

Instant Site is a beautiful, easy-to-use one-page website that сomes free with every Ecwid account. And it just got even better with the ability to add multiple customer testimonials to your Instant Site.

Testimonials offer social proof that your website — and your products — can be trusted by shoppers. The more you have, the more trustworthy you’ll appear. Sounds good, right? Read on to find out how to add testimonials to your Instant Site and learn why testimonials matter for your bottom line.

In this post, we’ll cover:

• How to Add Testimonials to Ecwid Instant Site
• Why Adding Testimonials to Your Site Is Important
• Other Locations to Display Social Proof
• How to Get More Customer Reviews

How to Add Testimonials to Ecwid Instant Site

For the Customer Testimonials section, choose short reviews (think the length of a tweet), that clearly articulate the main strengths of your product or service.

So what makes a good testimonial? According to a survey of internet users in 2018, 60% of respondents said that information regarding product performance was the most helpful when reading reviews, while 55% of respondents found purchaser satisfaction to be the most helpful. And don’t forget to ask your customers for a picture to make your testimonial more authentic.

Once you’ve got your testimonial, it’s time to publish it on your site. With Ecwid’s latest update, you can easily add up to four testimonials to your Instant Site. Testimonials are automatically arranged on your storefront under the Featured Products section based on how many you add.

Two testimonials:

Three testimonials:

Four testimonials:

To add testimonials to your Instant Site:

1. Go to your Control Panel → Website.
2. Click on "Edit Instant Site design and content."
3. Choose "Customer Testimonials."
4. Move the "Show section" slider to make testimonials visible on the site.
5. Click "Add More" and fill in the customer’s name, quote, and caption. Click on "Change Photo" to upload a customer’s picture.
6. Click "Save."

When editing the Customer Testimonials section, don’t forget to delete the demo content so that it’s not displayed alongside your real reviews on your storefront.

Testimonial editor, Ecwid Instant Site

Why Testimonials Matter

Since customers can’t physically interact with or sample your products like they would in a brick-and-mortar store, reassuring them with social proof is vital when you’re selling online.

• 92% of shoppers hesitate to make a purchase that doesn’t have customer reviews. They may hold off on making a purchase decision until they can do more research… but once they leave your site, there’s no guarantee they’ll come back.
• 53% of internet users stated that product reviews are the second most important attribute of an online shopping experience.

Customer testimonials add more social proof to your business, which makes your store look more reliable. This, in turn, increases sales, particularly for higher-priced and "risky" products.

Impact of user-generated content like customer reviews and ratings according to online shoppers (Statista)

Other Locations to Display Social Proof

Depending on the ways you sell, you can display customer reviews on your website, product pages, or right in the Google search results.

Your own website

If you don’t use Instant Site and you sell with Ecwid on other websites, you can use different apps or plugins to place testimonials in your store. Here’s how:

• WordPress: use WP Customer Reviews, Strong Testimonials, Google Reviews Widget, or a variety of others.
• Wix: add a testimonials list or strip, or install apps like Customer Reviews or Comments. Find more apps here.
• Joomla: install extensions like JLex Review or JoomTestimonials.
• Squarespace: add product reviews, use widgets like Testimonials Slider, or create a testimonials slider yourself.

You can also install the Trustami app from the Ecwid App Market to collect ratings and reviews from all platforms into a single location to simplify management and presentation.

Product pages

Let customers add reviews for specific items on your product pages. These reviews will be displayed on their appropriate product pages regardless of what website you’re using. And reviews within a product page can even lead to an increase in conversion rate for that specific product. Use tools like the HelpfulCrowd app to collect and manage your customer reviews.

Customer reviews on a CakeSafe product page

Google My Business

If your store has a physical location, you’ll definitely need a page on Google My Business. A Business Profile lets you manage how your business appears on Google Search and Maps, and can even be used to keep customers up-to-date on changes or share offers. More importantly, you’ll be able to collect customer reviews on your Business Profile, which gives you one more opportunity to create trust with your audience.

You can see ratings and reviews on a store’s Business Profile

More: A Local SEO Strategy for Your Online Store

How to Get More Customer Reviews

Ask and you shall receive. Happy customers are often excited to leave reviews, so don’t hesitate to ask! The easiest way to get a review is to send an email to your customers letting them know what you’d like them to do.

To maximize your chances of a favorable review, check out these tips:

• Keep your email short and polite. First, thank the customer for their purchase, then ask for their feedback. Personalize the email, if possible, with little touches like the customer’s name or the specific items they ordered.
• Use short, clear subject lines like "How did we do?" or "We’d love to hear your feedback!"
• Specify if you want customers to leave a review of the product they purchased or your company as a whole (or both). And don’t be afraid to ask for feedback on a specific product feature. For example, if you sell bikes, you could ask a customer how comfortable she feels after a long city ride. Narrow your question to make it easier for your customers to formulate a smart answer.
• Timing for a review request is also important. Reputation.com recommends asking for a review either immediately or soon after a customer has completed their purchase. Similarly, Reviews.io suggests anywhere from 7 to 30 days after a purchase has been completed. As for time of day, ReviewTrackers recommends sending your email between 2-3 PM and 6-7 PM.
• To sweeten the deal, you can also offer your customers a discount on their next order in exchange for a review.

You can use your website and social media pages to let customers know where they can send feedback as well. And don’t forget to peruse customer review sites like Angie’s List and Yelp to find additional feedback on your business.

Once you’ve got some solid reviews from your customers, choose the most informative to add to your Customer Testimonials section on your Instant Site.

More: How Product Reviews Lure Customers to This One-of-a-Kind Business

Use Testimonials to Get More Orders

It only takes a couple minutes to add testimonials to your Instant Site, but it can have a tremendous impact on your sales. Whether you’re in the middle of the holiday buying season, launching a new online store, or just trying to break new ground in your market, testimonials create trust, encouraging skeptical window shoppers to become happy customers.

Subscribe to the Ecwid blog so you never miss an update, and get e-commerce tips and interviews delivered right to your inbox.

According to a recent study by Walker Research, 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience. When a business goes the extra mile for their customers, those customers are more likely to return the favor with future purchases and referrals.

Thinking about a New Year resolution to improve your customer experience? We put together a list of our top-10 low-maintenance ways to make your store shine bright in 2020.

Enable Next-Gen Storefront and One-page Checkout

In 2018, we presented merchants with our Next-Generation Storefront — a drastically revamped shopping experience that included a new product catalog; new product, cart, and checkout pages; and a new modern design that offered one-click customization options for product pages, optimized specifically for smartphones and tablets.

Enabling Next-Generation Storefront will also give your customers a simplified checkout flow, reducing friction and making it even easier for shoppers to complete purchases in your Ecwid store. Transparent one-page checkout displays cart contents with all product and order info, while a new form at the top of the checkout page collects customer emails to help you build your email list.

Customers see their next steps on the checkout page

And it doesn’t stop there. Enabling this new storefront also unlocks other new features like Multilingual Store and Product Filters as well as helping your store meet accessibility guidelines by making your content reachable and visible to screen readers and keyboard users.

Apart from the latest features and designs, Next-Generation storefront will be a requirement for stores subject to GDPR (data protection law) and Strong Customer Authentication (regulation for online payments) in order to remain compliant while doing business in participating countries. So whether you’re in it for the features or by government mandate, this is one update you shouldn’t hesitate to enable.

If you set up your Ecwid store before 2018 and think you might still be using the old storefront, you can enable the Next-Generation Storefront in the "What’s New?" section of your Control Panel.

Read more about the advantages of Next-Generation Storefront and One-Page Checkout.

Display Your Store in Multiple Languages

If you sell globally or in a multilingual country, you can set up your storefront to display your content in up to 51 languages based on the user’s browser language.

When you add languages to your store, your store labels and email notifications are automatically translated into your selected languages. You can also add translations of your product and category titles and descriptions in your Catalog settings to create a complete storefront that speaks your customer’s language.

If you signed up before April 2019, enable the Multilingual Store feature in the "What’s New?" section of your Control Panel.

Read how to set up multilingual storefront and convert international customers.

Integrate Your Store with Facebook to Reach More Customers

The roughly 2.45 billion active Facebook users around the world spend an average of 38 minutes on their Facebook apps every day. And more and more, a portion of that time is being used to discover new products and services. So make social selling part of your 2020 strategy with Ecwid’s premium Facebook Shop integration.

In just a few clicks, and you can add products from your Ecwid store to the Shop section on your Facebook Page. Worried about managing multiple sales channels? Don’t be. With Ecwid’s Facebook Shop integration, changes to your product catalog will be automatically synced across your website and Facebook.

Our integration even makes it easier to run effective advertising campaigns, allowing you to quickly create Facebook ads that showcase your products.

A Facebook product page for  Sweet Memories Gift Shop

Set up your Facebook shop in the Sell on Facebook page of your Control Panel.

If you set up your Ecwid store before 2018, you’ll wanna check out the "What’s New?" section of your Control Panel first to enable the latest Facebook Shop integration.

Need help taking your store to Facebook? Visit the Ecwid Help Center.

Recover Abandoned Carts with Automated Emails

Over 69% of online shopping carts are abandoned, but that doesn’t mean they have to stay that way. Remind customers about the products they left in their carts with automatic emails.

Cart recovery emails are specialized emails that remind shoppers who’ve added an item to their cart to return to your store to complete their purchase. And the best part? You don’t even have to send them yourself. With Ecwid, abandoned cart recovery emails are sent automatically if you turn on automatic cart recovery in the Abandoned Carts page of your Control Panel. Feel free to edit the template of your email to fit your brand.

Abandoned cart recovery is one of the easiest ways to increase sales among interested shoppers. And with Ecwid, all you have to do is turn it on.

If you’re already using automated abandoned cart recovery emails and you enabled them before 2019, you can switch to our newest abandoned cart email template for an optimized layout and call-to-action buttons next to each product. Here’s how it looks:

The latest version of Ecwid’s abandoned cart email template

To enable the new abandoned cart email template:

1. Go to your Control Panel → My sales → Abandoned carts.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "Edit template".
3. Click on "Revert to default" under the HTML template block.
4. Customize the email subject line and content and save your changes.

Learn more about recovering abandoned carts with automated emails.

Customize Instant Site for Your Brand

Ecwid Instant Site is a life-saving one-page website, packed with easy design tools to help you create and launch a website fast without the stress of coding.

If you want a website that will flatter your brand without selling your left arm to hire a developer, then Instant Site is for you. And best of all, it comes free with your Ecwid account. Here are some of the awesome features waiting for you in Instant Site:

• 30 ready-made design themes
• A variety of cover and product catalog layout options
• Updated Testimonials section to add up to four testimonials

To update your Instant Site, go to the "Website" tab in your Ecwid Control Panel and click "Edit."

Find the best theme for your store in the Themes section

Add Gift Cards to Your Store

As one of our newest features, gift cards is one tool you’ll definitely want to consider for 2020.

There’s a reason gift cards were one of our most requested tools among Ecwid merchants.

• Gift cards are the single most requested wishlist item
• Gift cards reduce returns by enabling recipients to get exactly what they want
• And about $1 billion in gift cards go unredeemed every year, delivering sales at no cost to merchants

Interested? Go to Control panel → Catalog → Gift Cards to set up gift cards for your store.

You can edit the product details of a gift card the same way you would for a physical product

Learn more about setting up gift cards and using them in your store.

Add Messenger Live Chat to Your Site

Adding Facebook Messenger live chat to your site is the easiest way to meet shoppers’ demand for fast and convenient customer care. Facebook Messenger is simple to use, and with 1.3 billion users each month, it’s already the most popular live chat app on the market.

Curious if customers care about live chat? Here’s a couple stats from a recent survey:

• 56% of respondents said they would rather message than call customer service
• And 44% of respondents said that having the ability to talk to a seller in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important services and online store can offer.

You can help customers make a purchase decision during a live chat conversation

Read how to connect and use Facebook Messenger live chat in your store.

Make Your Store More Trustworthy

With new data protection laws like GDPR and CCPA, data privacy will continue to be a hot topic in 2020. With 53% of global internet users concerned about their online privacy and another 71% of US consumers worrying about how brands collect and use their personal data, it’s critical to demonstrate that your store can be trusted with customers’ personal information.

If you’re using Ecwid, we make that a little easier by offering bank-level security with PCI DSS Level 1 certification, so that merchants and customers alike can feel safe about their data.

To help customers feel more secure shopping in your store, here are a few quick tips:

• Add a checkbox with "Terms and Conditions" at checkout.
• Enable the GDPR cookie consent banner. If you plan to do business in the EU, you’ll want to ask your store visitors for permission to use cookies.
• Install the TrustedSite app. Once you pass the app’s security tests, your website will receive the TrustedSite trustmark, which let’s customers know that your business is legitimate and reliable.

Add More Testimonials and Reviews

Reviews aren’t just nice to have: according to a survey by Statista, as of 2019, online shoppers expect an average of 112 reviews before they’ll trust a product they found online.

Here are a few ways to add more reviews to your Ecwid site:

• Add a Testimonials section to your Instant Site. To get started, go to your Control Panel → Website, and click on "Edit Instant Site design and content." Then choose "Customer Testimonials" to add up to four testimonials to your website.
• Install the HelpfulCrowd app to allow customers to rate your products and leave reviews on product pages. Curate and share your favorite reviews in your testimonials section on your website, on social media, in digital ads, and more.
• Install the Trustami app to collect your product ratings from more than 20 platforms (including eBay, Etsy, Facebook, Amazon, and Google Shopping). Manage, publish, and promote, all in one place.

Customer reviews on a Kissed By A Bee product page

Add the Pinterest Tag to Your Store to Advertise on Pinterest

An impressive 66% of Pinterest users have bought a product after seeing a brand’s pin, which is reason enough to make Pinterest priority for many businesses. But Pinterest also has the unique ability to create social media content that lives on long after the useful life of its rivals. Where most social media content may "live" for a couple of hours, Pinterest pins can win repins and engagement for months after an initial posting.

And as of 2019, Pinterest is helping businesses get even more love on their platform with Shopping Ads from their self-serve interface.

Add the Pinterest Tag to your Ecwid store to get the most out of your ads. The Pinterest Tag is a tiny analytic tool that allows you to target your store visitors, find lookalike audiences, and track return on ad spend from your new campaigns. And with Ecwid, set-up is as easy as a couple clicks.

Learn more about adding Pinterest Tag, using Pinterest Tag for advertising, and creating great Promoted Pins.

Basic Pinterest ad format with a single featured image. Video and carousel ads are also available (Image: Pinterest)

Never Miss an Update

Missed any of these features? Here’s a few tips to make sure you’re always up-to-date on the latest and greatest:

• Make a habit of checking the "What’s New?" section of your Control Panel for new features and updates. You can read short descriptions of new features and enable them on the spot.
• Subscribe to the Ecwid E-commerce blog newsletter to stay in the know and get tips for better online selling delivered right to your inbox.
• And add Ecwid Help Center to your bookmarks so you’re always ready when you need help managing your store.

So, is your store ready for the 2020 makeover? What changes are you planning to do? Feel free to share and discuss your ideas in the comments!

At Ecwid, we want to make selling online easier for small businesses. That means building the very best small business e-commerce platform for our merchants, then providing the tips, insights, and best practices you need to get your business off the ground.

And 2019 was no different. All year long, we’ve kept the Ecwid Blog stocked with new articles and how-tos to make selling online easier. Missed a few? Here’s a recap of some of our favorite content from 2019 to help you launch your online store and start selling more in 2020.

DIY Your Own Product to Sell Online

When it comes to what to sell, our Ecwid merchants can get pretty creative. And sometimes they’re even downright inspiring. Like, Joe Kuelker, an Ecwid merchant who created miniature replica insulin devices for toys and stuffed animals to help children like his son with diabetes feel better about their condition.

HeroicKid

And Joe’s just one of thousands of merchants selling incredible home-made products online with Ecwid E-commerce. From store setup to advertising, if you’ve got a great idea for a DIY product, we’ve got the resources to help you sell it.

Not sure what DIY crafts make cool products to sell online? Browse our list of DIY product ideas.

Design an Awesome E-commerce Website

If you’re new to e-commerce, building an e-commerce website сan be a daunting task. Maybe you’ve heard that you’ll need a big budget and a developer. Maybe you’re nervous because you don’t know how to code. The truth is, you don’t need a developer or advanced skills to create your own e-commerce site. With a little motivation and a spare hour, you can build a functional — and totally free — e-commerce site with your own two hands.

Curious? Check out our guide to Ecwid Instant Site, a one-page e-commerce website that comes free with every Ecwid account. Here’s what one Ecwid merchant had to say about Instant Site:

"Ecwid is an amazing platform that allows anyone to easily start an online business. I created my site using Ecwid Instant Site, and it couldn’t have been easier — after about an hour of playing around with the software and customizable templates, I had a gorgeous online shop that was ready to use. ' — Lara, founder of Miku Deco.

Miku Deco

Already have a website? Add Ecwid E-commerce to start selling on your website, social media, and more.

Make Your Products More Appealing

Knowing you’ve got a great product isn’t enough to be successful online. You need to be able to convince others that you’ve got a great product.

Take kombucha for example. Kombucha has been around for centuries, it’s relatively easy to produce at home, and until recently, it’s grossed out the majority of the western world who’s known of its existence. But in just a few short years, kombucha has seen a meteoric rise in popularity, from a fringe wellness drink for the health-conscious elite to a homeopathic super-serum for anyone who wants to be on the right side of the trends. And 'how did this happen' you may ask. Presentation.

The sight of homemade kombucha is enough to make you nauseous. But slap a label on it, and that beautiful branding is enough to flip the script and make you thirsty for its health benefits.

Don’t underestimate the power of branding. Find out how to make your products more attractive to your customers.

Write Flawless Product Copy

With all the challenges of launching a business online, it’s no surprise that product-page copy gets neglected. If you’re selling blue t-shirts in four different sizes, how much could there be to say, really?

But product copy does more than simply spelling out a product’s features. Great copy can actually help you sell more.

To help you uncover the thin line between good and bad copywriting, read this confession from a professional writer as he describes the most annoying product copy mistakes and how to avoid them.

Get Your First 1,000 Store Visitors

Once you finally cut the ribbon and open your online store, it’s unlikely that customers will discover it on their own. You’ll need to put in some work if you want to start driving visitors to your new store.

Traffic growth is one of the main benefits of digital marketing, and on the Ecwid E-commerce blog, you have an amazing opportunity to learn it from the pros.

Listen to this episode of the Ecwid E-commerce Show as hosts Jesse and Rich chat with fellow marketers from Evergreen Profits about their best practices for driving the first 1,000 store visitors. (No time to listen? Check out the transcript!)

