How to set your E-Commerce store off the ground.
There is no denying that people make tons of money online. This exciting reality has led many aspiring entrepreneurs on the edge of starting a rewardable E-Commerce store.
If you too like to ditch the traditional brick-and-mortar and bank on money-making E-Commerce stores, hang in here.
In this blog, we will talk about everything you need to know about an online business from a scratch.
Because before you decide to be an online storefront owner, you need to have a feasible plan, all the correct information about the market and a way to deal with every stage you go through. You will have to step up on many stairs before you can finally jump off to start selling your product. The competition is high and will even go higher in the future, but there is still hope for tremendous success.
The success of your e-commerce business sure depends on how well you grind, but a roadmap can provide comfort along the way and give you an edge.
Therefore, we have collected some ways that will help you stay ahead. All of the information will make your journey a lot easier as it will clear many doubts for you. Following it, you will be much more confident in starting an eCommerce store.
- In the business realm, stand out a little ( A high-quality value is bound to captivate)
The kind of products you will sell is the first question you need to ask yourself. It is your best bet to start with a handful of products in a specific need, such as biking gear, some travel gadgets, or incredibly soft baby products.
You can always increase the variety of products as you increase business.
Fulfil a need or solve a problem by offering they can’t find elsewhere.
Try to make your product a little distinct from the products already on the market. Selling products with an added value unique products to beat the competition. Companies like Walmart and Target have their specific USP — they sell their products at cost-effective prices.
The goal is not to develop something entirely out of the box. You can save some generic products in a better offer to beat the competition. This value can be anything. A Discount or a combo, excellent quality, cruelty-free product, natural products, or even a hefty discount.
Once you find out what products you will sell, you should start looking for the people you want to sell your products to.
2. Be clear of your primary customers to save yourself from Defeat
Yes, we get it; you are excited about your business and believe in your products. It’s highly evident that you think your products will be needed, liked and demanded by everyone — a young or adult, a male or female to someone even living in the corner of most city houses.
This approach may be counterproductive because the business would require you to spend a lot of energy and money, which is generally not possible. You can use this money on other relevant aspects such as marketing instead. Even the most prominent companies soaring widely in success and profit do not consider everyone their target market.
Another reason it is imperative to find your niche is you can’t impress everyone. It is not mandatory to create products for every age and gender. It’s crucial to figure out how you can offer more specific products.
3. Planning a pre-launch should be a non-negotiable part of the plan
Make them feel excited and spark curiosity to make guaranteed sales on the first day.
Your pre-launch can be a missed opportunity, or it could be your golden chance to have a direct influence on the internet market.
Product quality and its technical merit alone would not guarantee the success of your eCommerce. For your store to cultivate customer interest and gain momentum, you need to work around your pre-launch carefully.
The main aim of your pre-launch is to create some thrill and excitement around your E-Commerce — so that when your product goes live, you make sales on the very first day!
If you utilize your pre-launch marketing correctly, you have primed up your audience to be curious for your big announcement; as you go about marketing for your pre-launch, you will increase eyes and ears around your new product.
We have created 4 pre-launch marketing strategies for you.
- Setting up and regularly updating social media profiles is an excellent way to create buzz around the launch.
More than 60% of social media users use their accounts to search for products that they may need.
- Confirm Orders and start a business before your launch.
Creating a fabulous waitlist for your early customers. Offering them pre-launch exclusives such as early access.
- Email marketing provides a return on investment.
Not setting up an email sequence can set you up for failure. If you don’t want to fail, you should use email automation to send a series of welcome emails over time. The welcome series is a precious strategy for your store.
- Invest in content marketing during pre-launch.
You only have to offer a promise of something better: use pre-launch in your favour and educate your audience on how your products are different from others.
4. Does marketing give you an unbeatable edge? Or are agencies going insane?
Marketing is the most crucial strategy for an E-Commerce business to advertise its product. Marketing is the fundamental process of promoting, creating awareness, and talking about the potential of your product. A good marketing plan is based on thorough research and involves a systematic study of the product’s qualitative and quantitative data and its place in the market. Based on the evaluation, you will find your customers who will design a blueprint of your E-Commerce business.
Why are businesses striving for tremendous visibility?
Marketing is directly proportional to the revenue you generate in the long term.
87% of the customers read online reviews for online and offline businesses. So if your business is illegally marketed online, it doesn’t exist for the people on the internet.
