Nov
Why Back Up Your E-Commerce Store with A Website
Published on 29 Nov
Undoubtedly social media has changed the way businesses operate online. With over 4.48 billion active users in 2021, social media platforms are a great place to connect with existing and potential customers. Enhancing sales opportunities online, Facebook and Instagram have created cost-effective channels and tools specially designed for commerce. As a result, many small businesses continue to run their online store exclusively on these social platforms. In fact, more than one third of North American small business owners don't have their own website, operating solely on social media or completely offline. While social commerce has great potential for brand awareness and sales, there are drawbacks to forgoing an e-commerce website.
Contingency Planning
Even social media giants like Facebook are fallible. When they go down, online businesses operating solely on that platform will lose access to their business. When Facebook, Instagram, and Whatsapp went down for most of the day, on Monday, October 5th, many stores completely lost access and sales. During the hours these sites were offline for many thousands of dollars were lost for those operating exclusively via social commerce.
While social commerce and social media marketing are beneficial tools, there is a risk of not using an independent e-commerce website to do business online. A custom e-commerce website will never be hosted on the same platform as your social media accounts, so in the case where one goes down, the other will be available to recover sales.
Manage Reviews
Reviews play a significant role in online sales. When a customer makes a purchase virtually, they often do so without ever seeing or experiencing that product in real life, so they base their spending decisions on what others say.
But sometimes, a bad review can misrepresent a brand or product offering. This can happen when a product doesn't work the way they expect or a service isn't provided in the way a customer is used to. If not handled properly, bad reviews can influence future sales. On social media, fake or dishonest reviews are more difficult to manage because they are controlled by a third party.
When you have your own website, e-commerce website design teams can pick and choose reviews to display centrally on your homepage and product pages that are accurate and better representative of your brand.
Digital Marketing
There's no question that social media marketing is the way of the future. As the platform develops, more opportunities arise to leverage social media for brand awareness online. However, social media marketing alone is not a complete marketing strategy. The best digital marketing agencies in Toronto recommend that those looking to grow their business use search engine optimization and PPC marketing to bolster online sales, which requires a custom e-commerce website.
In 2021, over 90% of all online sessions began with a search engine like Google, Bing, or Yahoo. An e-commerce website enhanced by search engine optimization is able to reach potential customers searching for businesses like yours via search engines. While social media accounts show up in search engine results, their rank is more difficult to control than an SEO-optimized website.
The most effective solution is to couple social media marketing with e-commerce SEO to monopolize as much real estate on the first page of the search engine results page as possible.
Custom Functionality
Unfortunately, business profiles on social media accounts don't belong to the user, limiting your ability to control design, functionality, and access. With an e-commerce website, your store is yours. You're granted total control over functionality, accessibility, user experience, and even content.
Operating through Instagram, Youtube, or Facebook, a business is limited to the functionality of that platform. As updates are introduced to mobile apps or websites, functionality can be added or removed without any notice, making it difficult to use and understand the tools available.
When you opt for a custom-designed e-commerce website, the sky is the limit. With a Juicebox powered website, you are granted total control over your website's appearance and how it functions. By working with an established e-commerce web design company with e-commerce SEO knowledge, you can effectively enhance the online customer shopping experience while simultaneously ridding yourself of complicated backend functionality.
E-Commerce SEO & Website Design at Xi Digital
As a local digital marketing agency specializing in custom e-commerce web design, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and various other digital marketing services, you can count on our team to deliver a customized and effective marketing strategy for your online store to generate more leads and boost brand awareness.
See how we've helped other businesses do the same.