Make Money on Instagram

According to Hootsuite, 200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile every day. Want to get started selling on one of the top social media platforms and grow your sales on Instagram? Read our guide to monetizing your Instagram and find out how one Ecwid merchant scaled her flower business from local to national with Instagram.

Learn How to Advertise Your Products Online

This year, we published a series of articles to teach beginner merchants how to start marketing their products with digital advertising. If you want to learn more about online advertising but aren’t sure where to start, check out our series:

• Intro to Advertising: Where to Begin When You’re a Beginner
• Facebook & Google Retargeting: How to Turn Your Visitors into Customers
• Facebook Pixel Strategies to Help You Run More Targeted Ads

Get Inspired for More

The work of an entrepreneur is never done. Want more ideas for growing your business in the new year? Take a peek at our list of great places for online store inspo.

Want to stay in the loop in 2020? Subscribe to our blog and listen to the Ecwid E-commerce Show for weekly insights and learnings from industry experts and fellow entrepreneurs!

Once you have set up an e-commerce store, the next step is, of course, to focus on driving sales.

Successful e-сommerce retailers don’t just launch and hope everything goes well — they have multiple marketing initiatives up and running that get their stores in front of new audiences, and ultimately driving sales, at all times.

If you’re a little short on ideas for making your first sale online, we’ve put together a list of thirty methods you can test right away. Let’s jump right in.

1. Start an Email Newsletter

Collecting email addresses for your email newsletter allows you to stay in touch with potential or past customers on an on-going basis. The ROI is significant, too: According to data from Campaign Monitor, you are 6x more likely to get a click-through from an email than a Tweet.

campaignmonitor.com

So how can you start gathering email addresses? Think about:

• Including an opt-in on your e-сommerce site
• Asking customers to opt-in during the checkout process
• Using a lead generator (like a 10% off coupon) for those who sign up
• Including an opt-in link in your email signature

Motivate people to subscribe to your newsletter: offer some kind of value for signing up. For example, it can be a chance to win a free product every month or week.

These are just a few ways you can get started–but as your list of subscribers begins to grow, you’ll be able to stay top-of-mind with shoppers who end up coming back to your online store over and over.

Learn more: 10 Smart Ways to Grow Your Newsletter List

2. Create a Blog

A blog is a place for you not only to promote new products and to share sale information, but it can help you build a relationship with customers by giving your audience a behind-the-scenes view of your online operation. Show your processes for shipping orders, talk about how you come up with new ideas for products, and let customers come to know you as the face behind the business.

Need an example? Online retailer Ugmonk wrote a blog that showed a product being made from start to finish.

3. Assemble a Lookbook

If you have a physical product that is associated with a lifestyle brand (think clothing, accessories, shoes, etc.), a lookbook that showcases your product in an aesthetically pleasing context helps buyers imagine themselves owning and using your products.

It’s a step beyond the standard product shot, and it gives shoppers an opportunity to see your products in action, too. Need an example? Check out L.K. Bennett’s online lookbook.

Learn more: Where to Find Models for Your Fashion Brand

4. Partner with an Influencer

Think about who your audience looks to for advice about your type of product–is it a blogger, a podcaster, a news outlet, or something/someone else? Outline some potential partners and reach out to propose a contest, giveaway, or product spotlight that can get your online store in front of a new, interested audience.

Not only is this a form of social proof that helps validate your online offerings, but it takes some of the slimey-feeling sales pitch out of the customer acquisition equation. Essentially, you’re letting someone else sing your praises–and that’s a great way to make sales online.

Bloggers Emma and Elsie at A Beautiful Mess partner with clothing stores to do "Sister Style" posts, which show them wearing products they’ve been given as part of a paid advertisement. In these posts, they link out to the stores that provided the items–which makes it easy for their blog readers to purchase them, too.

Send free samples to influencers within your industry or a related industry. When they review your product, you’ll get more traffic and followers as well as approval from experts in your industry.

You can also ask industry influencers for an interview. This way you may get content for your blog and gain new followers.

Also: How to Use Micro-Influencers on Instagram to Boost E-Commerce Sales

5. Test Facebook & Instagram Ads

Facebook (which now owns Instagram) makes advertising simple–and allows you to determine your budget, run time, target audience, and ad design. Not many other advertising enable so much customization, and the nice thing about ads here is that you can stop them at any time.

Plus, with Facebook’s built-in analytics, you can see real, tangible results for your efforts to discover what makes an effective ad. And since Instagram is now under the Facebook, including your ads in this network is just a matter of clicking a checkbox, as seen below.

Create Facebook ads that speak to your target audience and have a compelling CTA for customers–and then watch the sales roll in.

Read more:

• Intro to Advertising: Where to Begin When You’re a Beginner
• Facebook & Google Retargeting: How to Turn Your Visitors into Customers
• Facebook Pixel Strategies to Help You Run More Targeted Ads

6. Become a Source on HARO

HARO, AKA Help a Reporter Out, is a place where journalists and writers go to find sources for their articles. By becoming a source there, you can find opportunities not only to be quoted online and in print, but you can also share your expertise and build up authority as an expert in your field.

HARO sends out queries three times a day to source inboxes, and then you have the opportunity to respond with your best pitch. Over time, your successful responses will help you get your brand in front of new audiences–and you’ll have some positive SEO benefits from that as well.

Need more proof? Browse their success stories.

7. Participate in the Spaces Where Your Customers Spend Time

This last suggestion is a big one, because it’s how you’ll organically build relationships with customers. Find out where your target market spends time (is it a Reddit thread? A Twitter chat?) and participate there without making a sales pitch. Be resourceful, be kind, and strive to make friends in these spaces.

It’s what Gary Vaynerchuk did to grow his online wine business–which is now a multi-million dollar company. He spent time sharing his expertise, and people grew to trust him as a resource within his niche.

tv.winelibrary.com

This is a lesson straight out of Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Over time, people will come to know who you are and what you do–and they’ll take action without you having to ask them to. You’ll earn sales and referrals, which is good news for your e-commerce business.

Also, check out trade shows or even local flea markets and farmers’ markets. This way you can sell directly to your potential customers. Prepare discount coupons or stickers to give away for subscribing to your email newsletter or social media pages.

Learn more: How to Find the Best Place for Your Pop-Up Store

8. Throw a Contest

Contests are great for promoting your business. You may catch the interest of potential customers and gain new subscribers. Choose a prize worth joining the competition, for example, a gift card or a collection of products. Make sure the rules are clear and simple to follow. Promote your contest or giveaway on all your social platforms, even if it’s just Instagram-based, for example.

Explain or show your subscribers how you chose the winner. If it’s a contest — explain the criteria you based your decision on. If you use a randomizer app, make a video of the process. This way you ensure your followers’ trust.

Giveaways are popular on Instagram — you can throw them for any occasion you like (Image: @insidecrochet)

Also read: 25 Proven Contest Ideas to Promote Your Online Business

9. Master Your Networking Skills

Business networking is vital for attracting new customers or partners and understanding the market. It helps to make your business more visible and gain valuable contacts. You can network both offline (at conferences, business meetings, coworking spaces) and online. Social media is called "social" for a reason: join Facebook groups relevant to your niche, or participate in discussions on forums.

However, networking is not about handing out your business cards at events and subscribing to experts in your industry. It’s about cultivating long-term and mutually beneficial relationships with people who can be helpful to your business.

Check out our detailed guide to business networking and make your first step, or listen to this episode of the Ecwid E-Commerce Show, where two Ecwid merchants share how contacts helped them to manufacture their unique product from scratch:

10. Explore Pinterest

50% of people bought a product after they saw a promoted pin and 93% of pinners use Pinterest to plan their purchases. So don’t miss the chance to expand your audience. First, start a business account (it’s free), customize your profile with board covers and titles, and make sure your bio is SEO-friendly.

Pay attention to Rich Pins — they provide more information directly on a pin. There are four types of them, and your choice is a Product Pin. It shows the price and where to buy your product. Learn how to add rich pins here.

The pin shows the price and informs pinners that the item is out of stock

Learn more: Run More Effective Ads With Pinterest Tag for Your Ecwid Store

11. Work With Google Shopping Ads

Google Shopping Ads uses targeting, bidding, and keywords to help you expand your audience and create advertising campaigns. It seems to be quite profitable: for every $1.6 businesses spent on Google Ads, they make an average of $3 in revenue.

The good news is that Google Shopping is integrated with Ecwid. You can run automatically optimized Google Shopping Ads even if you’ve never dealt with it before. All you have to do is follow three simple steps: choose your target audience, choose products, and start your campaign.

This is what a Google Shopping Ad looks like to a potential customer

Also read: Google Shopping: Now Fully Automated and Optimized With Ecwid

12. Consider Affiliate Marketing

81% of brands use affiliate marketing. It allows earning commissions for marketing another company’s products. In other words, you pay someone for every visitor or customer brought to your website by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.

You may partner with bloggers or other companies from your industry. For example, you can provide your partners with special banners that link to your store. They can even place your entire store on their websites. The advantage is that you promote your products only to interested people and pay only when you get results.

GiftIdeaGeek is an Amazon affiliate website. It uses humorous descriptions and focuses on geeky and pop culture products that match their niche

Also: How to Set Up an Affiliate Program for Your Ecwid Store

13. Add Your Products to Facebook

To increase visibility for your new store, add your products to your Facebook business page. With Ecwid, it only takes a couple of clicks.

Once you’ve connected your Ecwid store with your Facebook business page, a new "Shop" tab will allow Facebook’s two billion active users to discover your products:

This will also allow you to quickly advertise your products on Facebook using Facebook’s powerful audience targeting tools. Learn more about Facebook tools available from Ecwid.

14. Find Distributors for Your Products

Struggling to get your first sale? Let someone else make it for you.

Distributors are third-party professionals who work with retailers to get your products into their stores. The right distributor partner can dramatically increase your sales by helping you reach untapped markets and create new channels for sales and promotion.

Bear in mind, however, that adding more middlemen can also eat into your profits, so it’s best not to look at this as a long-term strategy. But when you’re just starting out, distributors can be a great way to spread the word about your products and build a loyal customer base to grow your operations.

Read more about finding distributors for your products.

15. Open a Popup Store

Who says you can’t build an online audience face-to-face? If you sell locally, a temporary popup store in a smart location like a street market or festival can be a quick way to jumpstart your sales.

Having a physical interaction with your customers offers more than an opportunity to interact with your products. Someone who’s met you in person is more likely to create buzz about your store by sharing the experience with friends (granted the experience was a positive one). According to a survey of Ecwid merchants, word-of-mouth marketing (one customer sharing their experience with another) was the second most common way to promote a small business.

Read about an Ecwid merchant who managed over 70 popup stores in one year.

16. Ask Friends to Write a Review

Family and friends are often your first customers. Leverage those relationships by asking your personal network to spread the word about your products on social media, in person, and even on popular review sites. Just five friends promoting your products on their social channels can be enough to win those elusive first sales.

You can also offer your friends free products in exchange for detailed reviews. When free stuff is on the line, you might just be surprised at how helpful those friends can be.

17. Sell on Instagram

With one billion users, Instagram isn’t a bad place to start when you’re looking to secure some quick first sales.

Instagram is a prime channel for building an audience, getting early attention for your products, and leveraging influencers to build buzz around your brand. But there’s a few things you’ll need to do to make Instagram work for your store.

• First, fill out your profile completely; if there’s a form available, you should be using that real estate to build your brand and drive users to your site.
• Second, determine the best hashtags for your audience. What hashtag(s) is your ideal audience following? Use those to get your posts in front of them.
• Finally, post regularly with attractive images that feature your products. Instagram is a visual platform, so make sure that the visuals you’re using are good ones.

To streamline your sales, you can also connect Instagram shoppable posts. Shoppable posts allow you to tag products in your images with specialized links to purchase right from Instagram.

Considering Instagram? It’s best to create your Instagram profile early — even before you launch your store. The earlier you can get your Instagram rolling with attractive content, the faster your first sales will be. That being said, it’s never too late to start!

Learn more about selling on Instagram:

• Sell on Instagram: How Ecwid Merchants Can Now Reach 1 Billion Shoppers
• 10 Free Ways to Get More Followers on Instagram
• 8 Photography Tips for a Stunning Instagram Business Profile
• 5 Easy Steps to Organize your Instagram Profile for Business

18. Start a YouTube Channel

Becoming YouTube-famous isn’t exactly easy, but if you understand the trends (and put in the hours), you can — at a minimum — harness its power for your first sale.

Unboxing videos are a popular trend on YouTube and a perfect approach for e-commerce stores.

Source: Google

If you have a friend with a strong YouTube channel, ask them to shoot an unboxing video of your product. Or (if you have the money to spare), hire an influencer to create a sponsored video of your product.

And don’t limit yourself to unboxing videos either: there are a variety of YouTube trends you can leverage based on the types of products you sell, from makeup tutorials and recipes to how-to’s. Browse Think with Google, Google Trends, and your competition to understand what’s working on YouTube for similar brands.

Source: Think with Google

If you’re fairly new to YouTube, you’ll want to do some research before you jump in. Get started with resources like this YouTube guide from Hubspot.

19. Share a Great Story

Online competition is heavy, and the average attention span of internet users is falling. So, in order to engage your audience, you’ll first have to win their interest. And that’s where your brand story comes in.

Why should someone buy from you? What makes your business different? What are your company’s values? Your brand story is how you differentiate yourself from the pack. It’s who you are as a company — and that’s something shoppers are interested to know.

You might not have the resources to build a robust brand identity out of the gate, but there are several steps you can take to get your brand headed in the right direction:

• Create a strong value proposition
• Tell your story on your "About Us" page
• Use consistent, high-quality photography
• Present your products in consistent packaging (even if it’s simple)

As you begin to develop your brand, don’t be scared to showcase your strengths. A well developed brand story that tells customers exactly who you are and what you’re about can mean the difference between winning your first sale and being lost in the noise.

20. Add Links to Your Store

In order for a shopper to make a purchase, they’ll first have to find your store. And one of the most obvious ways to increase your store’s visibility is to create links.

Here are some great places to add links to your store:

• Your personal email signature
• Social media profiles (including personal)
• Guest blogs you’ve written for other websites
• In a QR code that can can be printed and placed on your car or in other conspicuous locations
• In comments on forums and groups

21. Participate in a Group Giveaway

Brands often collaborate with bloggers and influencers to drum up buzz with prizes and giveaways. Participation usually requires the audience to interact with the collaborators on social media in a specific way in order to be eligible for a prize. This gives new stores an opportunity to gain new followers, likes, and even make sales as a prerequisite to participation. And they may even stick around after to continue interacting with your brand if your profile has valuable content to offer.

To get started, you can brainstorm your own group giveaway or join an existing one. If you opt to join in on a giveaway that already has some momentum, look for giveaways united by a specific topic (for example, "eco giveaway") so that any prize will be relevant for the target audience.

22. Support a Charity Organization

Charitable giving is a great PR opportunity and a chance to make your first sale — especially if you’re a small business that relies on your local community.

To make your donations work for your business, choose your organization to donate to wisely. You can pick a local organization or something larger, but make sure the values of the organization resonate with your brand values.

La Mer donates to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation

23. Offer Buy Now, Pay Later

Whether or not a shopper completes their purchase depends — at least in part — on how convenient your payment options are at the time. If your products are more expensive, customers may hesitate to complete their purchase, particularly if you’re a new store with a short track record.

Fortunately, Ecwid offers "buy now, pay later" through Afterpay. Connect your Ecwid store to Afterpay to let your customers pay for their orders in four two-week payments with no additional fees when paid on time.

Learn more about Afterpay and Ecwid’s other 50+ integrated payment options.

24. Sell on Facebook Messenger

Once shoppers start discovering your new store, they’ll probably have a few questions before they’re ready to make a purchase. And if you want to get those sales over the line, you’ll need to be able to answer those questions quickly and efficiently.

Email is reliable but response times are often delayed, and too many phone calls is likely to frustrate both you and your millennial customers. That’s why we added our Facebook Messenger integration for Ecwid storefronts.

FB Messenger in the Ecwid storefront

About 1.3 billion Facebook users are already using Facebook Messenger to communicate with friends and brands, so chances are your future customers will be there too.

Learn more about what FB Messenger can do for your store and how to get started.

25. Run a Live Stream Event

We’ve mentioned how social media can create early buzz around your products, and one great way to do that is through live video. Facebook and Instagram both offer live video tools that can be used to create brand experiences to connect with your customers.

To get the most out of live video, think of a fun activity like a lottery, contest, lecture, etc., that your audience would be excited to tune into a live stream to get. Then announce your live stream event early and promote it every day leading up to the event to drum up interest and engagement.

If you’re using your live stream to drive sales, create an exclusive coupon code that you can share with your audience at the end of your live event. Remember to keep your stream short and fun, and get audience feedback to improve future events.

26. Prepare Gifts

In e-commerce, discounts are a dime a dozen. So what happens if you switch up your strategy and offer a free gift instead of an equivalent cash discount? In one study, researchers selling lotion found they sold 73% more bottles by offering a bundle as opposed to a discount of equal value.

More often than not, customers will be more attracted to an offer that provides an extra item for free than an offer than simply provides a partial cash discount — even if it’s monetarily equivalent. So take some time before your store’s grand opening to consider what type of offer will be best for your new customers. Is it an extra product for free? An exclusive gift? What one offer can you make that’s relevant to your store and provides significant value to your customers?

27. Offer Free Shipping

Once a shopper arrives on your website, you want to do everything in your power to convince them to make a purchase. Ecwid is already optimized to encourage conversions, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a few extra tricks you can use to help ferry window shoppers through the checkout process. And that’s where "free shipping" comes in.

Roughly 84% of shoppers are more likely to complete a purchase with a store that offers free shipping. In fact, shipping costs are the number one contributor to abandoned carts.

Promoting free shipping on your website empowers customers to add products to their carts and complete their purchases without friction, knowing they won’t be surprised with any ancillary charges during the checkout process. When they see the price, they can make a purchase decision right then and there.

And free shipping doesn’t have to mean lower profits either! Check out some of our guides like six free shipping strategies for help, then learn how to market your free shipping offer for maximum results.

28. Publish an FAQ Page

Sometimes customers have questions. And more often than not, they’ll want answers to those questions before they’re ready to complete a purchase. The easier it is for customers to find adequate answers to their questions, the more likely they’ll be to convert. By creating a resource with answers to commonly asked questions, you can help shoppers find important information quickly, and get back to the business of shopping in your store.

Not sure what to include on an FAQ page? Not to worry. Check out our guide to creating an FAQ page for ecommerce stores.

29. Offer Free Returns

According to recent reports, as many as 1 in 3 purchases will be returned. But that’s no reason to give up the fight. In fact, if you manage returns well, you’ll have the opportunity to not only save that sale, but also win customer loyalty for future purchases. And, of course, one of the best ways to manage returns well is to offer easy free returns for your customers.

