The recent decade witnessed the blooming of the e-commerce industry and it is predicted that by 2040, 95% of purchases will be carried out via e-commerce. Maybe 2021 is not too late to build your online store.
Choose your business idea and niche
Some of you might skip this initial step, however, this is how your e-commerce era starts. Don’t jump to create a website, seriously have one firm idea in place and define the niche that you want to sell. That requires market research including competitors, market demands, trending products to find out the right product; Trend Hunter or Google Trend might be of help to your research. Decisions on a niche will affect your sales figure, capital and strategy to approach customers.
Set up your store
Giving an easy-to-spell name will pay off your effort; what you need to do is trying to shorten the name to impress your audiences and use a standard domain like .com. The weird or non-popular domain will confuse the visitors and even bring negative assessments over your store.
Shopify – the best e-commerce platform
Next, you must properly select the appropriate platform to officially form your store. There are some names highly suggested by our experts like Shopify, Woo Commerce, WordPress or BigCommerce.
In this step, you also need to fix the shipping method and payment gateways.
Pre-sale
That step requires you to prepare and insert your offerings and products into your stores. Product descriptions, photos, price, shipping methods or maintenance must be appropriately shown on the website. Remember the product's description is not merely for introducing products, this could be an effective way to boost traffic.
Payment gateways
Simultaneously, you must study and plan a marketing plan. Adding a blog or integrating with social media like Instagram, Twitter or Facebook will be the best option to drive organic traffic to your website.
Start selling and run your store
Your dedicated preparation now begins to take action. You have been working hard thus far, be confident and willing to cope with all the frustrations and succeed.
Demo of an online store
There are some tips that can be influential and beneficial to your site’s performance:
- Social media: stay active on social media as a strategy to build and maintain the individual relationship and anticipation for your customers.
- Reviews from former buyers: testimonial quotes from your customers will direct your potential customers to the insight of your offerings.
- Promotion: customers love bargains, providing some coupon or discount code during special seasons or store clearance time can help you to dip toes into the e-commerce business.
Growth and extension
Employ influencers to boost sales
Once your store experiences steady development, you must be ready to extend your e-commerce business scale. At this period, you can consider recruiting some influencers who specialize in similar fields to promote your products. At the same time, don’t forget to strictly analyze your store, besides manual index and chart to clarify your product and store performance, you can count on some report-export apps.