According to GoDaddy’s 2020 Global Entrepreneurship survey, 1 out 3 Filipino businesses was started in response to the pandemic. Due to lockdown measures across the country, social media and online selling platforms have become the point of entry for these new entrepreneurs.
“The past year pushed businesses large and small, new and established, to adapt to the digital marketplace. With continued limitations on mobility, business owners need to continue building their online presence and streamlining their operations, so that they can provide their customers with hassle-free online shopping experiences,” said Norman Barrientos, GoDaddy’s Director of Marketing for Southeast Asia
GoDaddy, the company empowering entrepreneurs worldwide, shares how you can determine if an e-commerce website is the right fit for your growing business.
Sign #1: Your Inventory Has Grown
As your business evolves, you begin to add new products and services to adapt to your customers’ needs. From new variants and colors, to added customization options for your product or packaging, customers need to easily see their choices and select what they want when they order. Having an e-commerce website helps consolidate all your offerings in one central location and makes purchasing more convenient with just a few clicks.
GoDaddy’s E-Store, a web-based e-commerce website builder, helps you set up a creative and professional online storefront while also providing automated inventory management for efficient and reliable real-time tracking of purchases across different sales touchpoints. You can even set up your E-Store to alert you once a product is down to a certain number of stocks, so you can replenish it before everything is sold out.
Sign #2: You’re Getting Inquiries Across Multiple Channels
When you get a lot of inquiries on where to buy your products, it’s easier to direct prospective customers to your own e-commerce website where they can learn more about your products and services. Using an online store tool that allows you to easily link to your social media pages and make them an extension of your store, can help to provide an integrated experience for your business. GoDaddy E-Store, for example, has integrated social media tools that easily let you list your products on Facebook and keeps your inventory tracked.
Sign #3: You Want To Expand Your Service Area
Looking to offer your products and services nationwide or maybe even on an international scale? Best to set up your own e-commerce website. While social media can help amplify awareness around your business, customers may lose interest if they can’t quickly find the product information and a point of purchase. By expanding your service area, you can choose to offer a variety of shipping and payment methods making it easier for customers to support your business.
Sign #4: You’re Looking To Give Back To Your Customers
One of the best ways to show your appreciation to patrons or even new customers is by providing special coupons or voucher codes. Most e-commerce websites have tools that allow promotions to seamlessly be programmed in the purchase path. For example, with GoDaddy E-Store, special offers and discounts are conveniently applied once you set up special coupons for your site or specific products within a certain period. These can be automatically applied in the purchase path, without you having to manually compute for each transaction made.
Sign #5: You’re Confident To Take Your Business Up a Notch Online
Once you have organized your inventory, sorted out your shipping, logistics, and payment methods, and are keen on taking on all inquiries, you’re ready to set-up your own e-commerce website.
Having your own e-commerce website can lend credibility to your business. As online shopping is quickly becoming the norm, virtual storefronts can help establish the legitimacy of a business while providing a more visible space on the Internet, where the purchasing journey can run smoothly from discovery to sale—all in one place. To fully support customer orders, entrepreneurs need to ensure that they are able to accommodate and fulfill their customers’ orders with a positive purchase experience to keep them coming back.
“The recently launched GoDaddy E-Store helps entrepreneurs create and manage their own online storefront—enabling even non-techie business owners to better connect their ventures with their customers. GoDaddy E-Store is equipped to securely handle a number of payment methods including credit card and PayPal, and even offers a convenient way to manually set up payment instructions at checkout, allowing you to have provisions for cash payments, e-wallets and more. A multilingual feature can translate the contents of an online store either manually or with an automatic translator into the desired language to best engage with customers. In addition, E-Store can automatically calculate shipping fees to facilitate faster transactions and empower entrepreneurs to grow their business,” said Barrientos.
Currently, GoDaddy E-Store is available for a 30-day free trial. For more information about how you can build your own online store, log on to: https://www.godaddy.com/en-ph/websites/e-store