E-Commerce
E-commerce websites – At SME Media we’re aware that selling online can be the most affordable way for small and medium sized businesses to retail their products and services. That’s why we make e-commerce achievable for all businesses via our websites if required.
At SME Media we’re aware that selling online can be the most affordable way for small and medium sized businesses to retail their products or services. Having a bricks and mortar store can be expensive at the best of times. When there are additional challenges to the high street, selling products and services online is a logical business approach that can be easily achieved.
Online retailing is booming with a recent average of over £2.3billion’s worth of internet retail sales per month in the UK. The internet is expected to account for 53% of retail sales in 9 years’ time and many businesses are looking to establish an e-commerce presence now, to ensure their goods and services are ranking well as the number of online businesses grows.
That’s why we make e-commerce a realistic opportunity for everyone, even very small businesses. We want to ensure everyone, regardless of size, can maximise the positive influence that online shopping will have on the future.
Setting up your e-commerce website with SME Media
At SME Media we have set up e-commerce websites for a wide range of small to medium size businesses, in industries ranging from technology to trade. An e-commerce website is a different approach to a normal lead generation website. There is additional technology needed to ensure secure commerce activities such as e-commerce payments, safe management of data, and integrated systems to update customers on their purchases.
We’re comfortable working with a range of systems, but as an agency we strongly recommend working with established and widely used tools such as WordPress and WooCommerce to ensure the best possible customer journey, WooCommerce shipping gives you plenty of flexible options to get your goods to your customers.
Why choose SME Media for e-commerce?
• Sales orientated approach. We’re aware you don’t just want a website that looks good. Online retailing is all about online sales in the same way that a shop is all about instore retail sales. We look at promoting your products or services in such a way that the journey to move on to buy, is a natural progression. We encourage the development from online browsing to online shopping with strong call to actions, prominent shopping cart features and a smooth user experience.
• Professional transactions. People want to feel secure when shopping online; giving personal information and their credit card details. That’s why we ensure that all commerce activities for your small business appear as professionally and work as smoothly as they would for a large, international brand.
• Responsively designed. Nearly half of all traffic is from mobile these days, and people are increasingly shopping by app or mobile friendly website. As with all of our websites, our e-commerce websites are designed with desktop, tablet and mobile phone in mind. In e-commerce, we pay particular attention to ensuring the viewer can get all of the information they need to be able to make a purchasing decision, right then.
• Projecting your brand. We understand that every brand is different. We think that whether you’re in a more traditional industry with classic branding, or a state-of-the-art SME with minimalistic styling or bright colours, you can achieve equally effective results with e-commerce.
• Fast loading times. We know that slow loading times drives people to return to the search page and those few additional seconds could cost you business. That’s why we put a large amount of focus on ensuring those coming to your e-commerce website won’t be put off by a slower than average loading speed.
• Monitoring and analysing performance. We make sure that all the key analytics are set up so that you’re able to track the performance of your new website. This means not only can you see if you’re selling products or services, but you can see how the visitors are interacting with the website. You can look at the best performing pages, the ‘sticking points’ where people aren’t progressing, and where you’re losing potential transactions. For small businesses especially, every sale potentially lost is vital information you need, to give better customer service moving forward.
• Planning the next step. Once you’ve built it, they might not necessarily just come. We can show you the best ways to promote your new e-commerce website; information on Search Engine Optimisation, creative use of social media, integrating with email marketing systems for tools like shopping cart abandonment retargeting and promotions, paid ads and referrals, etc.
• We’ll walk you through it. We know e-commerce in the same way that you know your industry – inside out. We wouldn’t expect you to have to sit through long technical explanations. Part of our customer service is that we really break it down into what we can do for you and how e-commerce can work for your business. That’s all you really need to know.
• Affordable. Our client base is specifically SMEs, which means we offer scalable and affordable packages for businesses just like yours. We know your budget isn’t the same as a multi-national corporation, but we also know that we can meet your needs without compromising on quality and security.
Get in touch
You’ve probably got more questions about online retailing, so please do get in touch and ask them. We’re happy to show you how we’ve worked with companies looking to move into e-commerce in the past, what the technology we use can provide, and how achievable this could be for you. No business is too small for us to be interested in getting your goods and services online.