For thousands of years of human history, anyone who wanted to sell anything had to come to terms with the inevitable limiting factors that the “analog world” brings with it – in addition to the costs of running a store, the main one being limited reach. This had always been the case and seemed set in stone forever, until... yes, until the internet entered the world stage and revolutionized the market: Suddenly, retailers were location-independent, their reach theoretically limited only by the global population. Note: theoretically! Because as easy as it may be to set up a web shop today, and as promising as the possibilities may seem at first glance, it is all the more disappointing when visitors and sales ultimately fail to materialize. And it quickly becomes clear that simply putting a product online – no matter how good it may be – is not enough. And the more you realize what it takes to run a successful shop, the more you get the feeling that you either need an expensive team of specialists or have to transform yourself into a non-stop, all-rounder. However, neither of these is a realistic option for most people. So does that mean giving up?
Fast shipping, competitive prices, customer satisfaction (i.e., support), webshop updates, SEO, SEA, SMO, SMA, affiliate marketing, content marketing, marketplaces—shall we continue, or is your head spinning yet? One thing should be clear: running a successful webshop is not something you can just do on the side. That's not to say that things can't run reasonably well if you neglect one or two aspects, but as the saying goes: the competition never sleeps, and as a small or medium-sized provider, you'll quickly fall behind if you think you can rely solely on the quality of your products. What use is the greatest shop if no one knows it exists?
So there's no way around dealing with topics that are completely new territory for many people. As a recent study by the Institute for Management and Economic Research shows, small and medium-sized businesses are aware of the advantages of digital marketing, but in many cases they still lack practical know-how. And who can blame them? After all, as a retailer, you already have a full-time job: procuring goods, producing them if necessary, and then selling them at a profit. In light of this, it is completely unrealistic to expect retailers to train as developers, marketing or SEO specialists and then do these jobs in parallel, especially if they work alone or in a small team. As a result, online retailers leave many tools unused, meaning that their performance falls far short of what is possible.
The good news, however, is that this doesn't have to be the case. There are now a variety of efficient, affordable, and smart tools available to make your shop competitive. The magic word here is automation! These apps, extensions, templates, and services require little effort, often run completely invisibly in the background, but can make the decisive difference between success and failure.
Let's look at a concrete example of the sensible use of tools: A budding e-commerce retailer creates their shop using the user-friendly modular system of a shop software. To simplify search engine optimization, they can then use the SEO tool from Ranking Couch to find the right keywords and optimize their web shop for Google & Co. step by step. For legally compliant texts such as imprint, data protection, and cancellation policy, the IT law firm is a good place to go, and for the legally compliant use of analysis and marketing tools, the consent management platform from Usercentrics is recommended. And when it comes to effective marketing strategies such as retargeting, we would wholeheartedly recommend the leading retargeting app on the market, releva.nz. Ideally, this should be used in combination with the dash.bar tool, which keeps you up to date with all relevant data and developments in your shop. By the way: The apps from releva.nz and dash.bar can now be combined via our interface, so you can now easily track the key figures of your own remarketing campaign via dash.bar. Find out more in the linked blog article.
Tip: As a releva.nz customer, you get significantly reduced prices from the IT law firm, Usercentrics, and dash.bar. Just contact our support team.
That's basically all you need to know. Of course, there are lots of other applications that can make your life easier. We'll be publishing another article soon with more details about the options available to you. However, our most important message is this: you don't have to be able to do everything yourself, nor do you have to do everything yourself when you can rely on specialized tools that allow you to focus on your core tasks. Especially when it comes to important aspects such as online marketing, it's often difficult to know where and how you can get the most out of your efforts. Our conclusion is therefore that, especially for smaller teams or lone wolves, various tools that simplify or even completely automate tasks are not only extremely helpful, but have become indispensable. Whether it's payment & accounting, consent & data protection, SEO, SEA, and analytics, or marketing apps – don't make things unnecessarily difficult for yourself and let the little digital helpers do the job!
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