Creating the Perfect Ecommerce Store For Your Music Business

Whether you sell instruments, music, or merchandise, investing in an ecommerce store is a great idea for your music business. With the number of online shoppers on the increase, if you’re not online; you’re missing out.

Whether it is convenience, abundance of choice, or the cheaper deals, ecommerce isn’t going away any time soon. Your music business needs to embrace the Internet and broaden your horizons. Your competitors are tapping into this market, so you should be too.

Ecommerce vs. Bricks-and-Mortar Stores

There are plenty of reasons why ecommerce websites beat bricks-and-mortar retailers. They can be cheaper to run, you have complete design and positioning freedom, and you can promote it in any way you choose. But more than this, you can tap into a customer base you never knew existed.

By reaching out to an increased customer pool you not only increase your revenue, but your reach to. Word-of-mouth marketing is perhaps one of the most underestimated techniques, but is one of the most valuable. Give customers an unrivalled online shopping experience, and watch your business boom.

But getting customers to your online store is the easy part. Securing the sale is the most difficult. One false move and they will head straight to your competitor. So whether you sell drums or teach-yourself DVDs, there are a number of essential ecommerce design elements to be aware of.

Top Design Tips

Ecommerce web design varies between industries. What works for a clothing retailer won’t necessarily for your music store. Here we look at some top tips for creating the perfect ecommerce store for your music business:

1. Design Elements

One of the main reasons someone will leave your ecommerce site is poor site design. Whether it is out-dated, over the top, or clashing in colours; if you don’t give off the right impression, people will shop somewhere else.

Simplicity is often the key. Choose an original colour scheme that reflects your business, and appeal to your customer base. Keep this consistent with your branding elsewhere online and in print. A clear corporate branding is professional and attractive to customers.

2. Navigation

How many times have you left a website after struggling to navigate from page to page? Poor navigation between products and pages is a sure fire way to turn customers off. People need to be able to find what they’re looking for quickly and easily.

A clear header navigation, categories, and search facility will give customers a great shopping experience. When in doubt, it is advisable to keep things as simple as possible. Complicated navigation may be more aesthetically pleasing, but may drive customers away.

3. Checkout

If you’ve nailed all the other design elements, and people are adding items to their online basket, you may think that’s the end of the story. But a complex and long winded checkout process will put customers off.

While encouraging people to sign up may be your goal – you can add them to mailing lists – it is advisable to offer a quick checkout option too. Some customers will have found you by accident and only be interested in one product. Don’t make them fill in endless forms if it’s not needed.

4. Visuals and Audio

As a music business, you have a strong interactive element to your company. In a physical store, people can examine your instruments and test them out to gauge the sound quality. Give them the chance to do this online.

Make sure all your images are high quality and you include all the relevant dimensions and sizes. You could also include videos or audio clips of the instruments in action. This can often make the difference between securing the sale or not.

5. Reviews

One of the biggest elements of an ecommerce store is the customer review. First-time buyers and those ‘on-the-fence’ about buying a product will turn to these for reassurance. Make sure they’re in a prominent place, and don’t remove poor reviews.

You want to be transparent and honest with your customers, and the feedback is as much for you as it is prospective buyers. Getting a lot of negative comments? Then act on them and make the changes they suggest. This is best way to improve the user experience.

Bringing your music business up to date with an ecommerce store is a wise move. And by following this advice, and enlisting the help of a design specialist, you can offer the best possible user experience.

Ecommerce music store Djembe Drum Shop sells a great range of African Instruments and drums. Visit the website to find out more.