8 Ways to Help Your Online Store Stand Out in a Crowded Market

It’s one thing to create an online store but to have it stand out in today’s diverse and fiercely competitive market. Having a well-designed and fully functioning website is no longer enough. Even having a great product isn’t enough to get you seen by the right people anymore. While there is no magic trick to instantly stand out from the crowd, there are ways to help build your brand to get the right people talking about you. To stand out, you’re going to need a combination of tactics. But first, let’s understand why it’s important to stand out and the benefits that brings in today’s market.

The Importance of Standing Out

Customers have become far more selective when it comes to where they shop. If they don’t see an immediate benefit of what you’re selling, they’ll hop onto another site to find something that does.

We’re not saying that you need to be the biggest and most sought-after store on the market. However, you do need to offer something unique that your competitors aren’t doing (or aren’t promoting) so that your customers choose you over them.

Stores that succeed in standing out help build trust and loyalty with their customers, which leads to repeat purchases and therefore higher conversion rates. All of this fuels brand recognition and ultimately helps your store be remembered and stand out from the crowd.

Not to mention the power that reviews now hold, with 93% of consumers reading online reviews before even making a purchase.

So, let’s look at some ways you can boost your store’s brand awareness and edge out your competition.

1. Have Faith in What You’re Selling

While it may sound like a cliche, if you don’t believe in what you’re selling, why would anyone else?

You have to trust that your product will benefit the lives of your consumers. It needs to offer them something unique, or at least something that makes it unique. For example, Patagonia sells clothing, but its uniqueness comes from its dedication to sustainability and specifically how it manufactures its clothing.

How this translates to your online store might include sustainability badges on the homepage, detailing their process on how they source their materials and make their clothing, and essentially anything that makes their product stand out.

Having a strong belief that your product is going to benefit the lives of your audience is the lifeblood of your business. Without this, you'll have a hard time selling your products if you don't believe in them yourself.

2. Identify Your Target Audience

To effectively market your product or service, you need to know who to aim it at.

Identifying your target audience is crucial to maximize your marketing efforts and get the best return on investment. Understanding more about your audience means you can tailor your content to suit their needs and hit their pain points.

Let’s stick with the Patagonia example, this product wouldn’t just be aimed at everyone who wears clothing, obviously. It would be aimed at those who are conscious of the environment and want to make a difference. This kind of audience may visit organic coffee shops, are avid recyclers and use public transport or cycle to work.

By understanding your audience, you can tailor your content, messaging, and adverts and even tweak your products based on their feedback. There are plenty of platforms to help you identify your audience, with Google Analytics being a great starting block to discover key demographics like age, location and gender.

Remember, if you try to appeal to everyone, you end up appealing to no one.

3. Find and Learn From Your Competition

The more you know your competitors, the easier it is to identify and leverage your unique selling points and outshine them in the market.

Find out what’s good about them and what they’re doing right - but also look for areas where your offering beats theirs. For example, your competition might offer the same product as you but cheaper.

So, what do you do that justifies a higher cost? Is your product better? How? What are your customers saying about your offerings? Are they positive or negative?

Seeing how you square up to your competition can provide a fresh perspective on what’s unique about your offering and what isn’t. Don’t be afraid to take inspiration from your competition either. Just make sure that what you’re selling remains unique to your brand and mission statement.

4. Don’t Neglect Website Security and SEO

Ensuring your website is operating at its full potential is crucial from the start. You might have the most visually impressive website on the market, but if it has security issues and cannot be found online, this is going to cause problems.

First things first, make sure your store is running off a trusted hosting partner. WordPress hosting is one of the most popular options available and with the right team running the show, you don’t have to worry about security issues, plug-in conflicts, theme bugs and more.

Next, SEO.

The benefits of being easily found online are numerous and literally help you stand out from the crowd. Local searchers view 3.92 pages per session, significantly higher than traffic from paid search, organic search, or referrals. This means you should aim to be ranking organically for your top keywords and search terms to ensure your target audience can easily find you.

