An e-commerce business is a business model where you buy and sell goods over the internet. The money that we exchange in e-commerce business will get transferred through digital means with online transactions. With e-commerce sales reaching their peak, it’s time to start an online business now.
If you are a craftsperson or a skilled entrepreneur, you can pursue your dream and start a business that you are passionate about. And gaining success with it will help you achieve a sense of freedom and achievement.
Here is a short guide to help you start an ecommerce business of your own.
1. Choose What to Sell
The first step you need to take is to find a product to sell to your customers. This tends to be the most challenging part of starting a new online business. After you have landed on a product idea, think about how it can sell well.
Next figure out how and from where to obtain the products. It could be ready-made products like candles or you could get materials to make your products like jewelry. Find a good e-commerce solution to display your product online like Shopify, Amazon, and woocommerce hosting.
2. Write a Business Plan
Writing up a business plan is the most important part and it ensures that you run your business smoothly. A good business plan is a road map that helps bring your ideas together so that you can implement them.
It is important to determine what is important and how to reach potential customers. However, a business plan also highlights your brand’s mission statement so that investors and customers can better understand the core values.
Another factor that is included in your plan is to research your competition. You should know who you are up against in the industry and how you can stand out from the crowd.
3. Choose Your Business Name
Another challenging decision is to choose a business name or brand name and choose an available domain name. Come with a creative name that is not too difficult to pronounce. It should resonate and present your products properly.
Now that you have a brand name and a domain name, it’s time to create a logo. You can hire a graphic designer to create a logo that attracts the attention of the audience.
4. Set up Your Online Store
The most important part of an e-commerce business is to set up an online store. There are many crucial elements to consider when you build your store. You need to post high-quality photos of your products with captivating product descriptions. Choose the right color palette for the site.
Have a clear call to action on a product page so you can easily get the customers to hit the buy button. The area around the call action button must be clutter free on the website so that you can get more sales.
5. Set up Payment Methods
You need to choose the right payment method to close a sale successfully. If the payment method is too complicated, the customer could abandon your cart.
Below are a few payment options you can choose from:
- A redirect method that takes the customer to a separate site to process the payment. The most widely used example is PayPal.
- An off-site payment method that takes away extra steps from customers. But for this, you have to ensure that your site is encrypted so information is safely sent to the payment processor.
- On-site payments that happen on-site give you more control and responsibility.
6. Select Your Shipping Strategy
As you get close to the launch of your business, you need to think about the shipping elements that you have prepared. Choose a good shipping business supplier who can collaborate with you professionally on every order. Since you run an online store, it is best to offer more than one delivery option which must be adapted to the buyer.
Before you ship the products, label and package the products according to the current trends. Packaging is part of the customer experience so you need to make sure that it is tailored according to the customer’s needs.
7. Set Marketing Goals
Even if you have the best product page, many potential customers will not reach out to you at all because they don’t know that your brand exists. For this, you need to have strong marketing strategies to put your brand in front of consumers. To start with, you can create social media accounts on different platforms to post content about your brand.
You also need to optimize your page with SEO tactics so that it can rank higher on search engines. This way, when a user types a product similar to yours, the chances of yours appearing on the first-page increase.
If you can invest in marketing then you can consider Google and Facebook Ads. Your advertisements can reach your target audience with a single screen touch and the users can land your e-commerce brand page.