What’s more, free returns give new customers the confidence to buy by enabling them to test your products risk-free. This is especially valuable for a new business with limited reviews.

If free returns are out of the question, consider offering gift certificates in exchange for returned items. You’ll be able to recover the sale, and offer your customers an opportunity to get the product they want.

And don’t forget to provide a clear return policy that’s easy to find in your online store.

30. Promote Your Products at a Local Market

Crafty, handmade, local, organic — if any of those words describe your business, you might want to consider trying your hand at a local market. Farmers markets and artisan fairs are a perfect opportunity to get your products in front of potential customers to secure a few easy sales.

To bring your market customers online, print flyers with discounts and a link to your store, keep business cards or QR codes on hand, and remember to create an experience your customers will want to share.

Make Your First Sale Online: Try New Methods

If you’re not already executing some of the strategies outlined here, today is the day to start. In no time, you’ll be well past your first online sale and busy packaging up orders.

If you’re past this point in your business, what are some of the ways you made your first sale?

If you’ve managed your business for any length of time, you’ve probably picked up a helpful hint or two along your way. And depending on how helpful those hints actually are, your customers might even be willing to pay for them.

Ebooks are a simple way for online merchants to monetize their knowledge and experiences by creating a digital product that can be easily purchased and downloaded from their online stores.

If you’re just starting out with digital products, you might not know exactly how to approach selling ebooks. In this post, we’ll walk you through how to create an ebook, connect you with helpful resources to simplify the process, and get you started down the path to offering your very first ebook product in your online store.

Related: 11 Digital Product Ideas That Fit Almost Every Storefront

Five steps to selling an ebook:

• Select a Topic for Your Ebook
• Write Your Ebook
• Format Your Ebook
• Sell Your Ebook
• Promote Your Ebook

How to Select a Topic for Your Ebook

The first step to creating a successful ebook is to decide what your ebook will be about.

Generally, ebooks teach a reader how to do something. Unless you’re a novelist or a poet, you’ll want to consider how your skills and personal experiences could be used to provide actionable value to your readers and how that value can relate back to your store’s main product offerings.

For example, if you sell paper crafts, a relevant ebook to sell online might be something like: "Affordable DIY home decor with paper crafts."

www.favecrafts.com

Tie in personal examples from your own life or projects to add a human element to the actionable advice you’re sharing in your ebook. Using our paper crafts example again, you could show some of the ways you’ve personally used paper products to decorate your home. This adds relevant context to your ebook and offers opportunities for interesting visuals to help illustrate your content.

Before you start writing, be sure to review what types of ebooks — if any — your competitors are offering. In order for your ebook to really be successful, it needs to offer something your customers don’t already have from the competition. Do some research around the topics you’re considering writing your ebook about, then consider how you might differentiate your ebook with new content or a unique angle.

Browse top sellers on Amazon to understand readers’ preferences — that will help you to start selling ebooks that will actually get read.

How to Write an Ebook that Sells

Once you’ve found the perfect topic for your ebook, use these tips to guide you through the writing process and create an ebook that sells.

Focus on a how-to

People often buy ebooks because they want to learn something. So a step-by-step approach to your subject is a great way to structure your ebook. Walk the reader through processes, use lots of examples, and weave in your personal experiences whenever it feels appropriate. If you spell out each step of the process in detail, not only will your ebooks content be helpful for your readers, but it’ll practically write itself.

Think of a compelling title

The title will play a large part in whether or not a shopper is interested in purchasing your ebook — so it’s important that you take the time to write a title that’s both interesting and attractive for your target audience. Use concepts like the curiosity gap, a pain point, or a desirable outcome to make your ebook feel like a must-have.

For example: If you’re writing an ebook about canning fruits and vegetables, "How to Save $500 A Year on Groceries" would be a much more compelling title than "The Guide to Canning" because it tempts the reader with a more desirable outcome.

As writers ourselves here at the Ecwid Blog, we’ve learned that titles beginning with "How to" resonate best with our readers.

Other ways to make your ebook title more compelling:

• Provoke: "You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters"
• Intrigue: "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat"
• Use repetitive phrases: "Fitter, Happier, Healthier: The Ultimate 4 Week Body Transformation Plan."

Use simple words

Unless you’re writing your ebook on nuclear physics, your writing should probably be fairly easy to understand.

Ever find yourself re-reading the same sentence over and over again, but you just can’t ever seem to digest what it’s saying? Chances are, that sentence was either too long, too wordy, or both.

One universal rule of writing to educate is: the more simply you can state your points, the better. Unless you’re a poet or acclaimed novelist (and if you are, that’s awesome) it’s unlikely customers will be buying your ebook to find out how many big words you know. More than likely, they’re buying based on the positive outcome promised in your title. And they’ll want to understand and attain that outcome as quickly and efficiently as possible. (for example, the use of "on condition that" instead of "if".)

To make sure your writing is understandable, avoid the use of jargon, acronyms, and any industry speak that might be unfamiliar to your audience. If you’re still not sure whether your writing is simple enough, check out the Hemingway App. This handy tool will run your writing through a checker and automatically highlight words that are too big, sentences that are too long, passive voice, and unnecessary adverbs.

www.fastcocreate.com

Use your intro pages wisely

Most ebooks offer the first 10-20 pages as a preview to read online for free. This gives potential customers a taste for the ebook’s content and helps them decide whether it’s something they might be interested in purchasing to learn more.

Because the preview can play a large part in whether or not a shopper chooses to buy your ebook, it’s important to use these pages wisely. In the first 10-20 pages, lay out exactly what you’re going to cover in the following pages and why readers should care to learn more. Hook your readers early with a great value proposition and closing the sale on your first ebook should be an easy win.

Take it slow

It’s easy to want to sprint to the finish line when you’re writing your first ebook. But don’t rush the writing process. Instead, try setting an attainable daily/weekly goal for the number of pages or chapters you’re going to write, then stick to your goal. And using a tool like the FocusBoosterApp or the Pomodoro Technique will help you minimize distractions while you write.

www.fractuslearning.com

If you find yourself struggling with writer’s block, don’t linger there. Move on to the next chapter to keep the process moving, and come back to that spot later once you’ve had some time away.

If you’re not sure how to organize your thoughts, a tool like Airstory can help you break down key thoughts into digital notecards that you can visually organize and arrange until you’re satisfied with the structure and ready to dive in.

If you’re looking for more tips on writing your ebook, check out:

• How to write your first eBook from WikiHow
• How to write an eBook from Amy Lynn Andrews
• Write an eBook in 30 Days by Sellfy

How to Format Your Ebook

Up next: formatting. When creating ebooks, there are a few design elements to keep in mind to make your content more reader-friendly.

Select a good ebook file format

Different e-readers support different file formats. If you want to sell ebooks successfully, you’ll need to make sure your final file format works for your customers. To be safe, study the differences between ebook file formats carefully, and offer your ebook in several formats to make sure your customers can find a file that works for them.

The PDF is by far the most common file format for ebooks. PDFs open seamlessly across a variety of different operating systems, and they allow readers to easily access, download, and print their ebooks from their various devices. And because PDFs don’t require any special software to create, they’re great for ebook authors too. All you need is a word processor that lets you save PDFs, and you’re good to go.

Choose a font that’s easy to read

It’s not just the words you use that make your ebook easier to read. Your font style also plays a critical role in creating an ebook that’s easy for readers to understand. According to AWAI, san serif fonts are the best for reading online (simple fonts that don’t include "feet" or flourishes), with Arial, Courier, and Verdana among the most legible. Surprisingly, while Times New Roman was historically the default font for word processors, it’s actually the least preferred font-style by online readers. AWAI also recommends using a font size of 12 or larger.

You may be tempted to express your creativity through your font choice, but decorating your ebook with non-standard fonts is more likely to result in a complicated reading experience than a valuable differentiator. So it’s best to stick with proven fonts that are optimized for easy reading.

A bad font choice can ruin a reader’s experience

Finally, your ebook should be responsive to fit your reader’s screen size. This means that your reader will always have an optimal reading experience, regardless of what screen size your reader is viewing your ebook on.

Use a consistent color scheme for your ebook

Whatever color scheme you choose, you’ll want to make sure it’s consistent throughout your ebook. Select a palette of 2-3 colors that pair nicely with your company branding, and use these in your cover, font colors, headers and footers, and any graphics you use throughout your ebook. If you need a little help selecting a color palette, tools like paletton.com will help you find colors that work well together.

Format your ebook for easy scanning

Eye-tracking studies show that when people are reading on a computer or mobile device, they typically scan the content in an F-shaped pattern.

www.nngroup.com

You can format your ebook to accommodate this behavior by left-aligning your text and using short, bite-sized blocks of text that are easier to scan — like bullet point lists and short sentences. Whenever possible, avoid long paragraphs that require more than a quick glance to read and understand.

Use images in your ebook

It’s always easier to sell something when it looks good. So do your best to add value to your digital product with exciting graphics and illustrations.

If you already have your own high-quality photography, incorporate it into your ebook to illustrate steps in a process or end results. If not, look for high quality stock images to communicate your ideas. Sites like Death to Stock Photo, Unsplash, and Gratisography all offer great stock images that you can use for free.

Design a beautiful cover for your ebook

As the first thing your audience will see, a good cover design is important. Not only will your cover design help sell your ebook, but it’s also a representation of your brand. Free tools like Canva let you easily design professional ebook covers using their pre-made templates and stock design elements.

www.canva.com

Other ebook cover design tools include:

• Adazing
• CoverDesignStudio

Don’t forget to ask a friend or colleague to give your cover a quick look for a fresh perspective before settling on a final version. Fresh eyes can spot mistakes you might have missed and might even offer an insight to turn your good cover design into a great one.

Proofreading

Before you can start selling your ebook, you’ll need to have someone proofread it for spelling and grammar mistakes. Dropping your text into a free tool like Grammarly is great for a first pass and can usually catch most major mistakes, but nothing beats a set of human eyes reviewing your work (at least for the time being). Because the last thing you want to do is send out your first ebook with a bunch of misplaced commas and apostrophes.

en.wikipedia.org

How to Sell an Ebook Online

Ebooks can be sold on any number of online platforms, including Amazon, iBooks, your own online store, Google Play, Fiverr… the list goes on.

If you’re planning to make a living selling ebooks online, you’ll probably want to list your books anywhere you can. In this article, we’ll focus on two common ways to sell your ebooks: Amazon Kindle and your own online store (using Ecwid E-commerce as an example).

Sell ebooks on Amazon

If you’re a first-time author, earning money from your ebook on Amazon may take some time. Because of the sheer breadth of options on the Kindle marketplace, the average self-published author only makes around $1,000 per year selling on Amazon’s platform. However, thanks to its giant audience, Amazon can still work well as an avenue to promote your brand.

If you plan to sell ebooks to attract shoppers to your other products and services, consider offering your first ebook for free for a period of time. This will help you garner some early attention from readers who might otherwise be hesitant to pay for a book from an unknown author, and can be instrumental in securing those all-important first reviews. Once your ebook has some momentum, you can flip the switch to start getting paid for customer downloads.

Selling ebooks on Amazon can be fairly nuanced, so take some time to study this topic before launching your first ebook. For example, check out this practical guide from Joseph Hogue: How I Made $1,928 Last Month Self-Publishing on Amazon.

Sell ebooks in your online store

If your e-commerce platform supports selling digital products, one of the easiest ways to sell your ebook is from your own online store. For example, Ecwid allows customers to add digital products to their carts and complete the checkout process in the exact same way they do physical products. Once the digital product is ordered and paid for, Ecwid sends an email to the customer with the download link.

With Ecwid, there’s no limit to the number ebooks you can sell or their respective downloads. This feature is available on all paid plans, with file size allowances increasing for each plan tier:

• Venture — 100MB
• Business — 1GB
• Unlimited — 10GB

If you’re ready to start selling ebooks with Ecwid, simply follow the steps below:

1. Log in to your Ecwid Сontrol panel and go to the "Catalog" page.
2. Click any product to edit it or create a new one.
3. Open the "Files" tab.
4. Upload the files you want to sell.

Need more info? Visit Ecwid Help Center for complete details and FAQs on selling digital goods through Ecwid.

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How to Promote Your Ebook

When you’re finally ready to start selling your ebook, you’ll need some smart tactics to get the word out. Here’s a couple great ways to begin promoting your first ebook:

Use social media. Schedule several posts across your social media channels to let your followers know that your new ebook is available for purchase. And if you’re offering it free for a limited time, don’t forget to mention that as well!

Guest post. Try to find some relevant, high-traffic blogs you can guest post on to talk about topics that are relevant to your new ebook. Even if you’re not pitching your book in the post itself, you can link out to it in your bio.

Do a podcast tour. See if a few podcasts would be willing to have you on as a guest to share a lesson or two from your new ebook (without giving too much away, of course). This will help build interest with new audiences and offers another chance to share the link in your bio.

Partner with influencers. If you’re connected with bloggers or influencers in a niche that’s relevant to your ebook’s subject matter, ask if you can team up to give away a few free copies.

Selling ebooks is just like selling anything else: it’s all about finding effective ways to get your product in front of your audiences. And once you’ve found them, keep it going. Don’t let your promotional plan fizzle out after the first week — put together a strategy that will keep sales rolling in month after month through new channels and opportunities.

The main thing to remember is to keep finding new, creative ways to get your ebook in front of new audiences. Don’t let your promotion plan fizzle out the week after release — put together a strategy that will keep sales rolling in month after month through continuous new opportunities.

Selling Ebooks: Teach What You Know

From teaching others about your industry and products, to sharing your experiences as an entrepreneur, writing ebooks is an opportunity to turn your story into a product you can sell.

Does it require time and planning? Of course. What good e-commerce venture doesn’t? But when it’s done right, ebooks can help customers see your brand and your products in a whole new light — and put a few extra dollars in your pocket for good measure. So what are you waiting for? Get started today by creating your very own online store.

This post was originally published in 2017 and has been updated for accuracy.

Think about something you’ve bought recently. Maybe you were inspired by an Instagram post or found a product on Pinterest and followed the link to the website. Later in the day, you might have stopped by the store after work or searched for the product on eBay or Amazon to compare prices.

Your customers make their purchases through a number of different channels too: they shop on websites, social media, in apps, brick and mortar stores, and online marketplaces.

As a merchant, this means that whatever you’re selling should be available to your customers in a variety of locations. But how can you be everywhere as a small business?

People often say "you can’t be in two places at once." Here at Ecwid E-commerce, we reject that statement. We believe that you can be in all places at once because that’s exactly what our software was designed to do.

Our technology unites a bevvy of ways to sell online and in-person into single inventory, so you can serve your customers anywhere and everywhere they are from a single Ecwid dashboard. Here at Ecwid, we’ve made managing multiple sales channels as easy as checking your email. Curious? Read on to learn about some of the different ways you can sell with Ecwid, then give us a try for yourself!

1. Sell on a Free E-commerce Website

The moment you sign-up with Ecwid, you’ll be given a free one-page website to sell your products. We call it the "Instant Site." Our Instant Site is designed as a stepping stone and a great way to launch your online presence with minimal cost and effort.

You can customize your Instant Site’s template with your own cover images, text, and information about your business, like your story, testimonials, business hours, address, contact details, and social links. You decide the content, and we’ll automatically format it to look great on your customer’s screen.

Ecwid Instant Site

Read more: Ecwid E-Commerce Website: Your Great Online Store from Day One

2. Open a Facebook Store

Selling your products on a website with 2 billion monthly active users sounds awesome, doesn’t it? In fact, the average Ecwid merchant with synchronized stores receives 15% of their sales from Facebook. Take your Facebook selling to the next level by opening a Facebook storefront.

A FB Shop powered by Ecwid

If you set up your Facebook store with Ecwid, your customers can shop directly from your business page and go through the checkout from any device. Getting your product catalog on Facebook also gives you the opportunity to advertise specific products with powerful marketing tools like Dynamic Ads and the Facebook pixel.

It only takes a few minutes to create a Facebook store, and it’s also a great option as a standalone channel if you haven’t created a website yet. Follow our helpful guide to learn how to add products to your first Facebook store.

Read more: Ecwid’s New Social Selling Tools on Facebook

3. Sell on Facebook Messenger

Facebook Messenger live chat allows you to connect with your customers on one of the most popular apps, improve customer service, and create a personal connection with your audience. You can answer customers’ questions, help them choose the right size, give advice on how to use your product, or recommend other items based on their needs.

In terms of customer care, Facebook Messenger live chat checks a lot of user-boxes:

• Most online shoppers would rather send a message than call customer service.
• Being able to chat with a business helps customers feel more confident about a brand.
• And 1.3 billion people are already communicating with friends and brands through the Messenger app.

With Ecwid E-commerce, you can connect your store to Facebook Messenger and add live chat to your site in just a couple of clicks. Customers will be able to start a chat right from the product pages on your website, while any conversations will be saved in their Facebook Messenger inboxes for later.

Read more about using Facebook Messenger live chat in your Ecwid store.

Facebook Messenger live chat helps you make more recommendations to your customers

4. Sell on Instagram

Instagram is a hot platform for businesses thanks to its visual format and active audience. But there’s no easy way to convert a follower into an actual paying customer without the use of something called Shoppable Posts. This new Instagram feature encourages purchases by allowing users to buy products featured in your posts by tapping a special shopping tag. The user stays on Instagram during checkout and the whole purchase process is completed in just a few clicks.

Ecwid’s integration with Instagram allows you to connect your Ecwid product catalog with your Instagram business profile and tag products in your posts (just like you’d tag people) that users can purchase. Take your Instagram feed from eye-candy to eye-catching storefront in minutes.

An Instagram Shoppable post

Read more: Sell on Instagram: How Ecwid Merchants Can Now Reach 1 Billion Shoppers

5. Sell on Pinterest

Unlike the majority of social platforms that thrive on influencers and conversations, Pinterest exists solely to inspire. And regular Pinners use the platform to plan for some of life’s biggest moments — including the purchases they’ll be making in those moments.

If you want to get in front of shoppers at the exact moment they’re looking to be inspired by products like yours, Pinterest is a no-brainer.

What’s more, unlike other platforms, Pinterest users don’t mind seeing branded pins while they’re exploring the platform. In fact, the majority of Pinners even find it helpful, provided that branded content they’re seeing is related to the inspiration they’re seeking. Here’s a couple stats:

• 66% of users buy something after seeing a brand’s pin
• 78% of Pinners say it’s useful to see content from brands on the platform.

Another major advantage of selling on Pinterest is the long lifespan of pins compared to other forms of social media content: Pinterest posts can win repins and engagement for months after an initial posting, while posts on other platforms will only thrive for a couple hours before losing steam.

