ECommerce

The Art of E-Commerce: Your Guide to Selling Your Makeup Online

The cosmetic and beauty market’s set to hit $438.38 billion in the next 6 years. Coupled with the $9.09 trillion e-commerce market value, it’s never been a better time to sell makeup online.

These numbers reflect a booming digital world in which businesses are thriving. The entrepreneurial spirit’s at its peak and there are many resources to build your own online store.

As society changes, so does the beauty market. If your passion for makeup has brought you to the masses, it’s time to be part of the evolution.

Your dream to start a beauty brand awaits you. Here’s what to know.

Sell Makeup Online

While beauty and business may pose as opposites, they go hand-in-hand. That said, having a passion for makeup’s not enough. If you’re seeking success in the e-commerce world, there’s a lot to learn.

1. Establish Your Demographic

First thing’s first. You won’t get too far if you don’t know your audience. Ask yourself the following:

• Why do I want to sell makeup online?
• Have others encouraged me to open my store?
• Who’s expressed interest in my offerings?
• Who would enjoy this service?

Getting clear on your motives clarifies the rest of your creative pursuits. It helps with marketing, tone, branding, and staying authentic.

Since makeup serves different functions, it has various contexts. Different makeup angles include:

• Costume
• Anti-aging
• Professional
• Everyday
• Natural
• Organic

Makeup’s far more than just colors and brands. How it’s made, when to use it, and who it serves are top focuses.

2. Type of Product

Once you know your demographic, you can identify what you’re offering. Before you sell makeup online, there are a few things to consider.

What type of makeup is it? Do you want your own operation, or to scale the business?

Personal Products

If you’re selling personal products, you’ll have to abide by the Federal Drug and Cosmetic (FD&C) guidelines. The good news is once you do, you’ll gain rapport with your audience. 

Personal products involve branding, manufacturing, and selling all on your own. One person operations are manageable for smaller businesses.

White Label Products

If you’re struggling to scale, you might transition to white label products. White-labeling means using a third-party manufacturer while using your branding and logos.

It’s simpler to manage your own products, but it’s more efficient to white-label if you have a high demand.

Once you get into packaging, you’ll want to know about the Fair Packaging and Labeling Act (FPLA) to meet appropriate standards.

3. E-Commerce Methods

If you want to sell makeup, you’ll need an online store. The e-commerce world gives you options. You can:

1. Hire a web developer to build your store
2. Use online marketplaces like Amazon
3. Sell through social media

Successful businesses require big-picture planning. Consider which platforms you’ll use for customer engagement. That way, whatever you choose as your selling method can complement your outreach strategies.

If you want to start an online store, consider it a game. There are options and it’s up to you to choose your route.

Learning the language is important, but finding what’s best for you is the way to make it work.

4. Online Presence

Consider prioritizing your online platforms. If you already have a website, that means you likely have a following. 

Incorporating an e-commerce platform is easier with a following. While you’re building, you can tell your audience what’s coming.

If you don’t have a strong online presence, your store will be your big break. Consider how a website or social media platform can drive traffic to your shop.

5. Digital Marketing Strategies

Once you establish your online presence, you’ll want to implement digital marketing practices. One of the smartest ones to adopt is SEO—or search engine optimization.

The goal’s to become a trustworthy vendor and build reviews. Using keywords, strategic phrasing, and links can drive traffic to your site and boost your sales.

6. Follow Through 

The easiest mistake to make with online stores is focusing on the building more than the follow-through. The good news is the solution rests in shifting your focus. 

Amongst the many moving parts of building a business, it’s easy to focus on selling. While that’s exciting and important, things like order fulfillment need proper attention.

To some, making sales and order fulfillment sound like the same thing. The reality is there are many steps between a consumer’s sale and them receiving the product. The backend tasks are as important as the frontend—if not more.

Order fulfillment services have the following benefits:

• Meet demand
• Get the product to the consumer fast

Order fulfillment services ensure customers are literally fulfilled with their order. Customer service remains the greatest tell of a successful business. That means tending to the consumer the whole way through.

Remember, consumers don’t know you, they only know your product. As a result, your product is their experience of you. Thus, manufacturing, labeling, buying, and shipping must be seamless.