100% of businesses fail without good marketing. We hope this is a stat that everyone knows.
Without a suitable marketing plan, it will be impossible for consumers to know about your product. You cannot hide from the fact that marketing holds the power to make or break your business.
And because marketing is the voice of your business, it should say everything about your business. No one will buy your product from your E-Commerce store if you fail to market.
You might be shocked to know that marketing is even more important than the product you are selling! Yes, this might not be easy to accept. Nevertheless, without marketing, no one will buy a product even if it is the most outstanding product in the world.
5. Hooking your business with storytelling is your cheat sheet to build an audience
All successful businesses know that great storytelling is not just a marketing move, but it is the same way they present themselves to the world– both offline and online. It is seen that a business tends to struggle more if the mindset is all about boasting about themselves — the little accomplishments and their wins.
Yes, all this makes a customer care about your presence, but your E-Commerce Store needs to find a way to connect to your audience. If you fail to do so, you fail to share your brand values and the mission with the same consumers who will trust you and make a purchase.
In the book Corporate Culture and Performance, John Kotter and James Heskett demonstrated that companies that efficiently communicate their purpose and values could outperform their contemporaries in stock price by a factor of 12 and can beat the company without weights a whopping 750x times.
You probably know that Google, Apple, and Tesla dance built-in The Legacy of their owners. The brand speaks profoundly of the vision of its founders, who were to change the world.
Your brand must have a story, you know how to use it well. Surely you don’t want to be the next Apple, but you want to succeed.
People trust people and not a company, so investing in a story they can admire makes sense. Plus, storytelling keeps you of the age as it has a competitive advantage. You don’t want your brand to be lost among numerous other online stores. The decision-making that goes in the minds of consumers is based on t and emotion.
Start thinking about the story you need to tell which year the commerce store is running. You could have a generally better product that it would only sell if it connects right with the audience.
Small businesses on Instagram and Tiktok have used this tactic and have started to add heartfelt messages to their consumers when they send an order. Loyalty cannot be bought by brand numbers, data and website quality alone.
6. Top-notch customer support allows your audience to feel valued and heard
It is pretty evident that day by day, more and more consumers want to shop online, and the reason is quite simple — it is convenient, and everything works by just clicking on a button.
E-Commerce stores make it so simple and comfortable for everyone who wants to purchase anything. from my house plant to an entire house; one can have whatever they want!
This is why it becomes highly essential for your E-Commerce business to have excellent customer support. Yes, technology these days is incredible, but anything can happen while browsing through your website.
Websites are known to crash. It can also happen that your customer cannot find their favourite colour or their promo code isn’t working anymore. To solve hindrances like these, you will have to provide excellent customer support.
Top companies always make sure that they keep their customer service open 24/7. This builds trust, maintains accountability and guarantees long term relationships.
You can improve the communication with your customers in a lot of ways. Emails, online chat software and quick replies on social DMs can go a long way to ‘wow’ your customers in your eCommerce store.
Websites should also place their email address and phone number in the forefront so that they can be easily accessible at all times.
Hire staff to answer when your phone rings. Customers appreciate the feeling of priority and are likely to trust you more. A word of goodwill goes a long way.
However, if you can’t make it possible to provide the service 24/7, dedicate it to consumer satisfaction during working hours. Solve all their queries without a fail, and get user reviews that make you go viral!
You can also work with the marketing team to deliver personalized customer service. Just map up the customer’s journey and identify extraordinary ways by which you can assist customers.
There was an interesting incident with Jet blue where one of its passengers expressed his disappointment of failing to Grab a group of coffee before going to board in a tweet. Acting quickly, JetBlue delivered Starbucks Coffee to the passengers on the plane. This sensational tweet went viral. This is just an example you might want to create your scene as you do the business.
Following the above codes will save you from a lot of trial and error. You will be less confused, less overwhelmed and more focused.
7. Lay the Groundwork
Now that you know how to stand firm, quickly review the following details as they will help you lay the groundwork for your business.
● Take care of Legalities.
Before starting the online store, fix a meeting with an attorney, insurance agent, and accountant to adequately prepare to enter the professional market. Your products might require a different license, or your city might need another permission.
Therefore, you need to be aware of all the things that come into play as you build your store. Your accountant will help you identify the best route you can take to collect the sales tax from your customers. Online stores have a different code under the Main Street Fairness Act and Marketplace fairness Act, so do not forget to research more about it.
