The e-commerce industry is experiencing unprecedented growth, especially now during the global health crisis, where a vast majority of people who’re self-isolating have turned to online shopping. What’s always been a competitive field has only become more dynamic, challenging, and demanding.
Succeeding in the e-commerce industry has never been easy, but the payoff is well worth the arduous journey.
So, what can you do to ensure your success? How can you stay sharp and take on names like Amazon or Walmart and stay competitive in the world of e-commerce? Let’s take a look to find out.
The role of e-commerce in the modern economy
E-commerce has affected the economy, unlike any other industry. It’s opened up countless businesses to global audiences and enabled them to connect with their customers directly, all the while cutting costs and driving profits. E-commerce is as beneficial to the sellers as it is to the buyers.
Without a physical location, those in the e-commerce industry can reduce their overhead costs and significantly drive down their prices. This, in turn, attracts more customers and enables them to expand their CPI (Consumer Price Index).
On a global scale, e-commerce increases sales and exports, promotes production, and improves growth rates. It stimulates foreign trade and unlocks global markets to small and large retailers alike.
The true potential of e-commerce and its impact on the economy became evident with the coronavirus pandemic’s onset and the imposed measures to stop its spread. Only businesses that have successfully transferred to the online environments and started dabbling in e-commerce have seen their revenues either unchanged or increased.
The obstacles e-commerce struggles with
Although e-commerce opens up a world of potential to businesses across niches, it’s accompanied by several obstacles and challenges that can prevent you from succeeding in the industry.
One of the main challenges is attracting the target market and improving lead generation in such a competitive environment.
Consumer habits and preferences are changing. They have more options readily available at the tip of their finger. They can browse through several retailers with ease, compare and contrast prices, services, others’ experiences, and more.
Instead of solely looking into a product, they’re looking into the business behind it. They want to shop from reputable retailers and connect with companies dedicated to customer satisfaction, business transparency, and the utmost quality of service. Business reviews are more important than price tags. Trustworthiness and brand reputation are deemed more valuable than the brand name.
To succeed in the world of e-commerce, you need to overcome these obstacles and come up with sustainable solutions that you can rely on in perpetuity.
Popular solutions
Solutions to the obstacles mentioned above aren’t easy, as the only viable option is to establish a strong online presence and ensure an excellent brand image. Building up your reputation and standing out from the competition is challenging but can have a massive payoff.
To create an impeccable brand image, you need to devote yourself to research and analysis.
The right questions to ask:
- Who are your competitors, and what are they doing? Why are their marketing strategies successful, and why some are failing?
- Who is your target audience?
- What are they looking for in an e-commerce business?
- What are your leads and customers saying about you?
- Is your perception of your brand in line with your audience’s?
There are only two successful strategies you can follow to answer these questions – review monitoring and web scraping.
Review monitoring is essential
Review monitoring is an essential process that can help you determine and shape your brand reputation.
Over 90% of buyers read online reviews to determine whether to buy a product and whether to do business with a specific retailer. Regardless of your marketing campaigns and attempts to establish your own brand image, it’s the opinion of your customers that shapes how your target audience sees you.
While some of your customers may leave reviews directly on your site or dedicated channels, the majority of them don’t. They mention your business on their social media, they discuss it on online forums, and in the comments of third-party review sites.
To take control of your brand reputation, you need to commit to review monitoring and management. It will provide you with a bigger picture of how your brand’s perceived. Still, it will also help you gain insights into how you can change your image and improve upon it, increasing your brand awareness, boosting your ranking on search engines, and consequently attracting a wider audience.
Web scraping is a time-saver
The other part of the equation is web scraping. It will help you perform thorough competitor analysis and improve your lead generation.
Web scraping is the process of extracting and harvesting data that’s freely available online, on your competitors’ sites, across forums, on independent sites, and more.
While web scraping can be performed manually, it would waste too much time and workforce, so investing in web scraping software is often the best choice. Oxylabs review monitoring solution offers several choices for this use case – a Real-Time Crawler or residential proxies. Hence, you can use web scraping to collect data on competitor prices, gather contact information for lead generation, perform market research to forecast trends, and more.
It’s the only way to enhance your data-driven decision making and ensure success in a field as competitive as e-commerce.
Conclusion
Entering the e-commerce industry can be a challenge, but one that’s worth facing. With the help of review monitoring and web scraping, you can gain insights into your customers and competitors and improve your brand’s chances of survival.