Start a Beauty Brand

Once you fuse your business and beauty inspiration, you’re ready to start a beauty brand. Brands are impressionable, bold, and representative of you and your products. Building your brand means knowing the following:

• What makes you and your products different?
• What makes you memorable?
• Why should people come back?
• What’s worthwhile about this brand?

While there’s ample opportunity for beauty brands in e-commerce, the market’s laden with competition. That means one thing. Do your research!

Then, knowing what makes you stand out won’t be a pipedream—it’ll be factual. Find gaps in the industry and fill them with your passion and expertise.

Get Big in the Beauty Biz

Let the booming beauty business numbers encourage you to become part of it. Entrepreneurs fuel the economy with their small businesses. That means there’s ample proof that you can do the same.

If you want to sell makeup online, it’s not a question of whether you should, but how you will! Learn for yourself how both your beauty and business inspirations make a fierce combo.

For more on maximizing your business development plans, check out our latest blog posts.

Best Practices and Ecommerce Shipping Solutions

The number of people who shop online will rise to over 2.14 billion in 2021. That’s a vast pool of consumers. If you haven’t taken your business online, this statistic should persuade you to do that. 

But as more people opt to buy online, the number of online businesses is rapidly increasing. This creates a fiercely competitive market environment. It’s the reason you need to find fresh creative ways to market your product.

A smart move is to provide attractive eCommerce shipping solutions to your potential clients. The vast majority of online shoppers cite shipping options as the most critical factor when it comes to their shopping experience.

Indeed, shipping is one of the top elements of your online store. Businesses that can effectively implement best practices for shipping stand a better chance to draw more clients, enhance customer satisfaction, and experience higher conversion rates. 

Online stores that fail to offer shipping solutions that meet their customer’s high expectations, on the other hand, will inevitably experience high rates of cart abandonment. 

In this article, we explain several best practices and shipping solutions for your eCommerce store. Read on to learn more.

Highlight Your Ecommerce Shipping Solutions  

When it comes to online shopping, good consumer experience is critical. Customers will hardly revisit a site after they’ve had a bad experience or two. 

Take the time to create customer awareness regarding your shipping policies. Highlight some of the strong points of your shipping strategy, including the shipping options, return policy, and fulfillment. Doing so reduces cart abandonments.

Try to provide flexible shipping plans that are based on the amount the customer spends, how frequently they shop, the season they buy, the area they live in, and so on. Customize your shipping solutions to suit your customers’ needs. Always visit relevant sites to find out more creative shipping solutions to adopt.

Provide Free Shipping

Free shipping is undoubtedly the most attractive factor for online shoppers. About two-thirds of customers recommend a retailer based on this factor alone. High shipping costs, on the other hand, are the biggest contributor to cart abandonment.

Of course, free shipping is never really free. Someone pays for it – either you or the client. This means you either accept lower profit margins or your consumers pay higher prices.

Today’s online shoppers expect free shipping, so don’t think twice about providing it. If you don’t, you’ll be missing out on potential sales. The main concern, of course, is how to ship products for free and still make a profit.

The smart move is to have a shipping system where customers can enjoy free shipping only after their order has met a certain amount. For instance, you can provide free shipping on orders over $30. Once you start to provide free shipping options, you’ll begin to see an increase in the average order volume.

Ensure Any Shipping Costs Are Clear At Checkout

In case you don’t provide free shipping or only do so on orders above a specific dollar value, it’s important to make the shipping costs clear at checkout. The customer should be able to see the shipping costs once they view the order summary screen. It’s one of shipping best practices that’ll keep cart abandonment low.

Why?

Well, many customers are willing to pay for shipping, but no one likes surprises. If potential buyers suddenly get blindsided by high shipping expenses, they’ll most likely abandon their cart.

Let Customers Know the Expected Delivery Date

Most customers consider shipping time a vital factor when making a purchasing decision. That’s why you need to give customers a delivery estimate for the item they’re purchasing during checkout. This estimate, of course, depends on the date and shipping method they select.

Where customers have no idea when their item will reach them, they’ll find it hard to make a purchasing decision. Find a suitable tool that provides a delivery estimate for potential clients. This will give potential customers the information they need and reduce the chances of cart abandonment.