Pinterest is also one of the world’s most trusted social platforms, scoring the highest level of customer satisfaction among social media platforms in 2019.

"Pinterest accounts for 90 percent of my social media traffic." — Selena Robinson, founder of "Look! We’re Learning!" educational e-goods

6. Sell on Snapchat

When it comes to engaging younger audiences, there’s no platform like Snapchat. According to a recent study, Snapchat reaches 75% of 13- to 34-year-olds and 90% of 13- to 24-year-olds in the U.S.

And Snapchat users visit their apps a LOT: 71% of Snapchat users visit the platform multiple times per day, with the average user opening their app 20 times for a total of 30 minutes of engagement.

So, if you’re looking for new advertising channels to grow your business and your target audience includes teens and young adults, Snapchat might just be your answer. Snapchat also provides an opportunity to reach new markets, with more than one-third of Snapchat users currently inactive on Facebook or Instagram.

HBO used Lenses to drive awareness of their show Westworld

And to top it off, Snapchat is still a relatively untapped resource. More marketers are turning to Instagram Stories for similar solutions, making advertising on Snapchat fairly competition-free.

To make your ads more effective and enhance your ability to find the right audience, add the Snap Pixel to your online store. The Snap Pixel will help you run remarketing ads, optimize ad performance, and even find more people like your customers to engage through your ads.

If you’re on Ecwid, all you have to do to claim your Pixel is copy and paste the code into your Ecwid Control Panel. Best of all, the integration is available on all Ecwid plans — including our Forever Free plan.

Learn more: Sell on Snapchat with the Snapchat Pixel for Ecwid

If you want to learn more about selling on social channels, check out our comprehensive guide to the most popular social media platforms and how to sell on them.

7. Sell on Amazon and eBay

These giant online marketplaces provide business owners with a large and ready-to-buy audience. While a standalone e-commerce website works great for building your brand, exporting your products to Amazon or eBay is a chance to sell on an already trusted platform with a developed infrastructure.

Ecwid’s integration with Amazon and eBay opens these sales channels to merchants on Business and Unlimited plans. Sell on eBay and Amazon right from your Ecwid account, set up prices and product titles specifically for these audiences, and keep your inventory synced with your other channels. Test the deep water of marketplaces without ever leaving your Ecwid Control Panel.

Ecwid will carefully guide you through the process of taking your store to Amazon

Read more:

• Sell Your Products on Amazon With Real-Time Inventory Synchronization
• How to Sell on eBay for Beginners

8. Add a Storefront to an Existing Website

Maybe you already have a website? If so, it might be time for a commercial touch.

You can add an Ecwid store to any existing website whether it’s built on WordPress, Wix, Squarespace, Joomla, Weebly, or something else entirely. Even with a custom website, it only takes seconds to plug in a new Ecwid store.

Ecwid store on the FloraFlowerCart.com

Your Ecwid store will come ready with all the features you need to sell online:

• A rich storefront: photo gallery, detailed product descriptions, and convenient product options
• 60+ payment methods
• Multiple shipping services with an automated calculator for shipping costs
• Automated tax calculation
• Marketing tools like coupons, sale prices, etc.
• Access to Ecwid App Market with 160+ e-commerce apps and more.

Read more: How To Add an Online Store to Your Existing Website

9. Add "Buy Now" Buttons to Your Blog or Webpage

A "Buy Now" Button is a fast and flexible option to sell your products beyond your online storefront.

The "Buy Now" button in the sidebar

You can place a "Buy Now" button on:

• A landing page
• A blog
• A sidebar
• Your homepage
• Partner websites

Simply copy and paste the code to any spot on your website (just like embedding a YouTube video). You can customize the look of the "Buy Now" button by adding frames and choosing which fields are displayed (price, quantity, etc.). The color scheme of your smart button will automatically match your website and flow seamlessly with your company branding.

If you want to create or edit your "Buy Now" button, open your Control Panel → Catalog → Individual product page → Embed Product → Copy a piece of code and paste to any desired page.

Read more: 7 Ways to Sell With Ecwid’s "Buy Now" Button

10. Turn Your Online Store into a Mobile App

A native mobile app under your brand name is a unique sales channel available in Ecwid. It’s fully responsive and works on every mobile device. With an app, your customers will always have your store right in their pockets, perfect for the quickly growing market of mobile shoppers.

Having your mobile app available on the App Store and Google Play brings your business closer to your customers than ever before. Request your app today and have it ready in two to three weeks.

Read more: Сomplement Your Ecwid Shop with a Mobile App — No Coding Required

11. Sell In-Person

Over 50% of your customers expect you to sell both online and offline — maximize your revenue opportunities by creating both an online store and physical points of sale.

With Ecwid, it’s convenient to sell your products on-the-go: at craft fairs, marketplaces, or even a pop-up store. Accept cash and update your sales list using Ecwid Mobile for iOS and Android.

Or make things even easier when you accept credit cards with one of our POS integrations (available in the Sell-on-the-Go app for iOS):

• Square POS
• Vend
• PayPal Here
• Alice POS

Manage Your Sales from Anywhere

No matter how many sales channels you use, managing your store with Ecwid is always fast and easy. For convenient access to your Control Panel from anywhere, download the Ecwid mobile app for iOS and Android to manage your orders and inventory, upload product pictures from your smartphone, launch and control special offers, and much more.

   

Read more: How to Run a Store from Your Smartphone

Omnichannel shopping is more than another trend: it’s the present and future of the retail industry. It comes down to understanding where and how your customers like to shop and providing them with a seamless shopping experience that gives them access to your products at the right time and through the right channels.

Create your free Ecwid account and start serving your customers better with a new omnichannel strategy.

"Is Facebook organic reach dying?" — that’s the big question keeping business owners up at night. With each new News Feed algorithm update, brands and publishers seem to get further away from the viral success they long for on social media. And if that’s how you feel, well, you aren’t wrong.

Increasingly, algorithm updates have been found to diminish the power of traditional organic strategies. But just because the game changes doesn’t mean you can’t change with it. Organic reach isn’t doomed — you’ll just have to learn to play by Facebook’s new rules.

Read on to find out what affects your post position in Facebook News Feeds, and learn which tactics are the best for growing your organic reach.

In this post:

• Understanding Organic Reach on Facebook
• What Affects Facebook Organic Reach in 2020 
• How to Boost Organic Reach on Facebook
• When You Should Turn to Ads Instead of Growing Organic Reach

Understanding Organic Reach on Facebook

Before we explain how to boost organic reach on Facebook, let’s talk about what it is, and what affects it. Once we understand the mechanics of organic reach, we’ll be able to determine what strategies are most effective at growing it.

What does organic reach mean on Facebook?

Let’s start with the basics. Facebook defines organic reach as "how many people you can reach for free on Facebook by posting to your Page." With that description in mind, it’s easy to see why marketers would be concerned — because a decline in organic reach means a natural increase in the cost to reach their customers.

The ability to get in front of customers using free social media tools positively affects your brand exposure at a minimum cost to your bottom line. So now that we understand the problem, let’s look at why Facebook organic reach is decreasing and what we can do to reverse it.

Why is Facebook organic reach decreasing?

There are two main reasons for the decline in organic reach on Facebook, neither of which has anything to do with Mark Zuckerberg or his secret and deeply closeted contempt for small businesses.

First, the increase in content. There’s just a lot more content to compete with than there was 10 years ago. Consumers post more. Brands post more. And the sheer number of pages Facebook can and do engage with is increasing every day. And on top of all that, new tools and more elegant UX designs have made it easier than ever to create and share new content. All this has resulted in massive competition for your customers’ News Feed. And when we say "massive," we mean it is MASSIVE. In 2014, the average Facebook user would have a potential 1,500+ stories they could receive in their News Feed at any given time, of which Facebook would only display about 300. And that was six years ago.

The number of daily active Facebook users grows with every passing year, and so does the number of posts shared on the platform

If Facebook actually showed its users 100% of the content available to them, the News Feed function would become virtually unusable for most regular consumers, likely causing many to leave the platform entirely. A lose-lose-lose for everyone.

Second, much of the content being produced is only relevant to small segments of Facebook’s users. In the early days of social media when content was in short supply, any piece of content produced with a reasonable level of skill could be relatively successful. But these days, with Facebook users up to their eyeballs in amazing content, it’s not enough to create and share content that’s good. In order to be successful on Facebook in 2020, you need to share content that’s both amazing and relevant. Today’s Facebook users want content that’s targeted to their interests, and they want it in moderation without blocking stories from their friends and family (as branded content is disposed to do in such huge supply). Facebook, understanding the behavior of its users, turned its efforts toward cleaning spam from its feeds and improving the way News Feed targets content for relevance.

How Facebook News Feed algorithm works

What a user sees in their News Feed depends on four main factors:

• Inventory: the total content available from friends and publishers that can be displayed to a user.
• Signals: data tied to a specific post — for example, the type of content; when it was posted; who posted it; and how many likes, shares and comments it has. These are the only factor brands can control and use to signal (pun intended) to Facebook that their content is relevant to their target audience.
• Predictions: a prediction about how likely a user is to be interested in a post based on an analysis of what content that user prefers.
• Relevancy Score: a number assigned to a post based on the likelihood that a particular user will enjoy it.

These are the probabilities (predictions) the News Feed algorithm takes into account when calculating a Relevancy Score:

• likelihood to click
• likelihood to spend time with a post
• likelihood to like, comment, and share
• likelihood a user will find a post informative
• likelihood a post is clickbait
• likelihood a post links to a low-quality web page

Once the algorithm’s worked its magic, it orders the available content by score. The higher the score, the more likely that post is to be displayed in users’ feeds. So that random cat video you watched on your lunch break wasn’t really so random after all.

Now that you have a better understanding of the News Feed algorithm, let’s find out which of its updates affect organic reach the most.

What Affects Facebook Organic Reach in 2020

Over the last couple years, there’ve been some big changes in how Facebook’s News Feed algorithm positions content for brands and users.

In January 2018, Facebook announced that its News Feed would "prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people." This major change marked a turning point in the algorithm, marking Facebook’s renewed commitment to personal interactions between users and the people they care about. This change included priority placement for:

• Posts from friends and family
• Posts that "inspire back-and-forth discussion in the comments" and/or that users would be interested in sharing and reacting to

A slide from the Facebook News Feed webinar that addressed algorithm changes and the importance of meaningful interactions

Another important update came in November 2018 that improved the AI’s ability to remove violating content and demote sensational, misleading, or controversial content.

The most recent major update was announced in 2019 when Facebook updated the way it measured organic Page impressions. Historically, reach was calculated based on how many times a post was delivered in the News Feed. This recent update imposed stricter reporting, only counting reach once a post enters a user’s screen (the same approach Facebook uses to calculate ads performance). While this change was only intended to change the way reach is measured and not News Feed distribution, some pages have still reported seeing lower reach than expected.

What kind of content is best for your Facebook page

As we discussed in the previous section, Facebook emphasizes posts from family and friends over branded content. But public content that provides "meaningful interactions" also has a good chance of appearing in a feed. Here are some examples of content that’s likely to be prioritized:

• Content that’s shared over Facebook Messenger
• Content that’s liked or commented on
• Content that receives multiple replies

These are generally posts that provide real value to users by entertaining, inspiring, or teaching something new. They’re the kinds of posts that when you see them, you instinctively want to share them with someone else. According to Facebook’s private News Feed webinar, "Content driving meaningful interactions will perform better than content driving only consumption."

If a page is creating posts that users aren’t reacting to or commenting on, it’s only natural for that page to see a decrease in distribution. So does that mean that thoughtlessly collecting interactions and comments with messages like "Like for Like" and "Comment if…" is an appropriate solution? Also no. In fact, tactics like these will find your posts earning even less reach. Keep reading to find out why.

What kind of content demotes your Facebook page

If you’re looking to get more views on Facebook, you’ll need to be aware of what activities are the most likely to decrease your reach as well.

When Facebook says it values content that provides "meaningful interactions," that’s not just a figure of speech. News Feed demotes posts that bait users into clicking on a link or interacting in some way to increase organic reach.

There are several types of content that are regularly penalized by Facebook’s algorithm to reduce reach.

Engagement bait

Although News Feed prioritizes posts with greater interaction (for example, comments, likes, and shares), it also recognizes content which was created exclusively to goad users into said interaction and will penalize those posts accordingly. Can you guess why? It’s because the interactions received from engagement baiting aren’t meaningful. Remember, Facebook’s goal is to create meaningful interactions between users, but engagement bait isn’t designed to provide anything meaningful or valuable — it’s simply trying to trick the algorithm with low-effort post engagements. And needless to say… Facebook is onto the trick.

Here are some examples of posts using engagement bait:

• Vote baiting: "Vote on your plans for 2020! Click 'Wow' if you want to go on vacation, click 'Love' if you want to find your love, …"
• React baiting: "Like this if you can relate"
• Share baiting: "Share with 15 friends for a chance to win a new iPhone!"
• Tag baiting: "Tag a friend who’s always late"
• Comment baiting: "Comment '+' if you want to see more posts like this!"

Examples of engagement bait posts from Facebook

Keep in mind that Facebook doesn’t just downgrade the specific posts that are using engagement bait, they also apply stricter demotions for pages that repeatedly use these tactics.

The only exception to this rule is posts that ask for help, advice, or recommendations. For example, missing persons reports, requests to support a charity, or asking for wedding planning advice.

Clickbait headlines

One of Facebook’s core values is creating an informed community, so the platform is super strict when it comes to misleading, sensational, or spammy content.

Clickbait headlines present information in a way that forces users to click to find out the answer. For example, "You’ll never guess what this guy did to his best friend’s toaster!"

What makes a headline clickbait:

• Headlines that leave out critical details or intentionally withhold information: "This tactic will bring you 50 followers a day"
• Headlines that exaggerate information with sensational language: "You’ve GOT to see this! Lemons cure EVERYTHING!"
• Headlines that create misleading expectations: "Research could suggest that dogs can’t look up."

Just like with engagement bait, pages that rely on clickbait headlines will see a decrease in reach.

Links to low-quality webpage experiences

In their effort to show more informative posts, Facebook pays close attention to links that lead to low-quality webpage experiences, including pages that contain:

• A disproportionate volume of ads relative to content
• Malicious or deceptive ads
• Sexually suggestive or sensational content (shocking, disrespectful, or excessively violent content)
• Pop-up ads or interstitial ads, which disrupt the user experience

A post that links to these types of web pages is displayed lower in feeds. Facebook also shows fewer posts linking out to low-quality sites that "copy and republish content from other sites without providing unique value." So if you want to share someone else’s content with your audience, make sure you’re linking to a reliable source with original content.

How to Boost Organic Reach on Facebook

Just because organic reach is getting harder to come by on Facebook doesn’t mean you can’t still have a strong presence on the platform.

Here’s how to work with the latest News Feed algorithm to reach your audience.

Make sure you’re in your followers’ feeds

Even if you’re following all the rules, sometimes your content will still get lost in competitive feeds. That’s why it’s important to educate your audience about how to keep in touch with your page:

• Remind your followers that if they want to see more posts from you, they can update their feed settings to allow for it. To do that, they’ll need to go to your page, click Following, and choose See First:


Here’s how users can update their preferences to see more posts from you

• And remind your followers that they can also open the Pages Feed on the left sidebar of their News Feed to see content from pages like yours that they’ve liked.

Choose quality over quantity

Facebook is determined to provide the best possible content that’s unique, valuable, personalized, and relevant to the user.

When creating content, keep in mind that your goal is to get as much interaction from that piece as possible. The production of genuinely engaging content is time-consuming, but quick fixes like engagement bait also don’t help. So it makes sense to post less to ensure each of your posts is high-quality and relevant to your followers.

See also: What to Post on Facebook: 20 Post Ideas for Your Facebook Business Page

Humanize your brand

According to a report from Accenture Strategy, 63% of US consumers prefer to buy from companies that stand for a purpose that reflects their own values and beliefs. What’s more, they’ll actively avoid brands that don’t.

So it’s important to show followers that your brand is mission-driven and shares their values. To do that, you’ll need to understand who your customers are. Are they eco-conscious? Do they prefer to support local businesses? What are the issues that get them up and engaging?

Posts like this show customers that brands can do more than sell

Create emotional content

Emotion is a powerful tool for encouraging interaction and discussion. But, according to research published in the Harvard Business Review, not all emotions are created equal: some emotions are seen more often in connection with viral content. Here are some of the most common emotions used to create successful social posts:

• curiosity
• amazement
• interest
• astonishment
• uncertainty
• admiration

Contrary to what some may believe, negative emotions are actually less common in successful viral content.

Create video content

Creating video content takes more effort than posting an image with text, but it’s definitely worth the time if you’ve got it. Not only does Facebook’s News Feed prioritize video, but posts with video also gain at least 59% more engagement than other post types.

Practical how-to videos are some of the most popular video types on Facebook

In the same way a person might spin a sign to catch a passing driver’s attention, the motion of a video has the ability to catch a Facebook user’s attention as they’re scrolling through their News Feed. Short videos and even simple gifs can help to increase your presence in a News Feed. However, for best results, Facebook suggests posting videos that are between 3-5 minutes long, as longer videos tend to offer more value for viewers. And don’t forget to add subtitles; according to recent reports, a whopping 85% of Facebook videos are now watched without sound.

Have a video you already posted to YouTube? Refrain from sharing the YouTube link on your Page, and upload the video directly to Facebook instead. Sure, it won’t help your numbers on YouTube, but it’s also far more likely to get picked up by Facebook’s algorithm. As one of Facebook’s biggest competitors, YouTube content isn’t something Facebook is overly anxious to prioritize in its News Feeds. But video content from Facebook’s own platform? You betcha.

And give Facebook Live a try too. According to reports, live videos average 6x as many interactions as regular videos. And because you’re limited to what you can do in a live recording, live videos are also easier to create. That means live video could be a great way to kickstart your video strategy and create some interesting content on a short timeline.

Embrace user-generated content

What’s better than making content for your audience? Letting your audience make it for you. User-generated content is content created by your audience about your brand that you can share on your own page. Asking your followers to post a review of your products or share photos for a chance to win a prize are great ways to encourage user-generated content.

Hey It’s Oh So Pretty reposts pictures of customers who use their ribbons in wedding bouquets

Running user-generated content campaigns may also help you identify devoted customers who could be recruited as "brand ambassadors" to promote your brand to their networks (for a few freebies, of course).

Create Facebook Groups

Based on the latest version of the News Feed algorithm, Facebook Group content receives higher reach than regular Page content. Take advantage of that change by creating a closed group for your most engaged customers.

