Tips and Tricks to Start an eCommerce Business From the Ground Up
Starting from scratch isn’t necessarily a bad idea. The most creative and innovative products and solutions can often come from the process of building a business from absolutely nothing. It requires incredible determination, a lot of hard work, no small amount of passion, and a great idea. Whether you find yourself as an entrepreneur who makes a living off of starting businesses, you have a passion that you want to enterprise, or you are ready to work for yourself rather than spend any more time working for someone else. Whatever your reason, here are some tips and how-tos to learn how to start an eCommerce business from scratch.
Preparation and Determination
Preparation comes in a lot of different forms, but one of the most important things to prepare for is your eCommerce product. Anyone who goes out on a limb and decides to start creating an eCommerce without proper preparation and adequate decision-making on the product they want to sell is automatically going to struggle, a lot. Not knowing what to sell is another reason why people may be hesitant to start their own business, and so an early flame of enthusiasm may be blown out.
When you have your product idea already, it’s incredibly helpful to take advantage of some pre-sales research before going forward with it. Simply put, ask people you know what they think of your product. If everyone hates it, then don’t put your time and money into trying to sell it. What’s more likely is that by asking people about the potential product and business idea, it can help you get a sense of how customers will react to your product, what audience you should market your product toward, and any alterations you should make to the product(s) going forward.
If you are creating a product yourself that is innovative and creative, and you’re not sure if people will understand how it works, invest some time in creating a how-to video as well as written testimonials by people you have tested it out. When you are starting from scratch, ask your friends, family members, and neighbors to try out your product and see how they like it. Use their testimonials in the future when your eCommerce store is up-and-running so that potential customers have some feedback.
Your determination comes in the form of letting go of the fear of failure. At every stage of this process, when you want to start an eCommerce business from scratch, the fear of failure is going to permeate into your brain and you are going to have to resist. The truly successful entrepreneurs overcame their fear of failure in order to push their innovation and creativity into something truly unique and profit worthy.
Tips and Tricks for the Nuts and Bolts
The basics will be your best friend going forward. The biggest tip you can hold onto is that once
you have established the basics of your eCommerce store, every decision from there on out is going to be better informed and more on point with what direction you want your company to go in. This includes figuring out your product, and from there, hone in on what market niche you want to sell it to. A trick to success is to distinguish yourself from your competitors; what are they doing, and what can you be doing differently?
The next trick is to choose the right eCommerce platform. Depending on what you’re looking for, which only requires a little bit of research to determine, the right platform can set you up and make this process quite a bit easier. From there, you need to design and develop your eCommerce store. Unless you are planning to DIY your entire website, a great tip is to find a web developer or web development agency that can create a website that is seamlessly on brand and has all the customizations you want and that you might not have been able to make for yourself. A web development agency like 1 Digital Agency is a great example; they have experts certified in a variety of eCommerce platforms, so they can help with any amount of design or development that you want or need to be done. They are a full-service agency, so another tip is that they also can provide you with SEO and digital marketing.
Digital marketing is another really important thing to keep in mind when you want to start an eCommerce business because with an eCommerce store you are going to want to make sure it is search engine optimized and that you are properly digitally marketing it. You’ll want to make sure you are using social media to it’s fullest potential. Any social media platform that is relevant to your business or can aid you in reaching your target audience, is only going to be an asset to your eCommerce store and your overall ROI. Also, a huge trick to bringing in more customers and revenue is to make sure that your eCommerce store is mobile site friendly. With the surge in smartphones since their invention, so many people are accessing the internet and shopping online through only their phones. If you want to start an eCommerce business from scratch, you might not necessarily have the cash to create a smartphone app. However, not having a mobile friendly site is going to hurt you in the long run.
Another big tip is to take advantage of social networking. You can reach out to other eCommerce business owners on platforms like LinkedIn, Google+, or even Facebook and bounce ideas off of each other and ask questions. Maybe you will link up with someone who is in a similar or the same industry and you can have your eCommerce stores promote each other or even have dual-promotions for sales.
Whatever your inspiration or motivation was to start eCommerce business from scratch, as long as you have the preparation and determination to make it happen, then you can. If you figure out your product, determine your basics, and let go of the fear of failure, you’re already almost there. Are you determined to start your own eCommerce business? Contact Genius eCommerce today and get started.