Keep Customers Informed During Shipping

Now that a customer has placed an order on your store and you’ve sent the item, you may think that all is done. Nothing could be further from the truth. Customers expect to receive confirmation about their orders before the orders reach them.

Come up with a system of communication that keeps your customers informed while their items are in transit. This builds trust and contributes to a positive customer experience.

Deal With Problems Right Away

Your customer may have chosen the best way to ship their products, but sometimes the unexpected happens. Packages could get damaged lost. When that happens, the customer sees it as your responsibility, though that may not necessarily be the case.

Remember, you’re the one who chose the carrier who either damaged or lost the shipment. Therefore, you’ll need to do what’s necessary to make things right. As soon as you discover a problem with a client’s package, do the following:

• Find out the tracking details of the shipment online
• Verify whether the customer’s address and contact details were correctly recorded
• Call the carrier to find out the status of the package
• Follow up with the carrier till the issue is finally resolved
• Ship a replacement package to the client right away

Ultimately, the goal is to achieve the highest level of customer satisfaction possible. Making your client wait until the carrier can locate a lost shipment is unacceptable. It’s best to replace the parcel and eventually recoup the loss after the carrier traces the item or compensates you for the item.

Adopt E-Commerce Best Practices Today

Adopting efficient shipping best practices is one of the guaranteed ways to enhance the online shopping experience. Keep in mind that the consumer’s journey does not end the moment they make a purchase. Instead, it ends after they receive their package in good condition and on time.

It’s the reason you need to implement reliable eCommerce shipping solutions to ensure that you’re meeting your customers’ expectations.

Would you like to read more great content like this? Please keep visiting our blog.

E-Commerce Technology Trends That Let You Run Your Business From Anywhere

Unless you live in a remote town, you’ve seen your local community embrace e-commerce. A busy hub town is empowering – it’s filled with small businesses peddling their goods. You may have seen these physical shops go empty as well.

E-commerce is the modern version of a busy shopping hub these days. It has become ubiquitous, so much so that it commanded a monstrous $1.3 trillion value industry in 2014. Expectations for the e-commerce industry predicts a $4.5 trillion explosion by 2021.

How did e-commerce grow this fast? It’s in the technology tools which have been available to people. E-commerce technology creates opportunities for businesses to improve.

Want a piece of the pie? Then ask this: what are the e-commerce tech trends which can help you run your business? Here’s the low-down.

Product Visualization Technology

Here’s the problem e-commerce business owners encountered over the last decade. It’s making the most out of the shopping experience. Unlike brick-and-mortar outlets, buying online composes of a few processes.

Find a product you like, click the cart, and check out. This offers no ability for interaction at all. No matter how HD your picture is, people will not believe it’s an accurate representation.

Product visualization technology is becoming necessary. It’s a step up from today’s buying experience. Some of these online retail giants have come the way of virtual reality (VR).

The integration of VR and augmented reality is empowering. It can result in a near life-like shopping experience. All your customer needs is their smartphone.

Another visualization tech tools for business owners is the use of 3D images. Facebook rolled out their 3D image technology letting users take 3D photos and see the subject in a 360 view.

The potential for 3D images is endless. This can provide e-commerce business owners the ability to show off their products.

3D can show accurate product visualization. It can show your product’s craftsmanship. It can increase customers’ confidence in your products, more than any 2D image out there.

How does product visualization help you run your business away from home? You run it and go away. It can reduce the need to keep convincing the buyer into the authenticity of your products.

Chatbots

Chatbots are fast-becoming a solution of choice within e-commerce tech trends. Their relevance is greater now more than ever due to the level of technology available. These tools for business owners improve product delivery systems while cutting down costs.

Their current use, however, is logistics. Chatbots can solve many logistical issues in small businesses.

You can use chatbots as customer service funnels. They provide advantages that your average human CSR will take time to do.

Bots can provide a personalized sales experience per customer. They can browse customers’ personal order history and make suggestions. Bots can provide branching resolutions to common product issues.

In the future, bots as technology tools can do more things. They can even answer calls. Chatbots are there to work when you’re away.

Improved Payment Processing

Here’s another of the e-commerce trends business owners can expect. It’s easier payment processing.

