07.07.2021

Launch your products online – 10-step guide

If your business is planning to launch a new product or service, it is essential to get to grips with your online strategy. You don’t need us to tell you that we are living in a digitally transformed age and it has never been more essential for your products to be available online!

Whatever it is you’re planning to launch, we have created a 10-step guide to equip you with the fundamentals to reach your audience online, so you can showcase your awesome products or services and drive those all-important sales. You can also check out Episode 13 of our podcast, Revitalise & Grow, for even more on how to maximise online product launches!

 

  1. Your online store

Now is the time to choose where to place your products online. This is vital to get right. It could be you choose to sell on an existing website, either yours or a third party’s, or maybe you are launching a new product on a brand-new site too.

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  1. Grab attention!

Online shoppers will decide if they trust and want to purchase from your website in about three seconds! That means you need to have a simple, trustworthy, and easy-to-use website. Below are a few more statistics from a survey taken by SWEOR, proving how vital it is to grab your audience’s attention!

  • It takes about 50 milliseconds (that’s 0.05 seconds) for users to form an opinion about your website that determines whether they like your site or not, whether they’ll stay or leave.
  • 57% of internet users say they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile website.
  • 38% of people will stop engaging with a website if the content or layout are unattractive.

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  1. The right look

If you want to have a viable online business, you need to focus on quality from the outset. You need to build your online products to look professional, attracting your target customer, and have the right calls to action to help them convert when they visit your site. Design and functionality are key (across both desktop and mobile). Having an attractive website will definitely help drive interest and online sales!

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  1. Information

As important as design is, it shouldn’t outshine what you are trying to sell! Resist the urge to overload your website with so many call-to-action buttons, categories, or imagery that people get overwhelmed or lose patience waiting for everything to load. Being concise is key!

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  1. The customer’s journey

The customer’s journey is arguably the most important thing to think about when launching your products online. Make sure that the navigation menu to your new product is clear and does not confuse your customers. By having logical steps, you will ensure your customers know where to go, making the journey nice and simple for them. Quality over quantity!

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  1. Payment

When you are launching your new products online, you will need to pick a payment gateway that is trustworthy, simple and easy for your consumers to use. Research some options (at ADPR we use Stripe) and choose the right payment method for you. Think about optimising a number of consumer-friendly e-commerce options, such as a simple one-click digital wallet function to allow payment by Apple Pay or PayPal One-Touch. Make it as easy as possible for customers to buy your online products!

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  1. Analytics

You need data and benchmarks to grow your business. Your platform should be able to help you with crucial metrics like:

  • Unique visitors
  • Conversion rate
  • Most popular products
  • Average revenue per customer
  • User journey

Google Analytics is a great way to measure the performance of your products online. This will help you get to know your audience’s behaviour better so you can keep improving.

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  1. Social media marketing

Social media marketing is the process of creating content linked to your products to drive user engagement and traffic to your website. You can read our 8 top tips for a successful social media marketing strategy here.

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  1. Social media shopping

Social media shopping is growing considerably. When launching your products online, you’d be missing a trick to forget about the extensive e-commerce options social media offers! Social media shopping is an emerging channel that can pay big dividends, as 55% of online shoppers made a purchase through a social media channel in 2018, according to a study commissioned by Avionos. To elevate your online product launch, selling your products directly within social media platforms is well worth investigating, especially if you have an already existing strong following! Social media platforms offer fewer clicks to buy than most websites.

Instagram is the most popular platform for social media shopping, with its Instagram Checkout. With this new feature, purchases take place within the app, which expands on the original Instagram Shopping feature.

Facebook is also in the social media shopping game. The tools most used are Facebook Page Shops and Messenger. Brands can build an entire store on Facebook. You can add and update products, sell directly from your page, manage orders and shipping, and administer Facebook ads to promote your store.

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  1. Bring in the experts

Your business survives because it’s providing a product or service that others either need or want, but how will anyone know how good your company is if you neglect to tell them about it? Your business is amazing, and it should be shouted about! We understand the challenges of competing in a crowded marketplace often dominated by larger organisations, but it is possible to cut through the noise when you know how. Don’t allow your competition to get ahead of the game, visit our Optimised Product Launch package to leave it in our expert hands to position your company in the best possible way! You can also check out Episode 13 of our podcast, Revitalise & Grow, for even more on how to maximise online product launches!

We hope you enjoyed our 10-step guide to equip you with the fundamentals to launch your products online! If you fancy reading something similar, why not check out Your Definitive PR Toolkit or Our Actionable PR Strategy blogs! In the meantime, we’d love to hear from you! Let us know your favourite online product launches at hello@adpr.co.uk.

Let’s look at how good communication and basic planning will solve your problem and help you to convert your creation into actual sales. It’s a crowded marketplace and there will always be a lot of noise to cut through to get your product noticed, but it is far from impossible to achieve. Download our Checklist for a Successful Product Launch to help you understand everything you need to know about launching your new product!