If you want to have the best chance of standing out from the crowd early on, make sure you invest in website security and SEO from the get-go.

5. Put a Name to a Face

Authenticity plays a crucial role when it comes to turning scrollers into buyers.

Some brands are able to do this better than others. For example, it makes sense for a dentist to have photos of themselves treating patients in their clinic, as when you’re investing in a YMYL (your money or your life) service, people like knowing who their practitioner will be.

However, if you’re selling luxury silk scarves, the main focus of the home and product pages will be photos of the scarves. The About page, however, is where you should consider showing an image of the team behind the creation, the owner and any other images that show who is behind the brand.

Try to stay away from stock imagery as much as possible. Yes, it has its place in certain areas, but when it comes to building trust and authenticity, the more personal you can get, the better.

6. Create Personal and Meaningful Content

Creating compelling content can be done in many ways. Through unique blog posts, carefully crafted social media posts, video reviews and more. Regardless of the format, as long as your content is unique to your brand and is interesting, people will take notice.

To do this, you need to think about what makes your audience tick. What are their interests? What kind of content do they consume and where do they do this? Social media? Video platforms? Print? You need to know this before you begin creating content.

Let’s say you’re selling laptops. Some content ideas might be to create video reviews where your top tech person dives into the details of the latest laptops on the market. Their expertise combined with sharing it on your audience’s most popular platform can generate a lot of exposure and organic traffic.

You could back this up with a blog post breaking down the pros and cons of the laptop in a more digestible format for those who want something to read on the way to work.

As long as you’re creating unique content that targets your audience’s interests, you’re on the right path to standing out from the crowd.

7. Build a Memorable Brand With a Mission

This one should come as no surprise. Building a strong, recognizable and memorable brand is always the main aim of any business. It takes time, but brands that go the distance usually end up being the most memorable.

There are a few key elements that create a memorable brand. The first is identity, so your logo and website are visual identifiers. In fact, brands with well-designed logos are the most recognizable brand identifiers at 75%.

Next is your messaging; it’s essentially the voice of your brand, specifically how you communicate with your audience and provide a great customer experience. Considering 42% of consumers say that companies are not meeting expectations on personalisation, it's critical to tailor your messaging to resonate with their specific needs and preferences.

Finally, your mission. Without a company purpose, aim or mission statement, what are you aiming for and where’s the finish line? Yes, not all companies will have a mission statement and that’s okay. But what you do need is direction so that everyone is working from the same script.

Successfully combining these elements is what will help separate you from your competitors and keep you living rent-free in your audience’s heads.

8. Adapt Your Products and Offerings Over Time

To remain relevant, you need to have your finger on the pulse of the marketing landscape. Even if you have the best product in the world, at some point, something better or cheaper will come along and you may have to change your marketing approach or revisit your offering.

For example, some businesses are now looking to become more eco-friendly in an attempt to lessen their impact on the environment.

In 2021 a study showed that 87.6% of consumers considered sustainability at least “somewhat important” when buying online. In 2023, that number has only dipped to 86.4% showing that a clear commitment to sustainability is still a focus for many consumers.

Something as simple as using recycled plastic can make people think twice about what they purchase.

Either way, it’s important your brand stays relevant and in tune with the ever-changing consumer landscape. If you don’t, you might be surprised about how quickly you’ll be overtaken by your competitors.

Final Thoughts

With so many online stores popping up all over the world, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stand out from the crowd, especially early on.

But don’t panic. Start slow, learn about your offerings, research your audience and competitors and push your online store live whenever you feel comfortable. The personality and adaptation come after the initial launch, and it's easy to neglect this once your site is live.

Keep things personal and keep your offers unique and updated based on the market shifts. The more consistent you are and the more you listen to the demands of your consumers, the easier it will be to stand out from the crowd and create a store that lives long in the memories of your customers.