In the front end, e-commerce seems to be easy. In the backend, however, payment services need many steps to process.

Tax documentation. Inefficient payment schemes. These make the viability of online commerce a headache.

Emerging technologies push for a streamlining of the financial processes in e-commerce. This not only reduces workforce cost – but it also removes the headache of complicated financial hoops you need to take care of.

One such technology is factura electrónica or electronic billing. Simplified electronic invoicing can help businesses focus. Instead of handling payment processing, they can focus on their products.

There’s also a growth of alternative payment methods you can add during website building. Digital gift cards and e-wallets come to mind.

Once it takes off and stabilizes, Bitcoin can be the future of electronic payments as well. Bitcoin has much promise as a cryptocurrency but it’s unstable and unpredictable. This makes it one of e-commerce tech trends that are great in concept but has many real-life issues.

Regardless, payment processing technology makes it easier for your business to run. It will run without the need for you to take care of every financial decision.

Personalization Technology

Personalization and personalization technology. It is fast becoming one of the e-commerce trends experienced now. This technology makes shopping experiences more individual-based.

Some of these technology tools include social media analytics tools for niche marketing. There are also machine learning programs.

Netflix is a good example. It has added machine learning in their algorithms. This is to provide customized recommendations to their users.

How does it work? It takes into account viewing habits and past customer history. This can then predict customer preferences and give products catering to it.

Amazon has been using personalization algorithm as well. What they did is they studied their customers’ buying behavior. Taking this data, they leverage their customers’ order histories and recommend products.

The recommended products are a literal upsell. They come in the form of the “Bought With” and “Customers Who Viewed This” tabs.

Personalization technology runs in itself. If you’re away from home, you don’t need to spend time providing product recommendations. All you need is an algorithm to take care of it.

Artificial Intelligence

There’s zero doubt now how valuable artificial intelligence (AI) is. Among e-commerce business owners, artificial intelligence suggestion parsing is invaluable. For customer service, they are essential innovations in technology.

For starters, Amazon Echo acts as an assistant handling all purchases on a consumer’s behalf. It can provide suggestions, give fashion advice, and influence buying cycles.

AI has the potential to help with adaptable, data-driven targeting. These make them superb tools for business owners

The buyer persona processing can improve. It can add more variables to it.

Once optimized, the buyer persona can then dictate the right pitch. It can create a more appealing marketing strategy.

Artificial intelligence relates in efforts towards personalized buying experience. This provides a lead-up to you, as a business owner, for one-on-one lead conversion and scale this en masse.

Streamlining Supply Chain

E-commerce tech trends extend not only to the handling of consumer-related activities. Technology is also essential to streamlining logistical challenges.

Critical parts of logistics like inventory management, warehousing, and product delivery are emerging. Most of these technologies come in the form of better current technology.

Low-cost RFID technology for inventories. Drones for deliveries. High-speed product transfers for warehousing.

Investments in warehouse automation, for example, offer lower-cost solutions in scaling production. This can then underscore competitive advantage and, in the end, maximize the bottom line.

An excellent example of this, again, is Amazon. By using drones to perform same day deliveries, they can improve KPIs. These include customer satisfaction and product happiness.

This level of optimization ensures efficient and faster delivery. Faster delivery means speedier turn around times, which translates to more profit. Their pioneering work in forwarding e-commerce solutions made them the top business on a global scale.

Blockchain

In a world where e-commerce trends go toward empowering consumers, the blockchain touts much potential. It gears towards improving the ethical landscape of companies. The blockchain is democratic and transparent.

Data processed within blockchain receive timestamps. These can then verify the claims of business owners. This level of transparency is supply chain auditing.

Supply chain auditing makes sure that distributed ledgers only contain verifiable information. This data will then provide evidence of ethical business practices.

How do you take advantage of this as a business owner?

By having your supply chain audited by blockchain, you can create a “seal of trust”. This seal of trust is a branding strategy ensuring quality standards are up to spec without expensive authentication from standard-setting bodies. Add this to your PPC promotion strategies and you should be golden.

Multi-Channel E-Commerce

Here’s a word that is familiar for any e-commerce business: touchpoints. Touchpoints are an annoying but important part of the e-commerce business owners are growing. The primary problem about touchpoints is unification.