Groups can also help to build a community of brand loyalists and creates an easy channel to communicate with your ambassadors. And if you organize or promote events, groups can be used to quickly share and receive the best photos and videos from around the group.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that a group is about the members, not the brand. Communicate with your fans, answer their questions, share helpful content, and make sure they continue to have memorable interactions with your brand and its ambassadors. Make your customers feel appreciated, and they’ll take care of the rest.

Ecwid merchant Selena Robinson sells educational products for children with ADHD and manages a Facebook group for parents who align with her target audience

Reply to comments and promote conversations

Always reply to comments on your page quickly, and keep the conversation going if you can (but don’t force it). Start discussions, like asking what your followers think of your new product or what they think about the latest industry news.

To make staying in touch with your customers easier, add Facebook Messenger live chat to your website. Customers will be able to ask questions and have a conversation right from your website’s product pages, and you can even slide in an invite to follow your Facebook page.

Link to fewer outside websites

We’ve talked about not linking to low-quality webpages, but you should also be careful with links in general. Facebook naturally wants users to stay on its platform, so posts with links to outside pages aren’t at the top of its list to promote. Of course, you can’t always avoid linking to outside sources, and sometimes that’s really the best course of action. But if you can go without links to other websites, your posts are that much more likely to be rewarded in your followers’ News Feeds.

Bright Side engages followers into conversation in the comments to the post

Track how your content performs

When you experiment with new formats and types of content, you may see that some get more engagement than others. Decide what metrics align best with the goals of your content, track your content based on those metrics, and use that knowledge to adjust your content strategy. Skip posts your audience seems indifferent to and redouble efforts on post types that perform highest based on your chosen metrics.

You can also use Audience Insights to learn more about your followers and other users you’d like to reach. Use Audience Insights to view data like demographics, hobbies, interests, lifestyles, and more.

And test different posting times for better engagement. For example, CoSchedule found that the best times for healthcare companies to post on Facebook are between 6 am and 7 am, at 9 am, and between 11 am and noon. As for media companies, their "show time" is either at 7 am, 11 am, or 6 pm.

When You Should Turn to Ads Instead of Growing Organic Reach

Facebook rewards informative, authentic and meaningful content, so if that’s the kind of content you’re creating for your audience, you can expect your organic reach to grow.

Having said that, growing organic reach takes time. No matter how perfect your content is, you won’t see dramatic returns overnight. If quick wins is what you’re looking for (and you’re willing to throw a few bucks toward your business), consider running a few Facebook ads as well. As Josh Sample, Founder and Operating Partner of digital marketing agency Drive Social Media states: "Based on our experience of helping clients with paid social, the capabilities brands have access to with paid Facebook ads are extensive, and the benefits far exceed anything you would normally receive with organic content."

If you run an Ecwid store, advertising and selling on Facebook is easy with our Facebook Shop and Facebook Product Catalog tools.

Tip: Use organic posts to test content that you’d like to promote via ads, then use your advertising budget to promote those content pieces that performed best organically.

For example, if your followers favor a particular post, use the content from that post to create an ad targeted to other users who are similar to your followers. To do this, you’ll need to install your Facebook pixel first. And good news for Ecwid merchants, the Facebook Pixel is available free on all Ecwid plans, including our Forever Free plan.

Let’s Review: How to Increase Facebook Reach

The best way to grow Facebook Page reach organically is to understand how Facebook’s News Feed algorithm prioritizes posts and create content catered to the goals of the platform — namely to encourage meaningful interactions between Facebook’s users.

1. Ditch engagement-bait and click-bait, avoid linking to websites with poor webpage experiences, and limit linking away from Facebook whenever possible.
2. Create content that’s unique, engaging, and relevant to your followers and their values.
3. Ask your followers to update their feed preferences by choosing "See First" from the "Following" tab on your page.
4. Post less, but optimize each post to get as many interactions as possible (again, avoiding click-bait and engagement-bait).
5. Create emotional content that inspires curiosity, amazement, interest, astonishment, uncertainty, and/or admiration.
6. Post more videos (Facebook Live is a great place to start). But avoid links to YouTube videos which would drive users to a competitor site and deprioritize your posts.
7. Create a Facebook Group for your customers that provides additional value and shows that they’re appreciated by your brand.
8. Keep conversations going on your page by answering questions and starting discussions.
9. Encourage your followers to create posts mentioning your brand that you can repost as user-generated content.
10. Track how your posts perform and adjust your content when needed.
11. Try paid Facebook advertising to increase your reach in the short-term.

What do you think about Facebook’s News Feed algorithm? Have you experienced a decrease in your Facebook organic reach over the last few years? Share your thoughts in the comments!

If only getting more sales was as easy as clicking a button. Well, with Ecwid’s latest update, it’s pretty darn close. Enable Ecwid’s new marketing automation tool to automatically send tailored sales emails to your customers when they complete certain actions on your site, like adding a new product to their favorites or completing a purchase.

Once a customer completes an action, a marketing email is automatically sent to keep them moving through your sales funnel. These emails reach the right person at just the right time to engage shoppers and grow sales.

Ready to scale up your email marketing with Ecwid’s marketing automation? Go to the Control panel → Marketing → Automated emails to enable the feature in a single click or read on to learn more about email automation with Ecwid and find out what new emails are available for your online store.

Contents:

• Why Automated Emails Are Great for Business
• How to Enable Automated Email
• How to Add Discount Coupons to Your Automated Emails
• Seven Automated Email Campaigns in Ecwid

Why Automated Emails Are Great for Business

In e-commerce, automated email (a.k.a triggered email) is an email that is automatically sent in response to a certain customer action in your online store.

For example, someone might add items to their cart but bounce halfway through checkout. Or, maybe it’s just been a while since a particular customer visited your store. Whenever a certain criterion is met (for example, "three days after a purchase"), an email will be triggered to send.

Some of the benefits of automated marketing emails:

• Increased sales. Unlike manual emails, automated trigger emails are tailored to a variety of customer segments, so this tool is very scalable. Unlike regular mass mailing, automated emails are sent at the right moment for each customer, delivering higher open rates and generating more conversions.
• Reduced effort. Уou probably get what the word automated is indicating. Once enabled, automated emails are sent out automatically, meaning no action is required from the store owner directly.
• More cost-effective. Retaining an existing customer is always cheaper than acquiring a new one. Plus, with Ecwid, there are no transaction fees or subscriber limits (unlike most popular email marketing tools) so all you have to pay is the regular cost of your Ecwid pricing plan — regardless of how many shoppers are receiving your emails.

Marketing automation is a hot trend: 67% of marketing leaders currently use a marketing automation platform and 82% of marketers point out a positive return on investment from marketing automation — including automated emails. And now you too can benefit from this technology with Ecwid.

How to Enable Automated Email

Enable up to seven distinct email campaigns in Ecwid:

• Favorite items reminder
• Abandoned cart recovery email with a discount
• Order confirmation with related products
• Feedback request
• "Thank you for shopping with us"
• Inactive customer reminder (with bestsellers)
• Purchase anniversary

You can enable all seven emails with a single click or set up each automated campaign individually by navigating to Control panel → Marketing → Automated emails.

For each type of automated email, you can:

• Enable and disable the email. For best results, we recommend enabling all available automated campaigns.
• Change the email copy. Ecwid’s automated emails are already optimized for sales, but you’re always free to modify the copy to better fit your brand voice.
• Add a discount coupon to convert more customers. We’ll show you how to add coupons to your automated emails below.
• Add links to your social media profiles to grow your followers. (Add your social links in Settings → General)
• See email stats. For each campaign, you’ll see how many emails were sent and how much money they made.

New Automated Emails are available for Ecwid stores on Business plan or higher. Upgrade →

How to Add Discount Coupons to Your Automated Emails

To increase your chances of closing the sale, add a discount coupon to your email for a more compelling offer. Discount coupons can be added to any automated email campaign in Ecwid.

Choose from coupons you’ve previously created in your store (as long as they can be applied to all products and aren’t limited by number of users), or create a new coupon сode using the steps below:

• Go to Marketing → Discount Coupons in your Control Panel.
• Create a coupon based on these instructions.
• Then, return to your Marketing → Automated emails and select the coupon code in the settings of your automated email campaign to add it to the email’s content.

An automated email with a discount coupon

7 Automated Email Types in Ecwid

Let’s take a look at each email type individually to see what triggers them and how they can be used to drive sales.

Automated Email #1: Favorite Item Reminder

• Goal: convert more customers by reminding them about items they like.
• Email trigger: a customer added a product to their favorites but didn’t buy it.
• Time: three days (72 hours) after a customer adds a product to their favorites.

If a customer has added one or several products to Favorites, he or she will receive a reminder email with this\these product(s) and link(s) to your store to purchase. Note that the customer can receive this email only if they have previously entered their email address to create an account in your store.

Automated Email #2: Enhanced Abandoned Cart Recovery

• Goal: bring back shoppers who abandoned their carts to complete their purchases.
• Email trigger: a customer adds a product to their cart and leaves your store without buying.
• Time: two hours after a cart is abandoned.

Automated abandoned cart recovery emails have been available in Ecwid for a while now. Whenever a customer adds items to their cart and leaves, Ecwid sends a reminder email that invites that customer back to complete their purchase.

These emails were already effective, but now we’ve enhanced our automated abandoned cart emails with new discount coupons to convert even more shoppers.

"Having a slightly higher discount or exclusive gifts in the abandoned cart email is a great 'hook' for customers. This feature is pure gold," — Mark Norman, JustSaiyan Gear.

Enable or disable marketing blocks for this email under the Automated emails tab. Note that if you disable this feature, marketing content for your abandoned cart emails will be turned off, but the abandoned cart recovery email will stay on without a discount coupon.

If you want to disable automated abandoned cart emails entirely (not recommended) or edit the template, go to Orders → Abandoned Carts.

Automated Email #3: Order Confirmation + Related Products

• Goal: upsell by offering complementary products to increase average order value.
• Email trigger: a customer makes a purchase in your store.
• Time: immediately after an order is placed.

When a customer places an order in an online store, they receive a confirmation by email. Order confirmation is an important email that customers generally read fairly closely — which means it’s also a great opportunity to upsell.

To add the related products block to your order confirmation email, enable "Promote related products in order confirmation" under Marketing → Automated email in your Control panel. If you disable this automated email marketing campaign, your customers will still get the basic order confirmation email without related products.

For best results, manually assign three related products to each of your items in your Catalog to form logical product combos. For example, if you sell sports gear, you can assign helmets and tire pumps as related products to bikes. Short on time? No worries. If you don’t specify related products but still want to enable this automated email campaign, Ecwid will pick related products automatically.

Automated Email #4: Collecting Feedback

• Goal: grow feedback and connect with customers.
• Email trigger: a customer makes a purchase in your store.
• Time: when a customer receives their order.

Show your customers that you care by asking them to leave feedback. This automated email will display the product your customer bought with a button to leave feedback.

When the customer clicks "Leave Feedback," a new email window will open with the prefilled store email and the corresponding subject line:

All your customers have to do is type a quick review and hit send. And don’t forget to offer a discount on their next purchase to sweeten the pot.

Important! A customer can’t leave meaningful feedback before he\she receives their order. So you’ll need to set up this automated campaign to send based on your average shipping time. By default, this email is sent four weeks after the order status is changed to "Shipped." If your shipping generally takes more or less time, update your send time accordingly, and remember to update order statuses promptly as well.

Automated Email #5: a "Thank You for Shopping with Us" Email

• Goal: increase customer loyalty and encourage future purchases.
• Email trigger: a customer has made two orders in your store.
• Time: 30 minutes after an order is paid for.

If a customer shops in your store regularly, it’s a good idea to make them feel appreciated. With this automated email follow up, you can thank your customers for their loyalty and ask them to share their love for you store on Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media channel by clicking below.

Adding a discount code to this automated email can also entice customers to spread the word.

Automated Email #6: Come Back for Bestsellers

• Goal: bring back customers who are slipping away.
• Email trigger: a customer made a purchase at one point but hasn’t been back.
• Time: six months after their last order.

Bring inactive customers back with an automated email that displays your bestsellers and an optional discount coupon.

Ecwid uses products from your "Store front page" category for this email. You can change products to display in this category under Catalog → Categories. For best results, include your most popular items in this category, and don’t forget to update it as new items are added to your store.

Automated Email #7: One Year After Purchase

• Goal: activate inactive customers and drive additional sales.
• Email trigger: a customer has made an order in your store.
• Time: one year after placing any order.

Sending this automated email isn’t just to celebrate another year. Staying in touch with your customers at regular intervals is extremely important if you want to encourage repeat purchases.

Just like with the previous automated campaign, products for this email are taken from the "Store front page" category, and you can add a discount coupon here as well.

Automate Your Email Marketing… and More!

Automated email is just one more way Ecwid is becoming the fastest and easiest way for merchants to manage their businesses online.

Read about eleven more ways to sell with Ecwid and subscribe to our blog for more Ecwid tips and ecommerce guides. 🤓

Did you know that 90% of startups fail within the first 120 days? As sobering as that statistic may be, it’s not said to discourage you. Quite the opposite. My hope is that by acknowledging the risks, you’ll be encouraged to implement the strategies necessary to buck this staggering trend. And you can! So how do you avoid being in the 90%? By designing a product that solves your customers’ problem.

This article will guide you through the process of product development using what’s known as "design thinking." How will you solve your audience’s problems? What’s the relationship between a person, that person’s problem, and your product-solution? Learn all about what design-thinking is and how you can use it to create a product your customers can’t resist.

Let’s dive in.

The Principles of Design Thinking

When it comes to design thinking, the "design" isn’t about website graphics or pretty animations. In design thinking, "design" is everything related to the person your end product is meant for, i.e., your customer.

Design thinking is a way of framing and directing the process of new product development. As a framework, design thinking adheres to a set of principles:

• Human first. Design thinking is always about people. A quality product solves a problem for the audience and fits into the context for which it’s intended, e.g., a person’s commute, etc.
• Bidirectionality. There are two types of thinking required: divergent (quantitative) and convergent (qualitative). First, we work on the objective number of problems to identify or ideas we’ll need to create, and then we use our best judgement to choose the right ones to address.
• It’s okay to make mistakes. Design thinkers accept their mistakes and do not hesitate to make them. And often, that mistake will lead to a break-through idea or an extraordinary decision.
• Prototyping. It’s not a product but something that explains how the product works. It can be a short critical essay, a chart, graphics, a presentation, or just a hand-drawn picture on a whiteboard. The main thing is to explain what turns this product into a solution.
• Test as soon as possible. When a prototype is ready, give it to someone else for feedback. Improve it. Then make it again. Testing and analyzing a prototype is cheaper than creating a first series for retail, and it protects your product from major failures after launch.
• Design thinking never ends. So you’ve used the method of design thinking and developed the perfect product. Is that it? Far from it! First, everything can be improved. Second, your solution can become dated over time. That’s why savvy design thinkers periodically repeat the design thinking process to ensure they’ve got the best possible product for their audience’s problem at any given time.

Design thinkers don’t believe that every Jack has his Jill, aka "there’s a customer for every product." They act differently: do research, define customer pain points, and develop a product-solution for each one.

For your e-commerce business to succeed, you can’t be like the parent who cooks bad food and forces their children to eat it just because they made it. And some entrepreneurs are; they launch websites just because they have something ready to sell, and they never consider whether or not users actually want to buy what they’re selling. It doesn’t matter whether you like it or not. The only thing that matters is whether your audience likes it.

Long story short, develop products with design thinking in mind.

Design Thinking in the Process of Product Development

As a method, design thinking consists of six stages: empathy, defining, ideation, prototyping, testing, and implementing. If you do everything right, you’ll get a ready prototype of your e-commerce product that will solve your user’s problem.

So, here’s how to develop a new product with design thinking.

Stage 1: Empathy

• Type of thinking: divergent, quantity-oriented.
• Time required: about 15 minutes per person, from 10 representatives of your target audience.
• Equipment: a notepad, a pen.
• Additional tools: a voice recorder, a video recorder.

Theory

Empathy is about understanding your customers and their lives — knowing what they do, think, and feel. It’s not about conducting sitting at a desk and hunting around the internet for ideas. It’s about actual communication with your would-be customers to determine if there’s a problem and how you might solve it.

In practice, this stage is best implemented through interviews.

Directly observe what users do, ask what they want, and try to understand what might motivate or discourage them from using your product. The goal is to get enough information that you begin to empathize with your target audience.

It helps to create a buyer persona and a customer journey map, as well as examining the correlation between a customer, his problems, and your product (or your competitors’ product if yours isn’t ready yet).

Practice

During the empathy phase, ask about your user’s latest experience related to the problem you think your product solves. Try to reveal as many pain points as possible. Imagine yourself as a doctor diagnosing a disease: the more symptoms you find, the better your diagnosis, and ultimately, the better the treatment you’ll give.

Lifehack: Buy coffee coupons or Amazon gift cards, and offer them to your audience as incentive for the interview.

Example

Let’s say you sell smartphones. So you need to know why a person needs a smartphone, how they choose which smartphone to buy, and how they search websites to find it.

First, ask them about smartphones:

• What do you use your smartphone for?
• What do you see as the advantage of a smartphone over a regular phone?
• How often do you use your smartphone?
• What kind of problems do you have when using your smartphone?
• What problems would you like to solve with your smartphone but can’t?

After that, ask about their latest experience with buying a smartphone online:

• How do you buy devices?
• What problems did you have when shopping online?
• How did you buy your latest smartphone? What did you like and dislike about it?
• What was your #1 problem while buying a smartphone online?

If the person you’re interviewing is one of your current customers, ask about their experience using your website:

• Could you please tell us about your latest purchase experience with our store?
• What device did you use? Did you find us on Google or social media?
• Did you know which product to buy beforehand, or did you search our website for ideas? How long did it take to decide that you wanted to buy this product?
• Did you talk to our online consultant? How would you rate that communication?
• What problems did you face when buying in our online store? Is there anything we should improve or keep doing?

Sometimes customers lie: not because they necessarily want to lie, but because of their inflated ego or self-doubt. So, ask and observe. Learn to see where words fail to meet actions. Keep your questions open, avoid binary responses, and ask plenty of "Why?" questions to mine for more information.

In short, get to the heart of the problem. Find out something about your customers that they don’t know about themselves. Become like a psychologist who learns everything about your clients’ lives, and know when to stay silent to make sure they have plenty of time to speak. In other words, observe, engage, and listen. This is the secret to creating an exceptional customer experience.

Stage 2: Defining

• Type of thinking: convergent, quality-oriented.
• Time required: about 40 minutes to analyze your collected data plus a few minutes to define the problem statement.
• Equipment: the data, a notepad, a pen.
• Additional tools: a laptop, a whiteboard.

Theory

If you did everything right in the empathy stage, your notebook should be full of problems, needs, and comments from your audience by this point. If you interviewed 10-15 people, you should have enough data to highlight their common problems. If you interviewed more than 20-30 people, you’ll also be able to segment those audiences a bit more to define commonalities between people of similar demographics and psychographics.

