If you’re in e-commerce, you don’t need me to tell you that you’re swimming with a shark. Amazon’s domination of the e-commerce space, partly brought about by its tendency to eat or kill smaller ‘fish,’ has led to it becoming a byword for an online leviathan. Amazon isn’t the only big fish in the e-commerce pond,though. It can be hard to compete with companies that are so big they can afford to take a loss to gain market control by undercutting you, or to go toe-to-toe for customers with companies with million-dollar ad budgets and full-time design studios at their beck and call.
So how do smaller e-commerce stores compete?
1. Focus, focus, focus!
Big e-commerce stores are primarily focused on growth. They sell themselves as the best place to get anything online, but they’re the e-commerce equivalent of giant out-of-town stores, and smaller, boutique outfits have survived in the high street by becoming the very, very best place to get just one thing. Amazon sells candles, so does Walmart, but not like lightacandle.com or waxworks.co. Think of the problem as search: most people don’t go to Amazon, then search for a product:they search, then find themselves at Amazon. If you can catch them on their way to buy the product you specialize in you stand a good chance of turning them toward your website before they ever ‘set foot’ in Walmart.com.
2. Become the Walmart of small things
Walmart sells everything – but it doesn’t sell every size, every color, every width fitting or every length of everything. Customers looking for something specific will find themselves quickly disappointed at big-box stores, because the paradox is this: because these places have such huge ranges across the board, within any niche, their range is actually quite small. That’s something you can leverage, enabling you to offer a wider,more varied range within your niche than Amazon or Walmart can ever hope to do.
3. Experience is everything
Using a big-box website can be easy and simple, but it can’t be molded to fit the tastes of a specific demographic. Again, as victims of their own reach, stores like Amazon have to be all things to all people; the magnolia of user experience. You don’t. You can make a killer website that appeals right to your target audience: their tastes, their style, their way of communicating. Whether you sell flesh tunnels or gardening forks, you can create a user experience that will trump the big stores by focusing on your customers.
4. Engage!
Reach out to your customers. You’ve got a great range and an awesome website, but no-one knows about it? Get out there and tell them! Again, this has to be done using your ‘weaknesses’ as strengths. BigBox.com can be pretty good at automated engagement – Amazon’s email marketing is the stuff of legend, eBay could give lessons – but what’s their social media like? On the basis of actual personal interactions you can offer engagement and passion that no big store can hope to match.
5. Sell to the customer
Most people who start out to sell something don’t sell it. That’s because they can’t get their minds off their desire to sell something and think about the customer’s desire to buy something. If you can sell to the customer rather than from the store, you’re on course for success. Small stores that fail to learn this lesson typically don’t survive, but large stores to some degree have to act like they haven’t learned it.
If BigBox.com segments too effectively, it might segment some customers right out of the picture. And in a business model that’s based on maximal turnover with razor thin margins that’s disastrous so they can’t afford it. But you can. In fact, the more you sell right to your best customers, the more they’ll feel appreciated and develop feelings of community and loyalty and the more your business will grow.
Need help putting these ecommerce best practices into place within your business? Stratosphere Networks has the technical solutions and the certified staff to help make your ecommerce business thrive. Fill out our contact form or call us today at 877-599-3999 to learn more.