The need to combine many touchpoints into a single, unified technology is pervasive. If done right, it is among the valuable tools for business owners. Enter multi-channel e-commerce.

Multi-channel e-commerce is the ability to be ubiquitous on almost all touchpoint platforms across the internet. Because shoppers tend to shop in multiple touchpoints, a multi-channel infrastructure gives you more places to sell your goods.

You don’t have to get stuck in an online marketplace, an online store, in social media or brick and mortar business. Multi-channel e-commerce tech trends can put you into all these touchpoints.

This means more chances for you to sell. This means whenever someone wonders where a product is from, you can offer yours. Provide the one you have up for sale.

Multi-channel tools for business owners are not even simple ideas. They are, in actuality, available now as e-commerce visibility strategies. Comprehensive reports on multi-channel e-commerce are there to help you win out, too.

The Future of Running Your Business Anywhere With e-Commerce Technology

Running your business from anywhere requires sophisticated technology. To be able to run your e-commerce business, you need technology which reduces the steps necessary to do so.

Automation’s design is to take away specific steps to make the entire process faster. By utilizing e-commerce technology, you make the whole cycle shorter.

Shorter logistics. Shorter product turnarounds. Quicker delivery.

All this equates to more profit and less work.

If you need to add a content strategy to your superior e-commerce technology, then you need Article City. Article City provides digital marketing and content strategy solutions that work.

We use data-driven analysis to confirm topics in your industry that work. We’ll bring in results. More targeted traffic, more content-driven conversions.

Contact us today and get only the best content marketing. Highest content standards every time.

5 Proven Strategies to Promote Your Ecommerce Website

If you’re looking to make some money online, setting up an E-commerce store is a great way to do so. They’re simple to design, only need basic maintenance, and can rake in some serious cash.

However, that last part is a lot easier said than done. Especially if you’re not accustomed to having to promote your website.

If this is your first dip into the E-commerce waters, you’re going to want to have a bit of fanfare and publicity to get the word out. Here are 5 proven strategies to promote your website and get people buying!

1. Post About It

One of the most effective ways to promote your website is by running a strong SEO campaign. With the right selection of keywords and a strong enough ranking, you can draw in clients from all around the globe.

But in order to have a strong SEO campaign, you’re going to want to create great content.

Once you’ve selected your keyword, write up a quick post about the exciting opening of your new site. Let readers know what they can expect from your E-commerce store by plenty of photos and details.

Blog posts are a great way to build hype, and you’ll strengthen your website’s ranking at the same time!

2. Get Social

There’s no ignoring how powerful of a tool social media is in today’s world. With billions of users around the world, social media can help you reach customers in a newer, more modern fashion.

Best of all, you’re going to where your audience is. No need to worry about bringing them to the content. After all, social media is about more than just the ‘likes’ and ‘shares’. It’s an incredibly simple way to generate some business for free.

Set up social media channels for the big 3: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and get to posting. Make sure that your pages look professional and reflect your business values.

3. Run an Ad

Of course, there’s nothing wrong a more traditional method of advertising. After all, banner ads have been an internet staple for a good reason — they work.

And now, thanks to Facebook Ads, you can combine the power of social media with the pinpoint accuracy of an ad.

It’s relatively cheap and you’re able to target customers directly through demographic options. Best of all, it actually works and you can track your results in easy to understand ways.

4. Host a Giveaway

While advertising fads come and go, one thing remains constant: people love free stuff. If you’re looking to drum up some quick interest in your site, connect with some businesses for a giveaway.

It doesn’t even need to be your own product. You may choose to use ticketliquidator.com to give a lucky winner some great seats to an event!

It’s hard not to get excited about free things, so keep this easy psychology hack in mind.

5. Run a Sale

If you can’t quite afford to give away free stuff, no worries. You can always discount some goods on your store.

Sales are a fantastic way to draw in new customers and move old stock at the same time. Just make sure to publicize your sale ahead of time so people know about it.

Final Thoughts on How to Promote Your Website

Thanks to social media and easy to use E-commerce sites, it’s easier than ever to promote your website. Keep these tricks in mind and your business will thank you.

And for more great content, don’t forget to sign up for your free Article City account!