Ecommerce Best Practices – Increase Sales by Making Your Ecommerce Store Unique

Video Transcript

Unique positioning is usually not found in most ecommerce stores. If you go out on the internet and look at most ecommerce stores, what you’ll typically find are commodities markets. This may be true of your store of your competitor’s stores. So whether you’re selling batteries or lighting or carpet fibers, typically you have most people selling the same thing. Sometimes there’s variation in selection. Sometimes there’s variation in price. But most people are taking the same sales angle. This is one of the largest underexploited opportunities that I see with ecommerce businesses and ecommerce business owners – they don’t fully exploit the uniqueness of their business.

How do you find your unique positioning if you’re selling batteries or if you’re selling lighting? What’s unique about your business? In most cases when people find you, they find you through a search engine, and they’re looking for a specific product on your website or a specific category of products. But the reality is they’re also at your competitors’ websites and they’re seeing something very similar. Often the websites are set up in a very similar way. So how do you make yourself unique in a real way – a way that really adds value and is going to help you make more sales and also add more lifetime value to the customers you have?

The bottom line is you have to go to the depth of what your business is about. What do you uniquely bring to the table that your competitors don’t? So for example say you’re selling lighting; and maybe you’ve been in the lighting business for a really long time – like it’s a family-owned business and it’s a second generation business. That could be something that’s really important to bring to the forefront of your customers – to let them know, “Hey we’re family owned and operated.” Just start to bring that feeling of pride; of ownership; and of who you are and how you stand behind your products. That’s really a crucial part of starting to bring out the full flavor of your business onto the internet.

Most websites – most of your competitor’s websites are going to be pretty cold and impersonal. And that’s probably the way your website is right now. But a key element to making your sales message unique and your website unique can be bringing out the personal part of your business. That may be the history of your business. That can also be how you stand behind your products. Maybe you have a charismatic owner or a charismatic manager who’s running the business that you can put up as the first face of the business. Put key messages about the sales process from that person throughout the website. Put their picture in key places. Really put a personal face behind your business. That’s one very strong way you can increase the unique positioning of your business.

The bottom line with unique positioning is if you don’t stand out uniquely, eventually the rising tide of your market is going to sweep you away. You’re going to get into price wars and price cutting because the buyer has to make a decision based on something. So if you have a competitive price, a good product that you show well, you can use unique positioning. Again, your personality, the way you stand behind your product and some other aspects of unique positioning to really tip the table in your favor.

So coming back – how do you do this? The number one thing is you have to really think about your business and what’s unique about it. The most unique elements of your business are things that can’t be copied by your competitors. Those are the things that your visitors need to know about because it’s their reason for doing business with you. Why did you get into this business? How do you represent your products? What’s special about you versus your competitors? You want to emphasize those things on your website and at key point in your sales process. By doing that, you’ll help customers with their buying decision; and help them have a much warmer feeling about you and why they should do business with you versus your competitors. Where in all other ways, perhaps on pricing and product you may be the same, that’s how you can differentiate yourself from the pack.