There’s no need to highlight every possible segment: two or three should be fine. Define their points of view to understand them better, and this will help you define your problem statement (a short statement of the problem your product will address).

Practice

Based on what you’ve learned about your customers and their context, define the challenge you’ll be addressing. To do that, you’ll unpack the observations you gathered at the empathy stage.

Take all the data you got from interviews and create a table — like the one shown in the image below — to develop a buyer persona: name, age, gender, contacts, occupation, interests, etc.

After you’ve done this for all your interviewees, determine what they have in common and segment them into different groups based on those connections. If a substantial percentage of interviewees seem to have the same problem, see what unites those people.

Then you’ll take the problem most of your audience shares, and start generating ideas to solve it with the help of your new product development process.

Example

To define the problem, consider HMW (How Might We…?) questions.

Source

Stage 3: Ideation

• Type of thinking: divergent, quantity-oriented.
• Time required: about 10 minutes.
• Equipment: a notepad, a pen.
• Additional tools: a set of techniques for brainstorming (mind maps, sketches, screens).

Theory

Now that you know the audience and their problems, it’s time to generate the broadest range of possibilities to solve them that would enable you to grow your business.

The ideation stage isn’t about finding the right idea just yet. It’s about brainstorming and creating as many ideas as possible. Here, you’ll sketch out different ideas, mix and remix them, rebuild others’ ideas, etc.

Practice

The first 5-10 ideas that come to mind during a brainstorming session are usually boring or duplicative of others. For effective marketing brainstorming, consider a 7-10-17 strategy.

Follow these 7 rules:

• Organize a comfortable workspace for brainstorming.
• Appoint a person who’ll write down all the ideas.
• In case of a group-wide brainstorming, organize a warm-up so all participants can get to know and get comfortable with each other.
• Pinpoint the problem.
• Don’t rush the product development process.
• Don’t gather more than 10 people for a brainstorming session.
• Encourage each member of the group to share their ideas.

Avoid these 10 mistakes:

• A brainstorming session with no topic.
• A team with no motivation to create something remarkable.
• A team with no problem-solving skills.
• A team of people with similar mindsets: invite people with different backgrounds, not marketers only.
• A team of people with competing projects.
• Too many breaks during a session.
• Clinging to traditional and already-developed solutions.
• Being too serious during a brainstorming session.
• Calling for rapid response.
• Approving ideas in the moment.

Consider 17 brainstorming techniques when you develop products: travel in time, teleport, reshaping yourself, assuming different roles, filling the gaps, spying, switching brains, choosing the best ideas, building mind maps, searching for help, playing sports, no stops, a SWOT analysis, criticizing, unlimited resources, a random factor, exaggerating.

Source

Stage 4: Prototyping

• Type of thinking: divergent, quantity-oriented.
• Time required: about 40 minutes with a good layout.
• Equipment: use whatever you need.

Theory

You’ve developed a bunch of ideas to solve a problem during brainstorming. Now it’s time to build a tactile representation of those solutions to ask for feedback from your audience.

During this stage, your goal is to understand what components of your idea work and don’t work. Create a solution prototype (a new landing page, product descriptions, category, lead magnet, etc.) to see what customers think of it. The prototype is an explanation of how the product will work.

Practice

When building a prototype, don’t spend too long on it. Your task here is to build an experience and let users practice it as soon as possible. They’ll experience the prototype and share their thoughts on it. (Opening and follow-up questions will help you gather feedback.)

Change the prototype based on the feedback you receive, and then observe users’ reactions. Each prototype of your product gets you closer to the final solution.

Create several prototypes of your product. It can be an upgrade of an existing product, an additional service, or an entirely new product.

Oftentimes, your audience will reject the ideas that you initially liked. And that’s what makes the design thinking method so valuable for new product development: it helps you avoid products that could have been expensive failures without the right feedback.

Stage 5: Testing

• Type of thinking: convergent, quality-oriented.
• Time required: minimum of 60 minutes per person, 10+ representatives of your target audience.
• Equipment: prototypes, user feedback, a notebook, a pen.
• Additional tools: a voice recorder, a video camera. It’s also good to conduct your test in a place where the product will be used in real life.

Theory

The testing phase is about gathering customer feedback on your prototype. You show them something tangible and ask, "How about this?" Even if a user likes the idea of the product, they may not consider its prototype the best.

Practice

If possible, recreate the environment where consumers will use the product. If it’s a new café design, you can use 3D models, turn on background noise that might be heard in a café, and bring coffee and croissants to the test. If it’s a new kitchen machine, you can rent an apartment for a day and conduct tests there.

Record everything your participants do during the test. Next, analyze your participants and identify patterns: and remember, their behavior can often tell you more than their words.

Source

Your prototypes can offer varying levels of detail. Develop your work plan so you’ll have time to conduct several tests. First, show drawings of your new product; then its 3D-model prototypes; and finally a working prototype and your ready-to-sell product.

Example

Let’s say you sell clothes. You create your first prototype for a new pair of jeans, and after introducing it to your audience, you discover that a select segment would like jeans specifically for disco dancing.

So, your next prototype is a drawing of your jeans with a new light-emitting weave to make customers stand out on the dance floor. Your second audience likes these new jeans more, but wants you to make the weave bigger. You take this recommendation into account and create a corresponding 3D model of your jeans to show them from all sides.

Now your audience says they would like to see weaves that wrap around the entire jean. So, you do that. They ask to make the weaves on the back smaller. You do that too. Now you’ve fine-tuned the prototype enough that you create a working sample for your audience to try on.

They worry about buttons, a zipper, and whether the weaves would be wiped out during washing. So you change the buttons and the zipper, and give them the jeans for a month to test by washing them every two days. Then you gather their feedback, make tweaks, and repeat this final stage as needed until the desired product is achieved.

Stage 6: Implementing

As the most crucial step of design thinking, "implementing" is the key to successfully launching your new product.

The final stage of design thinking is about staffing, funding, and mapping out your e-commerce product timeline. This is where you’ll determine milestones for your solution and develop a funding/long-term revenue strategy to grow your business.

Points to consider:

• Any costs you’ll incur, including staff and marketing.
• Choosing reliable funding sources.
• The number of sales required to hit your revenue goals. (How will you create repeat business? Will you introduce new versions of your product later?)
• Your long-term goals. (What will happen with your product in five years?)

Note: The product design process never ends. You’ll ideate and test your product again and again to deliver the best possible solution and encourage your customers to keep returning for more purchases in the future.

Designing E-commerce Products: What’s Next?

So what have we learned?

With design thinking, you’ll create and refine products that solve real problems for your target audience. And solving problems means more profit, happier customers, and lifelong fans.

Harness your new design thinking skills to start creating products that sell.

Marketing automation with Ecwid just got smarter.

Now you can be seen everywhere customers are browsing, researching, and buying online with Google Smart Shopping ads for Ecwid stores. With this latest overhaul of the Google ads tool, you can take your products to the top of Google search and beyond with YouTube, Gmail, and the Google Display Network.

Automated Google advertising with Ecwid is like having your own marketing team on-call 24/7: ads run, test, and optimize automatically in just a couple of clicks.

Be Seen Everywhere

With Google Smart Shopping, your ads will appear across mobile and desktop devices on Google Shopping, YouTube, Gmail, and more than 2 million partner websites via the Google Display Network. Advertise everywhere instantly, all from a single tool that’s available free in your Ecwid Control Panel.

Reach the Right Audience at the Right Moment

Wondering what’s so smart about Google’s latest advertising tool? Using Google’s new Smart AI technology, Google Smart Shopping instantly evaluates billions of insights to automatically locate and display your products to the customers who are most likely to buy them.

• Show up in front of new customers: For most customers, online shopping usually starts with a Google search. Google Smart Shopping ads put your products at the top of Google search results for customers searching for products and solutions like yours.
• Stay on the radars of previous store visitors: Ads shown across Gmail, YouTube, and Google Display Network are based on customer behavior in your online store. Repeat visitors who are familiar with your store are more likely to convert on a second or third visit.

Start Advertising in Minutes

Outside of Ecwid, creating a campaign of this scale would take 10+ steps to complete; with Ecwid’s marketing automation, you can do it in three:

1. Go to Ecwid Control Panel → All sales channels → Google Shopping.
2. Choose categories to advertise and regions where you want to sell.
3. Set your daily budget and launch your campaign.

No marketing skills? Don’t need "em. Automated Google Smart Shopping requires zero experience, so you can forget designing complex targeting rules, building keyword lists, or messing around with changing product feeds.

The best part? Google’s Smart Shopping tool is available in 40 countries for free with any Ecwid plan (advertising budget not included.)

Get Even Better Results Over Time

Of course, the magic of Smart Shopping doesn’t stop there. Once launched, Google’s Smart algorithm will continue to automatically tweak your campaigns to improve performance, saving you time and money by optimizing your bidding strategy and ad placements for the highest return on investment. The longer you advertise, the better your results. Isn’t that smart?

Launch your first campaign today or learn more about Google Smart Shopping on our podcast.

Also read: Google Shopping Search Ads: Now Fully Automated and Optimized With Ecwid

Now you can connect your Ecwid store to Alice POS, a point-of-sale solution designed to help businesses manage their in-person sales and stores across multiple locations. Whether it’s a single store or a huge franchise, with Alice POS, you can manage your online and offline sales, inventory, prices, reports, and stores — all in one place.

What is a Point-of-Sale System?

A point-of-sale (POS) system is a combination of software and hardware that allows merchants to sell in-person from physical locations. The software allows the merchant to process transactions and manage their orders, inventory, and staff. And the hardware may include a POS terminal, a cash drawer, a credit card reader, a receipt printer, a barcode scanner, and/or a customer facing display, depending on the merchant’s needs.

If you sell both online and offline and use a POS system that connects to e-commerce platforms, it allows you to sync your online and in-person sales and keep your inventory up-to-date in real time. This is especially convenient when you own a brick and mortar store and want to sync your inventory online to track your stock in real time.

Who Needs a Point-of-Sale System?

A POS system is useful for online merchants and brick-and-mortar store owners who want to better manage their inventory and expand their business.

If you sell online and plan to open a brick-and-mortar store

Sometimes online merchants want to expand their operation to physical locations, whether that’s a brick-and-mortar store, a kiosk at a market, trade shows, festivals, a pop-up shop, or something else.

If you sell in-person and want to open an online store

If you haven’t thought about bringing your business online, it’s probably time you gave it a try. As more people turn to online shopping for everything from clothes to groceries, online shoppers are expected to reach 2.14 billion people worldwide by 2021.

People shop on websites, apps, social media platforms, and marketplaces — and with Ecwid, you can sell on all of them, reaching more of your audience and growing your sales. And if you use a POS system like Alice, you’ll be able to quickly sync all your sales and inventory, so you don’t go crazy while you’re going omnichannel.

If you want to better manage your inventory

If you use a POS system that connects to your e-commerce platform, you can sync your in-store inventory with your online inventory without hiring someone to manage it manually. So you save on operational cost while simultaneously protecting your customer experience.

Alice POS for Single Store Owners

Alice POS is a feature-packed all-in-one cloud-based POS solution designed to help businesses of all sizes. Alice POS is powerful enough to support a franchise, but scalable enough for single store owners with a desire to expand.

Alice POS functions worldwide, supporting three languages — French, English, and Spanish.

Implement more revenue streams

In Alice POS, you’re not limited to single-stream new purchases. Create multiple revenue streams by managing rentals, repairs, consignments, trade-ins, and used goods. Here are some examples:

• Rentals: This feature is useful for store owners wanting to rent products to their customers, like bikes and scooters.
• Repairs: Alice POS allows merchants to manage repairs in their stores, from sporting goods like bikes to electronics and everything in between.
• Consignments: This feature allows you to hold onto a customer’s merchandise until it sells and share the profits. This is especially useful for used clothing stores like thrift shops.
• Trade-Ins: Video game stores love this feature which allows them to purchase inventory (like used games) from customers to resell them in their stores.
• Used goods: Manage the sale of used products, from electronics to sporting goods.

Each of these features can enable merchants to create new revenue streams, or centrally manage their current revenue streams to an all-in-one POS. Having one system to manage a variety of sales options saves costs and time related to having multiple software systems.

Cross sell

Suggest similar or complementary products or services to your clients to increase average purchase amount.

Manage package breakdown

You can breakdown a package of multiple products into individual items within your inventory, which saves time stocking up.

Easily migrate from your current POS

If you already use a POS system but would like to try Alice POS, you don’t have to worry about your setup process. Alice POS onboarding team will import all your products, clients, and inventory list for you. Read more about the migration process here.

Alice POS for Franchises & Networks

Here’s how Alice POS might benefit franchises, corporate networks and buying groups:

Manage multi-stores from one dashboard

Alice POS was made for multi-stores like franchises, corporate buying groups and corporate networks, and allows to manage all stores from one dashboard.

To easily manage such multi-stores, you can create master and sub-master accounts. A Master account is usually managed by Head Office, and sub-master accounts are usually managed by a store owner that owns more than one store within the network. You can also let managers generate custom profiles and provide role-based permissions to users.

Easily transfer inventory levels between your physical locations

If you have more than one store, you can quickly transfer stock between branches. For example, you can find one store to supply stock to another store in case inventory levels are running low. Moreover, managers can monitor the number of available products in stores, track item transactions, and determine the amount of revenue collected.

Update prices and promotion terms for all of you locations

You can use your master or submaster account to create promotions or edit prices once and then push them towards your different stores to save time. The stores that receive the price list can accept all changes, or adjust prices to their local market. This way you save time while running several stores.

Give local managers permission to add products and set prices

Network stores may sell their own products or set their own prices. With Alice POS, you or your store managers can create local products and prices, if allowed by the master account.

Get reports from all stores in one dashboard

Alice POS gathers reports from individual stores and consolidates them into one place for easier access and analysis. It means the head office can view individual store reports and take action on them. Stores can also give access for an accountant so that they can manage accounting remotely.

Get custom development and training

Alice POS adapts to your needs and offers custom development that might be especially important for large networks. The Alice POS team can serve you in English and French.

Alice POS’s onboarding team will not just train you and your team, they will accompany you every step of the way and adapt to the specific needs of your business.

How to Connect Your Ecwid Store to Alice POS

It’s not always easy to know if the POS you would like to implement is truly adapted to your specific needs. Implementing a new POS can be such a big change in your business, especially with regards to migrating data and training employees.

That is why Alice POS has a do-it-for-you migration and training process. They also want to make sure your choice is truly adapted to your needs before you get started. So, if you consider connecting your store to Alice POS, request a demo with one of the Alice POS retail experts:

1. Open Alice POS app in the App Market.
2. Click "Get."
3. Fill in the form to get your free demo.

Alice POS team will get in touch with you. On a 15 to 30 minute call, you can talk about your specific needs and learn if Alice POS is adapted to your business. If you feel it is, the Alice POS team will provide you a customized and detailed demo to help you make your choice. If you decide Alice POS is adapted to your business needs, the onboarding team will help migrate your data, train your team and connect your POS to your Ecwid store for seamless in-store and online sales.

Choose the Right POS System for Your Ecwid Store

POS systems help sync your in-person and online sales and inventory, which is essential for merchants who use different channels to sell. Depending on your business, your choice of POS solution may differ from other merchants’, which is why Ecwid integrates with various POS systems. Your choice might be based on where you sell, how many stores you have, your ambition to expand, or something else entirely.

If you want to learn more about POS systems or other payment options available at Ecwid, check out the article in our Help Center.

It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for. Now you can let customers pay for orders with a tap when you set up Apple Pay for your Ecwid store.

Re-typing credit card details and shipping info is — unquestionably — the worst part of online shopping. It’s inconvenient. It’s tedious. And it involves entirely too many numbers. With Apple Pay for Ecwid stores, your customers can forget all that. Apple Pay lets your customers complete your entire checkout process from a single tap.

And because Apple Pay is authorized by fingerprint or face identification, your customers can always enjoy the same frictionless checkout experience whenever they visit your store.

Set-up Apple Pay with Stripe to start offering simpler payments and encourage more shoppers to complete their purchase with your new one-tap checkout. Apple Pay is now available for free on all Ecwid pricing plans across 35 countries.

Easier Checkout for Customers, More Sales for You

Like we said, no one likes re-typing their credit card details or shipping info — and that goes double for mobile users.

With Apple Pay, payment details are stored securely in the Wallet app for easy use in Apple’s Safari browser across iPhone, iPad, and Mac devices. And paying with Apple Pay isn’t just super fast: it’s also secure thanks data encryption technologies and Touch ID/Face ID.

According to Ecwid’s data, 27% of all orders in Ecwid stores are placed from an iPhone or iPad. So even if you’re not an Apple or Safari user yourself, there’s a good chance quite a few of your customers will be. And for those users already enjoying the convenience of Apple’s lightning-fast Apple Pay from other stores, adding their preferred payment system will give you a leg-up on your competition.

But adding Apple Pay to your Ecwid store is about more than doing something nice for your customers. Apple Pay offers an almost unbelievably smooth checkout experience for Apple users. And the less friction you have in your checkout experience, the more sales you’ll be able to complete without shoppers abandoning their carts and — ultimately — the more money you’ll be able to earn for your business.

Once you connect Apple Pay in your store, Ecwid will display a separate Apple Pay button on your checkout page signaling to customers that it’s available:

How to Enable Apple Pay in Your Ecwid Store

Currently, Apple Pay is only available in Ecwid through Stripe payment processing. But over the coming months, Apple Pay will be made available to merchants across a variety of payment processors through their Ecwid stores.

Enable Apple Pay with Stripe using our comprehensive step-by-step guide.

Can Ecwid stores accept Apple Pay while selling in-person?

Yes! Ecwid has integrated with several of the largest Point-of-Sale systems to help merchants easily sell their products in person. With a POS connected to your Ecwid Control panel, you can sell in-person and sync your sales and inventory directly with your Ecwid store. Ecwid POS partners like Square also support Apple Pay, so be sure to check out their integration (available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and Japan) if you’re planning to sell in-person.

Learn more about connecting your Ecwid store to POS systems in your Control panel → Sales Channels → POS or in our Help Center.

Enable Apple Pay Today

Apple Pay makes it easier to shop online across all Apple devices. And with mobile shopping eclipsing desktop experiences, efficient checkout is a no-brainer for Ecwid merchants. With Apple’s simple one-tap checkout, you can convert more desktop and mobile shoppers and provide a seamless customer experience that keeps customers coming back for more.

"Entrepreneur is a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit." That’s the dictionary definition of entrepreneurship. Fair enough.

