Did you ever dream of sitting at your home or personal workplace, smoothly running your own business and earning profits in a short span of time. Well then, believe me, there is no need to dream any longer because this can be easily turned to reality. But how?
In simple words, you can live your dream by building your own website or online store, which certainly is the most cost effective way of converting your minimum effort into maximum revenue.
Once you have made up your mind to go ahead with this, you need to think through how to get this plan into action. For this specifically, your initial step should be to search for the best domain to launch your own website or choose the best suited platform to set up your digital store for selling, look for products, find manufacturers / suppliers, take orders and fulfill them.
Sounds like too much work? Don’t worry, I’m going to make this less-complexed by guiding you in this blog.
How to start an ecommerce business?
Starting an e-commerce business is not at all difficult and this industry is the most profitable considering the new generation in which people prioritize purchasing online, receive items at their doorstep.
Below are four traditional types of Ecommerce Business Models you need to pick from:
- B2C – Business to consumer. B2C businesses sell to their end-user
- B2B – Business to business. In a B2B business model, a business sells its product or service to another business
- C2B – Consumer to business
- C2C – Consumer to consumer
Moving forward, here are some quick guidelines to assist you with how to proceed with your e-commerce business idea:
1. Choose a unique and catchy business/store name
2. Get your brand registered if you wish to launch your own
3. Create an attractive logo that won’t go unnoticed
4. Build your website using one of the various website builders
5. Choose your sales channel to start an online store
As soon as the above targets are achieved, you are all set to move forward with your e-commerce business by covering all mandatory steps. Make sure none of these are missed, or else, your initial hard work would be wasted and you may have to re-think your plan and ways to implement it.
What to do next for running your e-commerce business?
1. Choose a product
After launching your store / website, the next crucial step is to select what you would like to sell. It is very important to analyze what products are in demand and won’t be out of fashion soon, that which would give you enough margin to earn from. And last but not the least, products which are easy to source from suppliers or shipped directly to customers, if so.
You’ll want to go with more specific/trending items that appeal to a particular audience. This also depends on the sales channel you are set to sell on, research on best-selling products over there to get more hints. I suggest starting by making a list of potential products you might like to sell in your store, and you can always verify whether your product ideas are any good by searching for them on Google.
2. Research and Know your market
You need to research the relevant market to get a kick start and better idea about the kind of business you’ll be running. Look up for your competitors / other sellers in your sector, see and understand what they might be doing to be in the best sellers. Also understand what to avoid to take wrong decisions which won’t benefit your business and you might fail to run your sell or run your store.
Use keyword tools and trending product lists to find your first profitable product. Thoroughly research your competition and write a business plan.
3. Identify your audience
If you have customers already, you can use their data to create a preliminary audience profile. Useful data points include:
- Age and gender
- Family status
- Occupation
- Spending patterns
- Interests
- Searches
4. Sourcing your product
There are a ton of helpful resources online but first you should figure out what type of supplier you’re looking for. This will help determine the terminology you need to use in your research. There are several supplier options, the most common being:
- A manufacturer who produces your own product idea
- A supplier (who may also be a manufacturer), wholesaler, or distributor who purchases already-existing brands and products
- A dropshipping companythat supplies products and fulfills orders of already-existing brands and products
If you are overwhelmed about how to obtain the product or find reliable supplier through anti-fraud procedure, then a product management tool would help give you a good start. One of these softwares called Stock Konnect is integrated with multiple manufacturers/suppliers, having a wide range of different products to choose from and manage on a single dashboard. This software won’t fail to surprise you, it is also affiliated with many well-known dropshipping companies. So you would like to opt for this option because you will find this tool convenient and hassle-free.
– 12 apps for sourcing products
Whether you’re running your first or fifth ecommerce business, explore the following 12 apps to source products for your store:
- Handshake
- Printify
- Dripshipper
- DSers
- Spocket
- Syncee
- Creative Hub
- Printful
- My Online Fashion Store
- Lulu Direct
- Shapeways
- Modalyst
5. List your products online
The next step you may find hectic is to add / list the chosen products on your website or store. I’m sure this is where you wish to lesser the burden of one-by-one manual listing. Definitely Stock Konnect is the solution, as it allows to add products in bulk with CSV/Excel file on multiple sales channels, including own website.
Furthermore, you can manage inventory, optimize listings, monitor performances and keep your store in check.
6. Create marketing campaigns for your products/store
The key factor which executes your plan to sell as per your wish is to promote your store or products to reach accurate consumers and drive target traffic onto your listings, saving you time and struggle.
It is preferable to launch quickly and start thinking of ways to generate sales through ecommerce marketing. Just listings your products and sitting idle won’t bring in expected sales. The utmost thing is to get your marketing skills into action for surprising results. This will eventually breed opportunities to improve other things along the way.
The most common ways of e-commerce marketing are given below:
- Promote listings and pay once sold
- Pay-per-click promotion
- Email marketing
- Social media marketing
- Affiliate marketing
- Paid ads
- Website pop-ups
- Organic search
Things Your eCommerce Business Needs to Thrive:
E-commerce is still very profitable if you know what to do right from the start and implement that plan. There is still a lot of growth in this industry as buyers are still shifting from offline purchasers to digital buyers.
So once you’ve started your eCommerce business, use this handy checklist to ensure you covered all the right steps:
- Right product to sell
- A strong branding strategy
- A fully-optimized website or store
- Easy signup/sign-in and path to payment
- A referral or affiliate program
- E-commerce marketing
- A well-defined returns policy
- Great customer reviews
Tips for starting and maintaining an eCommerce store
Starting an eCommerce business is thrilling but some may feel the burden, therefore I’ll lend you a helping hand by sharing the following tips which you should keep in mind:
- Focus on building up a top-notch website/store
- Know your target audience and what they demand
- Sell products to get more attention initially
- Experiment with marketing and advertising
- Invest in outreach and link building
It would take a while for your effort to pay off, but do not feel low if your initial sale / earning is not high. You could set a benchmark annually, once you see your sales and business grow. A lot goes into starting an online retail business but if you work through it step by step, learn more by doing, and adapt as you go ahead. With a little time and more practice, you’ll be the king or queen of the e-commerce market which would make you proud.