Having a resale license will be an immense advantage. It will help you to get wholesale discounts from the manufacturer. You will not only save on the cost price, but you’ll also be able to offer huge discounts yourself while still making huge profits.
● The Product
What decides the theme of your business is how you will source your products. While there are lots of options like dropshipping and reselling, we encourage you to invent and manufacture your own products or collaborate with some fantastic creators who create merchandise for sales.
Very interestingly, the records of 2020 concluded that the global handicraft market was worth $647 billion. That’s quite a number to attract anyone to start their own ECommerce store!
If you invest in your own one-of-a-kind products, it is hard for competitors to keep up. This also improves the popularity of your product as now you have full control over the product quality, which matters a lot!
There are a lot of flea markets, raw material suppliers, and retail businesses which sell raw materials you can rework with. You also get to have full liberty to decide the kind of products and their prices and the profit margins.
With this, you have to carefully plan the time frame to manufacture pictures and keep the stock ready for selling.
Also, give a thought as to how you will package your products. Research shows that the “unboxing effect” shows long-lasting effects on your customer experience so it makes sense to think over the packaging. To cut short, whatever helps your business, should be implemented.
And after your parcel is ready to be shipped look for suitable shipping services like Shipstation, ShipperHQ, Route and even Amazon offer fast affordable shipping options and delivery rates to all merchants out there. With all these options available today, running an online business is rather feasible.
● Maintain your account- after all, it’s all about the profit.
The spreadsheet will help you keep track of all your transactions and costs. Surely, you want to keep your wallet heavy, and for that, you will have to keep an eye on the following prices.
1. Wholesale price
2. website cost
3. shipping cost
4. Credit Card processing fee.
Plan your products in a manner that the shipping cost is as low as possible. Statistics show that 40% of Shoppers abandon their carts due to high shipping charge costs.
You will also have to keep up with the cost of Credit Card processing. Still, your payment IL can be free of charge with the digital modes of payment like Apple Pay, stripe, amazon pay and other platforms such as Shopify and Woocommerce. You can receive payments and get paid instantly.
● How an eCommerce website should be.
Your website is your business for the front; it represents the external attitude of your Ecom store. Hence, it must demand great quality.
A quality website should first be three things — professional, easy to navigate, and visually appealing.
Only if it appeals, the users would want to discover more. So it would be right to say that getting your website built by a professional is instrumental for the success of your E-Commerce Store. A designer can make every aspect of your website look outstanding. Your social media ads, logo, and image related to your business stand out. By hiring a designer you save a lot of time, and you can use it to get other things ready for your store.
Considering that in today’s internet attention is everything. Hence, you have the first 5 seconds to grab everyone’s attention and retain a customer.
To do this, a lot of work has to be done on the website. Your website should be extremely user-friendly and provide a complete non- troublesome experience. 50% of online transactions for shopping happen through mobile; hence make sure your website is optimized for your mobile.
Your web developer or designer will make sure that all the elements of the websites follow the user’s comfort, starting from the striking looks to check out, and the clean images. Shoppers might also want to view multiple angles of the products they are about to buy, so talk to your designer about the layout.
Keeping track of all these things and placing the hassle-free shopping experience would have your customer coming back for more.
● GoPro at the graphics
Once you are settled with the marketing strategy and the basic mechanics of your plan, you must look at the content — visual and written. Good content will establish the backbone for a successful E-Commerce business such as yours. It gives out a clear message of your brand and helps you generate leads.
Make sure to get high-quality pictures of your products. As your potential customers can’t physically feel the products, at least they can have a good view of them. A good E-Commerce store has a clear product description, inspiration ‘About Us’ page and even a blog to keep their rankings in check. You will also need to learn to use SEO to your advantage.
● SEO is Goldmine
There are thousands of SEO tools today that you can easily find online. These tools will help you to extract the necessary keywords concerning your product. A practical way you can do this is by finding out what your competitors are doing to drive traffic, and what words they use with respect to their customers and the website.
Bottomline
There are many advantages to starting an eCommerce store.The market is growing, creating your own is at ease. Also, the number of buyers is uncountable! Orders take place 24*27.
You can tell the last written lines to everyone you meet if you religiously follow the roadmap we have laid for you. But, never lose patience as you go about running your successful eCommerce store.