And for posterity, here’s another definition from Michael E. Gerber, founder of a business skills training company: "The entrepreneur is a dreamer, a thinker, a storyteller and a leader. The dreamer has a dream, the thinker has a vision, the storyteller has a purpose, and the leader has a mission."

Whether you’re on team Team Dictionary or Team Gerber, no two entrepreneurial journeys are ever the same. There are as many ways to describe an entrepreneur and their experience as there are entrepreneurs themselves. So we asked some of our Ecwid merchants to do just that.

If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur and want to know first-hand what it’s like to start your own business, read on as our Ecwid merchants share their own experiences, motivations, and the skills that helped them succeed.

Ready to start your online business? Set up a free store with Ecwid and sell everywhere: on websites, social media, online marketplaces, in apps, and in person. All with no transaction fees.

What Does it Mean to Be an Entrepreneur

Kiki Heinzer, founder and CEO of premium meal delivery service Kleanla

– What does it mean to be an entrepreneur?
Being an entrepreneur means total freedom to create the job and life you want. With that freedom, comes a lot of responsibility, but you get to truly tap into something that has great meaning for you.

Kleanla

– Why did you become an entrepreneur?
I ultimately wanted to help people. I saw a need in the market and I knew I could fulfill that need better than anyone else.

Leah Da Gloria, premier couture designer

– Are entrepreneurs born or made?
Made. I believe it’s more of a question of where one’s entrepreneurial qualities originate. Some benefit from their supportive upbringing where their parents or mentors provide a path of critical thought and analysis of themselves, promoting emotional intelligence and awareness. Others nurture these qualities within themselves through environmental change. So I believe it’s more of a question of where their qualities stem from than a question of "you have it or you don’t."

LEAH DA GLORIA

– What does an entrepreneur do?
First and foremost, entrepreneurs are innovators who have a unique product/service/idea. They are "big picture" people who are relentless in realizing their dream. They are people who are self-confident, tenacious, consistent in their execution, possess an unlimited mindset, are visionaries and optimistic.

Jimmy Craig, artist and owner of prints store they can talk

– What is entrepreneurship to you?
A part of what entrepreneurship means to me is figuring out what works — including trial and error, making adjustments, listening to your audience, and experimenting. Since I started selling comics on my website, nearly every aspect of my business has evolved in some form or another — including the paper I use, how they’re printed, and what they’re shipped in.

they can talk

– What tip would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
If you’re starting your own business, I would recommend taking advantage of social media to connect with customers. Social media makes it so easy to post polls and promotions. When I post comics, I can easily see which ones my audience responds best to, which ultimately are the ones that turn into prints.

Michelle Cox, owner of personalized hand-stamped jewelry store Mermaids and Dinosaurs

– Are entrepreneurs born or made?
I think entrepreneurs are made. Throughout my life, I’ve had various job roles, but nothing really felt right. I’ve always been creative, and after lots of trial and error, I found that making jewelry was my main calling. For anyone starting a business, of course the end goal is to make money, but more than anything you need to have a genuine passion for what you’re doing.

Mermaids and Dinosaurs

– What skills do successful entrepreneurs have?
Passion, desire, and thick skin! There is no quick money making scheme if you want to be an entrepreneur and business owner. It takes a lot of time, effort, and perseverance! More than anything you need to be consistent, connect with your audience, not follow the crowd, and try to reinvent constantly. I’m forever working on new design ideas and teaching myself new jewellery making techniques to keep things new and exciting for my customers.

Kay Keusen, owner of premium swiss chocolate store Taucherli

– Are entrepreneurs born or made?
I think both or nothing. In my view it’s passion that you need. Passion is the biggest driver. But a base of business knowledge is also important which is supporting your passion.

Taucherli

– What skills do successful entrepreneurs have?
The most important skill is perseverance. Especially nowadays when you see successful stories, a lot of people just think: "Wow, they just got rich". No, in 99% of businesses, you have to work hard.

Emily Meadows, owner of Pip the Beach Cat LLC

– What does it mean to be an entrepreneur?
It means that the entire customer experience, the business, the people depending on you — it all weighs on your shoulders. You are living, eating, and breathing the success of your company because it is not an option to fail. Your success brings success to an exponential number of people that your business deals with on a daily basis.

Pip the Beach Cat

– Why did you become an entrepreneur?
I’d always kept an irregular schedule, choosing to work as a waitress instead of using my degrees, because it allowed me an adventurous lifestyle. The next step was to somehow figure out how I could make my schedule even better. While I definitely work more now than I did before, I know that I’m working for something important to me and something that can positively affect my life for years to come. And if I find that I need a day off, I just take it. I think the concept of being your own boss is pretty rewarding.

Jill Simmons, owner of calligraphy and stationery store The Letter Box

– What is an entrepreneur?
For me, being an entrepreneur means being a leader for your brand. It means doing the right thing, evaluating what worked and didn’t, learning new methods to cut time or cost for your products, and providing a high level of customer service.

The Letter Box

– Why did you become an entrepreneur?
My dream job didn’t exist, so I created it. I wanted a flexible schedule creating calligraphy and invitations and teaching calligraphy workshops. I began The Letter Box in 2016 and have served dozens of brides with wedding invitations and taught hundreds of students calligraphy. Some days are challenging, and some days are rewarding. I have gained great knowledge from my experiences as an entrepreneur.

Trey Humphries, CEO and founder of clothing brand Carton Outerwear

– What is entrepreneurship to you?
To me, entrepreneurship is a fundamental aspect of having a career that you love. Starting your own business provides the opportunity to place your values and interests at the forefront of what you do every day. I find the whole process to be the most fulfilling part of my life. I have had the same dream of making my own clothing line since I was a child when I spray-painted graphics onto white t-shirts using stencils.

So, for me being an entrepreneur doesn’t just mean that I am my own boss; it means that I am living out my dream with total freedom and creative control. Obviously, some days things are very difficult and it can feel like my dream is actually a nightmare. But even in the toughest times, I have never truly wanted to quit because I couldn’t imagine having to relinquish that freedom.

Trey (in the middle) with social media influencers at the opening of Carton pop up shop

– What tip would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?
My advice would be to brace yourself; starting your own business is easier said than done. Don’t spend too much time talking about the company you aspire to launch and just start doing it instead because you will never know all that your business needs until it starts operating. People often spend too much time in the planning phase because it feels rewarding to just conceptualize your ideas’ potential with no risk of failure.

You have to develop a new relationship with your shortcomings because it is when things go awry that you actually learn what the business needs to operate. When things go well, the consumers are just validating what you already knew. But I’ve learned a lot more about what our company needs to work on from the times that we fell short, because at that point, the aspect that’s holding you back makes itself glaringly obvious. Count your blessings, but study your shortcomings.

Carton Outerwear

Entrepreneur Tips

We’re consistently amazed by the way Ecwid merchants use our tools to manage and grow their businesses. On the Ecwid E-commerce Show, we invite our merchants to share their individual stories and offer tips for current and future entrepreneurs to realize their own e-commerce dreams.

Solve a problem for yourself and it could become your next product

If you want to become an entrepreneur but you’re not sure where to start, begin by finding a solution to a common problem in your own routine.

If your idea does solve a real problem, even for a very small niche, there’s a good chance you’ll be able to build a business around it — like Billy Miller, owner of triangle and finger cymbal machine store the Miller Machine. Billy was playing drums and percussion for Broadway, and needed something to make the sound better when playing a multiple set. So he designed a solution for his own problem, and other musicians took interest.

Listen to Billy’s story: Solopreneur E-commerce Journey to Vanlife

But just because it worked for Billy doesn’t mean your solution needs to be a brand new invention. For example, Jill Bartlett was shopping for a rain coat for her dog Scout when she struck gold. While Jill did find dog-raincoats from other sellers, there was nothing designed to fit her Porti-Doodle. When Jill realized there were other dog owners with the same problem, she opened her custom dog coat shop ScouterWear to fill the need.

Listen to Jill’s entrepreneurial story: Pet Passion Project — Custom Dog Coat Store

Get help from your local entrepreneurial community

At the start of her business, Jaeleen Shaw, founder of the flower store Flora Flower Cart, gained much needed exposure from her local entrepreneurial community:

"When we first got started, this was the number one thing that really helped us boost and get in front of the community. We’re a part of a local entrepreneurial group that’s called Tuesdays Together. We joined that community really early on, and all the people involved in that are really core in the creative community here in Fresno. They all shared about us on their social media and with their friends, and that helped us really blow up really quickly because they really loved us and cared about us."

Another thing that helped Flora Flower Cart to succeed is their beautiful imagery

Listen to Jaeleen’s entrepreneurial story: Local Flower Cart to National Seller with Instagram

Don’t let doubts stop you

Antonette Montalvo, a community health consultant and life coach for nurses, was originally planning to share her nursing insights on her personal blog before deciding to collect her thoughts in a book:

"Entrepreneurship wasn’t on my first track. It was just about wanting to do something innovative in terms of providing health care. I started writing down some notes and my husband was telling me: 'You need to publish it. There are people that can benefit from this.'

It still took time to get to 'I think it’s worth putting into a product.' Finally, I decided to take this compilation of thoughts and reflections and inspirational musings on being visionary and being able to impact health care and compile it in a way that it would be tangible for other people to utilize it and be innovative themselves.

I launched my book, and it’s probably been the best thing that I could have ever done. Not only for this business that I’m trying to scale but for other nurses who are looking to have some direction and some support."

Listen to Antonette’s entrepreneurial story: E-commerce for Author, Coach, Speaker

Be ready for ups and downs

Akilah Nisa, owner of natural cosmetics store Kissed By A Bee Organics, understands the challenges of being an entrepreneur first-hand:

"Everybody thinks entrepreneurship is easy, and it’s not. It’s like a graph. Sometimes it’s up. Sometimes it’s way down. If I don’t get orders in a couple of days, I’m like 'Oh my God, what’s going on? Why did I do this? Let me freshen up my resume, I need a job.' But then you have your good days.

There are good days and bad days, but it’s hard work. It’s a twenty-four-hour job. Yet it’s super rewarding. Entrepreneurship is about connecting, networking, and helping each other. That’s what we should do as humans."

Listen to Akilah’s entrepreneurial story: Customer Success Story — KissedByABee.com

What’s the Best Age to Become an Entrepreneur?

Fun fact: according to Harvard Business Review, the average age of an entrepreneur at the time they found their company is 42. So don’t think that you’ve missed your chance to start a business if you spent your twenties partying or working hard somewhere else.

For example, Paul Tasner founded his own start-up at age 66 after working continuously for other people for 40 years:

Entrepreneurship in different countries

Depending on the country, the number of early-stage entrepreneurs differs in various industry sectors. According to a 2019 global report of the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor:

• The Republic of Korea has the highest percentage of manufacturing/logistics entrepreneurs — 23%.
• In the Middle East and Africa, Madagascar shows the greatest proportion of agriculture/extractive/construction early-stage entrepreneurs — 25%. Angola has the highest level of wholesale/retail activity — 74%.
• In Europe, service and technology are prevalent. Austria has the highest percentage of health/education/government/social and consumer services early-stage entrepreneurs — 33%. Switzerland has the highest proportion of early-stage entrepreneurs in finance/real estate/business services — 30%. Ireland shows the largest percentage of entrepreneurs in ICT — 13%.

Starting your own online business is one of the most affordable options for aspiring entrepreneurs. With Ecwid, all you need is an email to get your store up and running. Merchants of all ages and skill-sets prove day after day that starting an online business with Ecwid is fast, easy, and fun.

"Ecwid is an amazing platform that allows anyone to easily start an online business. I created my site using Ecwid Instant Site, and it couldn’t have been easier — after about an hour of playing around with the software and customizable templates, I had a gorgeous online shop that was ready to use." — Lara, 14-year-old founder of Miku Deco.

What is an Entrepreneur? Share Your Ideas!

To paraphrase a popular maxim, "many entrepreneurs, many minds." Tell us more about you and your (dream) business, describe what being an entrepreneur means to you, or share your view of some entrepreneurial best practices in the comments.

Brilliant news for Ecwid merchants in the UK! We just released our integration with top shipping carrier Royal Mail, to let you easily display real-time Royal Mail shipping rates at checkout.

With automatic shipping rates from Royal Mail, you can charge your customers the same rates you’ll pay when shipping their orders, so your delivery costs are always covered.

Read on to learn how to set real-time rates for Royal Mail in your Ecwid store.

Your Shipping Expenses Will Always be Covered

Calculating accurate shipping rates is essential for covering your costs without charging your customers too much or too little. Charge your customers too much and you risk losing them to high delivery costs; too little and you lose your own margins to costly shipping expenses.

New Royal Mail real-time shipping rates allow you to accurately display shipping costs at checkout, so your customers are charged fairly and appropriately based on product dimensions and distance of shipping. They pay what YOU pay.

Customers will see the rates for each available option at checkout

To give customers more options, you can add up to 18 Royal Mail shipping methods in your store. For example, some shoppers might be willing to accept longer delivery times for a lower shipping cost, while others would be willing to pay a bit more to have their order delivered faster. Offering a variety of shipping methods will reduce barriers and enable you to close more sales among shoppers who arrive at the checkout process.

You can add different Royal Mail shipping options in your store settings in just a couple of clicks. Once enabled, customers will be able to choose from your listed Royal Mail shipping options at checkout.

Royal Mail 1st class and Royal Mail International Economy are active by default when you set up Royal Mail shipping in your store

How to Enable Automatic Royal Mail Shipping Rates in Your Ecwid Store

Automatic Royal Mail Shipping Rates are available for merchants on all Ecwid pricing plans. Yep, that includes our Forever Free plan!

Setting up automatic rates for Royal Mail is pretty straightforward, but before you start, ensure that:

• You’ve marked products as shippable and entered each products’ weight.
• You’ve specified the shipping origin address (the UK) and currency (pound sterling).

Now you can enable the automatically calculated Royal Mail rates in your Ecwid store:

1. Go to the Shipping & Pickup page in your Ecwid Control Panel.
2. Click on "+Add Shipping Method" and click on "Set Up Royal Mail".
3. Find "Automatically calculated rates from Royal Mail" and click on "Set Up Royal Mail":
4. Specify the address from where you ship your orders. It will be used to retrieve calculated real-time shipping rates.
5. Click Save & Finish.

After you enable the automatically calculated Royal Mail rates, two of 18 Royal Mail shipping options will be active by default in your store: Royal Mail 1st Class and Royal Mail International Economy. To enable more Royal Mail options, go to the Shipping & Pickup page, find Royal Mail method, and choose Edit.

Learn more about editing shipping settings, setting up default package size, and shipping markup for Royal Mail in our Help Center.

What if I pay for postage through Royal Mail Click & Drop?

Royal Mail Click & Drop allows you to buy postage online, download your label, and print it from your desktop. You can then put the printed label on your parcel and drop it off at a convenient location like a Royal Mail Customer Service Point, post office, or a postbox drop-off. You can buy postage and download labels from the Royal Mail Click & Drop website.

If you pay for postage through the Royal Mail Click & Drop service, you can check the "Postage paid through Click & Drop" option in the Royal Mail settings in your Control Panel. After you do that, the shipping costs at checkout will be calculated with discounted online prices from Royal Mail (the ones you paid for with Click & Drop) to offer more accurate cost calculations.

Learn how to check the "Postage paid through Click & Drop" option in our Help Center.

What if I already use the Royal Mail Shipping Rates app from the Ecwid App market?

Before this update, Ecwid merchants were able to display Royal Mail shipping rates in their online stores with the help of the Royal Mail Shipping Rates app from the Ecwid App Market. This app still works, but the new integration provides more accurate rates, works out of the box, and supports more Royal Mail services.

We advise you to start using the new Royal Mail shipping method and delete the old Royal Mail method added with the app.

Learn how to delete the old Royal Mail method and start using the new one in our Help Center.

Take Your Shipping to the Next Level with Royal Mail and Ecwid

For UK sellers, set up Royal Mail shipping methods today and start enjoying our most convenient shipping process yet.

And while you’re at it, upgrade your packaging and shipping even more with the following articles:

• Product Packaging: The Secret To Getting Repeat Customers
• How to Market Free Shipping to Grow Your Online Store
• An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Understanding Shipping Labels for E-Commerce Stores

Stay tuned for more great content like this one and subscribe to our blog newsletter to get all our latest content delivered direct to your inbox.

Social media contests are a proven strategy for growing engagement on your business’s owned social channels. Nice! The real challenge is picking the right contest to motivate your audience to participate. A sweepstake? A photo contest? Maybe a simple "Repost to Win" giveaway would do the trick. And what would spark interest on Instagram? Is there a contest type that performs better on Facebook?

To answer these questions, we rounded up 25 contest promotion ideas for online businesses. With the right preparation, you’ll be able to shake up your audience and get more engaged eyes to your store. But before we dive into those ideas, let’s go over some basics for running a successful contest.

How to Run a Successful Online Contest

Here are a few things to consider before you launch your contest. These three steps will help you craft a more profitable contest with results you can learn from and perfect over time.

A target goal of social media contests

Going into the online contest, you need to have a clear benchmark for success so you can gauge whether or not the contest went well. Your goal might be something like:

• 10% more Facebook likes
• XX new followers on Instagram
• XX new email subscribers

Set this goal before the contest begins so you can build the contest around it via entry format, submission, etc.

Prize and winner selection process

Outline what your prize will be (and make sure it’s something your contest participants will be excited about) before the contest begins. Limited edition items, gift cards, or a large collection of products work well, as these have high value to entrants.

Then, outline how the prize winner will be chosen. If your contest is a sweepstakes, sites like Rafflecopter or Random.org can help ensure you’re choosing a completely random winner (and can help keep your contest fair).

Promoting a business

Think about how you’ll spread the word about your contest once it’s live. Social media and email will help you reach your existing following, but how can you reach beyond your normal crowd? Some contests have sharing aspects built in but consider additional promotional aspects, such as:

• Partnering with influencers
• Running Facebook ads
• Partnering with local businesses

Once you have these three basic steps outlined, you can start getting more specific about the contest itself. Here are some ideas for contests you might try this year with your online store.

25 Social Media Contest Ideas to Promote Your Online Business

1. Photo caption contest ideas

Have participants create a creative or funny caption for a photo you post, and then pick your favorite as the winner. Ideally, the photo will relate back to your store or products to keep the contest relevant. Pro tip: you can ask to caption short videos for your contest as well.

Shopkins’s contest for the most creative caption

2. Video contest ideas

Leverage user-generated content by having participants create a short video as a contest entry. The video might showcase a person using your product, sharing why they deserve to win your contest, or talking about why they love your brand. These stories can be great ways to get testimonials for your brand while incentivizing contest participants.

3. Essay contest ideas

Ask participants to write an essay about why they admire your company and/or products. You’ll find some great customer stories and quotes within these essays you can leverage later, too.

4. Sweepstakes

Sweepstakes work well for getting new people to opt-in to your email list, like/follow/share your social media accounts, or check out items from your store and comment on a particular blog post. Oftentimes, participants can earn more entries the more actions like these they complete. From there, a random winner or the one with the most votes is selected at the contest’s end.

Luster offered bonus prizes in addition to their sweepstakes

5. Share your best tips contest

Let users share how they use your products with a contest geared toward participants sharing their best tips. This is a fun and easy way for your audience to learn hacks and tips about using your products — and creates a dialogue on social media. Ask participants to share their best tip for using your products, then choose the top liked tip or a random winner.

6. Selfie contest ideas

Let users enter your contest by taking a "selfie" with your product. This helps add real-life context to what you’re selling — and shows that you already have lots of customers who love your products. From here, you can randomly select a winner or let your audience vote on their favorite selfie.

Suki Hairdressing offers a contest for their clients as a way to improve customer loyalty

7. Instagram contests ideas

Create a contest that encourages people to share photos featuring your product or business on Instagram with a custom hashtag, and draw weekly or monthly winners. This helps build brand awareness and shows your product being loved by happy customers.

Instagram contest ideas can vary depending on the content you want your participants to post. For example, you can ask your followers to post an Instagram story with a product review, create a post using your business’s custom filter or mask, share their story in comments, or repost a photo of your product. Pro tip: Remind participants that if their profiles are private, you won’t be able to see their entries.

A scavenger hunt is another great option for Instagram. For example, come up with several puzzles or tasks that are posted on Stories and/or in your feed. For example: "Answer a question on Stories," or "Find [insert #] differences on two similar pictures." Participants need to complete each task to enter, and the first follower to complete all tasks is crowned the winner.

8. Share a photo contest

This more generic photo-sharing contest that encourages contest participants to share a photo as an entry. It could be a photo of their favorite outfit featuring an item from your store, or a photo of your pets enjoying their favorite treats. The idea is to feature the product…but with the user’s personal twist. Encourage participants to be as creative as possible, and you can repurpose that user-generated content later to post on your social channels.

FacePaint runs their annual contest for Halloween makeup photos

9. Facebook contest ideas

Almost any type of contest can be modified to fit any social media platform. However, some contest ideas may be better suited for Facebook. Here are some good Facebook contest ideas:

• A Q&A contest: publish a post with a question and the first person to comment with the correct answer wins. This works great for fast, one-day contests.
• Vote for a Product: Let your followers vote for their favorite product or your next new product, then choose a winner at random from the followers who voted. This type of contest earns double points because it also provides you with valuable data — like what product to order, what to create next, or what to invest in.
• Take a Quiz and Share Your Result: for this contest, you’ll need to come up with a quiz (try any quiz maker online), and then choose a winner from those who share their results on their Facebook page.

You can also use Facebook features to increase engagement on your page during your contest. For example, if you want to increase audience size for your next Facebook Live, use that Live session to announce the winner of a contest. Keep that in mind when considering Facebook contest ideas.

10. Drawing/painting contest ideas

Encourage your audience to get artsy with a drawing or painting contest. Have them create an artistic representation of their favorite product from your store, and then open up voting to see which one your audience likes best.

You can also partner with artists and ask them to choose a winner based on their skills. And you can even have two winners to encourage more participation: one based on skills and execution and another based on the number of likes/shares.

11. Cutest pet contest

Ideal for pet-centric online stores, cutest pet contest are a great way to get participants to share photos of their furry friends and to encourage voting, sharing, and promotion of your store. Plus, it’s a simple way to learn more about your animal customers!

An entry for Tukabear contest

12. Recipe contest ideas

Especially around the holidays, a recipe contest is a great way to get people sharing their favorite foods and tips for dishes. If you have a food-related online store, see if you can tie the recipe contest into your products and encourage entrants to create something new with your products.

Pro tip: you can create recipe contests during the holidays tied to popular seasonal dishes or flavors.

13. Fill in the blank contest

Ad libs and fill in the blank contests can help drive people to your online store by testing people’s knowledge. Ask a question like: "The Ecwid blog first posted on  ________ date?" to make people search out the answer within your website. You can randomly select a correct answer or give it to the first correct response.

GodrejLocks’ contest for their Twitter followers

14. Trivia contest ideas

Test your audience’s knowledge with trivia questions about your brand. Again, you can drive store visits by asking highly specific questions about your brand’s history, your products, or by using snippets of product photos.

15. Product-a-day giveaway

"Repost" and "Tag a Friend" giveaways are pretty common these days. If you want to attract more participation, try something different with a more tempting reward. For example, a week-long, product-a-day giveaway. Each day, you can award a surprise product to a random contest participant who shares your Facebook status or comments on a particular post.

16. Name a new product contest

Let your audience get involved with naming your products by challenging them to name a new product you’re releasing. Encourage puns, a play on words, or a deep knowledge of your brand. You can let people vote on the name they like best, or you can self-select the name you think is best.

Name It contests also help to increase followers’ engagement

17. Curated Pinterest board contest

If your audience is one of avid Pinterest users, leverage this social network and create a contest around it. To enter your contest, participants can create a curated Pinterest board featuring products from your store and other related pins for a theme you designate, like "fall weddings" or "bikini weather."

Great British Chefs’ Christmas-themed contest

18. Build a lookbook contest

Challenge your participants you create a lookbook around your products. This might even become a marketing asset you feature for your store. Just remember: This is a big undertaking, so be sure the prize is proportionate–it needs to be worth it!

19. Mother’s day story contest

Have people share a story about their moms in honor of Mother’s Day, and talk about why they think their Mom deserves a prize package on her special day. Then, randomly select a winner from the submissions.

www.clarisonic.com

20. Father’s day story contest

Same as Mother’s Day–but with dads. Encourage people to celebrate their families and tell stories about their loved ones. This is a great way to earn organic shares on social media!

21. Win an afternoon/session with an influencer contest

If you’re partnering with an influencer for a contest, your prize might be an in-person session with that influencer for whatever his or her specialty may be. Maybe it’s a decorating session, a makeover, a closet revamp–you name it. A chance to get one-on-one time with an expert influencer can drive participation in a big way.

Bloggers and entrepreneurs Elsie and Emma from A Beautiful Mess did this successfully: Their contest included a grand prize that was an in-person decorating session where they helped one lucky winner re-style a room in their home (in person!)

A Beautiful Mess

22. Win a gift card contest

Rather than designating a specific item for your contest, add some mass appeal by making your prize a gift card. This can attract more participation, as it lets the winner select whatever he or she wants.

23. Vote for your favorite item contest

Find out which items your audience really likes by creating a contest in which people vote for their favorite items from your store. At the same time, anyone who participates is entered to win in a random prize drawing. Think of it as a type of interactive user survey!

24. Holiday decorating contest

Get in the holiday spirit by encouraging contest participants to decorate holiday items — but with a branded twist. Entries might be carved or painted Jack-O-Lanterns with your logo, cookies iced with your products, or ugly Christmas sweaters that bear your brand name.

Encourage your customers to be creative with their entries

25. Create a jingle contest

Go old-school and create a contest where participants have to create a jingle for your brand. You’ll get some free advertising–and you might find your next marketing hire!

What’s Next: Use Contests to Promote Your Online Store

If a contest sounds like a good fit for your online store, here are the next steps you need to take to get the ball rolling.

1. Choose 1-3 contests that you want to run throughout the next 12 months to drive sales.
2. Outline your target goals for the contests (whether it’s to drive sales, to grow your audience, or otherwise.)
3. Outline your prizes for your contests, and get a plan in place for how you’ll select your winner.
4. Get a strategy in place for marketing your contests, and start pulling together the pieces (and potential partners you’ll need) to make them successful.

With some planning and strategy in place, you can implement a few smart contests throughout the year to boost your online sales and grow your audience in a way you could never have dreamed before.

Just remember: Don’t overdo it, and make your contests worthwhile for the participants. They shouldn’t bankrupt your business, but they shouldn’t be underwhelming for the audience, either. Introducing two or three new contests during the year is a good way to get started and can keep your promotional budget in check.

Your turn: What’s the most successful contest you’ve ever ran? We’d love to hear about it!

The Ecwid E-Commerce Show hosts Jesse and Richie talk with the founder of DataAutomation Will Christensen. Will nerds out on Excel tricks and various options to automate your e-commerce business: emails, inventory, accounting, shipping, tracking, and social media options.

Show Notes

• Tips from Will Christensen, co-founder of DataAutomation
• When to automate your e-commerce business
• E-commerce automation: examples
• Free automation tools for beginners
• Bonus by Will: a free call with the expert
• Social media automation

Transcript

Jesse: When you start an e-commerce business, you find out there’s a lot of stuff to do. You have to put stuff in boxes and tape it up and cut and paste all the addresses. Then you got to email people and you got to cut and paste this. There’s a lot of cutting and pasting. Control C, control V for anybody out there. It’s not going to be that easy. But there are ways to automate your business. We’re going to bring on the guy that’s going to make all our lives easier: Will Christensen, co-founder of DataAutomation.com.

Tips from Will Christensen, co-founder of DataAutomation

Will: Hey, guys! I tell people sometimes that I am the dude who actually sells the one thing money can’t buy — I sell time. At one of my jobs I spent 16 hours a week copying and pasting. And I thought there has got to be a better way. Somebody showed me VLOOKUP. Here’s tip number one — google VLOOKUP. Google Sheets, Excel, if you don’t know how to do it, look it up, you are missing out.

I started chipping away at my sixteen-hour process. I was like: "Okay, I want to make it do this. I could record Macros." So tip number two, get in there, try Macros.

I was crazy enough to decide I was going to teach myself to get in there and code the macros together. And so if you’re using a Google sheet, you got to use Google Apps script. If using Excel, you can have to use Visual Basic.

And so I started to teach myself how to code them together. At one point, I was like: "Okay, I can do my entire process. And all I have to do now is to download all of my reports and then I have to go put those reports in Excel and then I just press a button and watch my computer work for four hours. Wait, what if I could wake my computer up at 2 a.m. before I come into work, and it’ll do it while I’m sleeping?" So I did a bunch more Googling and I figured out how to do that. So tip number three, if you’re wondering how to automate something, go type it exactly the way you wonder into Google. "How do I wake up my computer in the middle of the night without logging in?" That’s how I figured out how to do that. "Do I automatically open an Excel or Google Sheets workbook at a certain time?" I figured out how to do that.

It took me over like 180 to 300 hours of concerted effort to take my 16-hour process down to just two hours. My fourth tip is don’t give up. And if you feel like you’re in a little over your head, there are people out there who’ve done this before. And that’s what got me started.

I was like, okay, I’ve got it to the point where it was two hours. My computer would wake up in the middle of the night. It would download all my reports. And all I had to do was spend two hours going through them, making sure it did its job. Then I thought, okay, there’s gotta be other people out there who need this. What I just described to you could be any e-commerce business downloading orders and having to ship them off and send them to a third-party logistics company or whatever that might be. So that’s what Data Automation became.

When to automate your e-commerce business

Jesse: For e-commerce, there tends to be a lot of repetitive tasks. When does automation come in? When should people be thinking about it?

Will: Honestly, that is the question of "when to automate" or "should you automate." That gets me into my litmus test. So the litmus test is the following. What does it take to get this where it needs to go? If you haven’t done it five times manually yet, get off the couch. Go do that thing five times manually. You probably should do it 20 times manually before you decide to automate it. And the reason for that is if you dive down the automation rabbit hole too soon, you’ll automate a piece of it, making an assumption about how this is going to happen. You’ll discover that the fork in the road is actually more common than you think. Do the thing five times at minimum before you try to automate it. And that gives you enough knowledge to actually diagram it.

My second litmus test is, "how much time is this thing taking you?" Write down things that you’re doing more than once and then track how long it took you to do that thing. You need to understand how often this is happening. If it is happening more than 15 minutes a day, more than 15 minutes a week, or more than an hour a month, it’s time for you to consider automating this.

Jesse: What are some tasks that people need to automate?

Will: The last litmus test is if you were to hire somebody who’s just out of college or somebody who has a decent understanding of email and Excel. If you could teach someone with that level of understanding without any other knowledge in less than 15 minutes, if you can teach them something in less than 50 minutes, you’ve got something you really need to start bringing to an automation expert or you need to start googling about, because it’s those sorts of simple tasks that are easily taught that really get there.

E-commerce automation: examples

Will: Remember that the examples I’m about to share are common use cases. Just because we don’t find one doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

So one common example is that we had a guy who was on a platform called Skubana. They do some inventory management stuff. He needed to know how much inventory you had available. It was so important that he knew because he needed to notify people immediately if they placed an order, and somehow it went out of stock.

He wanted to let the customer know: "I’m really sorry about this. I know you’ve already paid for it. I’m working on it: And then he wanted an automated delay of 24 hours to check to see if it came back in inventory. And then he touched the customer again automatically: 'Hey, check it again today' — totally automatically — 'still out of inventory. I’m going to check again in a couple of days, and we’ll let you know what we’re going to do.' And 72 hours later, he did it again. And if it was out of stock at that point, he would say he would send a calendar link or something like that. That’s a tool you can use to automate scheduling, Calendly.com. He would send a Calendly link, and get on a phone with that individual: 'I’m so sorry. Let’s find another product. Let’s figure out if we’re going to do a refund.' It increased his customer service rating by a lot.

Will: Another example is tracking numbers or order information passing back and forth from one email to another. An email comes in; I’ve got to take that order information, send it out to a drop shipper, or to a third party logistics company. So, tracking information or order information that needs to be put back and forth between different systems. Nine times out of ten, we can help you with that.

Jesse: I feel an opportunity to fix something. But let’s give some other options out there.

Will: Do you ever have a situation where you’re like: 'If I get an order that is above X, I probably want to know about it'? It depends on what you’re selling. If the cart is this much above, maybe that’s a fraud. I want to stop something like that.

I’m going to do that with Zapier, so you can read calendar appointments, I can read orders that are coming in, and I can say: 'If the order is above this dollar value or there are this many items in it, then it’s time to get a phone call or a text message on my phone.'

Jesse: I didn’t realize you could use Zapier to send phone calls too.

Will: Guess what? That’s my favorite part — it’s free. So even a free account can make a hundred of those a month. Zapier is a platform that allows you to take data from one point and put it into another, and it’s got a lot of things baked into it. 1500 applications. Ecwid has a Zapier app that you can use, and it’ll do a lot of stuff. They’re even people like me who can help you connect that via their API or do something special. Zapier is a powerful platform that I use in my home automations. But also I use it all the time for my clients.

Jesse: For people listening, Zapier is fully integrated with Ecwid, and almost anything that happens inside of Ecwid is connected to an API call, which then can be connected to Zapier.

Will: Ecwid is actually a good example of one that’s very well integrated. You got a new customer that comes into Ecwid; you can push that somewhere else, you’ve got a new product that comes into Ecwid, you can push that somewhere else. You’ve got a new paid order or a new order; you can actually delineate when it’s been paid or when it hasn’t been.

Jesse: I think from a basic level too, we talked to a lot of customers through the podcast, there’re a lot of people that are not gathering an email. Anytime you get an order, you can set up a system to grab that email, at least put it in a Google sheet just to start building your email list.

Will: If you’re like: 'I don’t really want to get into MailChimp cause it looks complicated. I just want to send somebody a message in Gmail.' There’s a tool called Yet Another Mail Merge. It’ll let you send out 40 or 50 emails a day for free. After you get it into that spreadsheet, take it a step further and start sending out a little email list.

Jesse: A lot of free tools here. That’s a free tool. Zapier is a free tool. Ecwid is pretty darn free to until you get to a certain level. We’re talking very, very middle, and minimal investments of money here on for a lot of these things.

Will, are there some stories of clients out there that you’ve had walked into just a disaster, and you’ve been able to work your magic, fixing their life with what they could do with automation?

Will:One time we built a 32-step zap inside Zapier because we had a huge process of emailing and then checking if they responded and if they responded to this and if they do that, do that.

Free automation tools for beginners

Jesse: What do you recommend people that have litmus tests, they find a couple of things to automate. Do you think they can probably figure that out on their own with Zapier? What do you recommend?

Will: One of the things that’s cool about Zapier is that it is such a widely used tool that there’s a lot of tutorials already out there to help you with it.

So, if I were just getting started out, I would focus on Google sheets and Zapier. Airtable is another one that I would recommend looking at, cause there are some things that just Google sheets are not cut out for and Airtable is and vice versa. I would focus on those three things. And if your process is to the point where you haven’t involved a Google sheet yet, you might want to start doing that because that’s going to force you to think about, where things go and how to attack it more appropriately.

Jesse: Again, free tools here.

Will: Airtable is totally free up to 1500 rows, and it comes with a built-in API for free.

Jesse: Free tools to help you run your store. We’re not talking about like: 'Hey guys, you got to go spend a bunch of money on your business.' This is about spending time on your business, being smart, helping you make money. You got a free call here with Will, the expert.

Bonus by Will: a free call with the expert

Will: One of the things I want to offer to anybody who’s listening, if you mentioned this podcast, when you reach out to us via DataAutomation.com, we will actually give you a 15 to 30-minute call. I charge 350 an hour for my automation sessions. I’m the CEO of the company; I have to keep my time pretty solidified cause I gotta help different members of the team. I’ll offer you a 15 to 30 minutes call for free, all jump on, and help you figure out some of this stuff. The reason I mentioned that is because if you do get stuck, I’m here for you. Zapier support is there for you as well, and it’s not as bad as you think.

Jesse: Will, you mentioned DataAutomation.com. Are there other places you want people to go to, like social media?

Will: You can check us out on Facebook and Twitter. Now we’re going back into automating some of our own social media channels. We’re starting a podcast as well.

If you reach out and you’re like: 'Oh wow, I have to wait two weeks to talk to Will,' that’s because a lot of people are listening. I gotta space that out, or that’s all I would do all day. But I’m here to help. I want to help Ecwid users get to that next level and understand what’s truly possible.

Social media automation

Richard: I have one last question. In the world of social, it’s almost like people are irrelevant if they’re not participating in the world of social. I also seem or would guess as if it could be a sticky place to automate stuff because it’s social. What is something you could do with content or social, that someone could think about or use?

Will: We made a lot of social media for a lot of clients. Zapier is totally capable of helping you schedule posts; it is totally capable of helping you automatically pick up all sorts of stuff, like if you want to retweet somebody else’s stuff. You can totally become like an aggregator and retweet stuff inside Zapier and push that. Now obviously I mentioned Zapier a lot, but there’s a lot of other platforms out there, Integromat and several others that do this sort of work.

You can post on all of your major social media platforms using these systems. I’ve seen people take high-end reviews and automatically post those five-star reviews: 'Hey, another happy customer, thank you.'