Is this the year you are going to launch the business you have been dreaming about??
We are here to help and motivate you in the journey.
Imagine how BEARDBRAND became an eCommerce store with $20,000 IN SALES EVERY DAY by using the growing community. Eric Bandholz founded Beardbrand in 2012 and since then had an incredible journey because of his own passion for facial hair and the right strategy. Began with a YouTube channel, a blog, he realized the opportunity in the market and the unmet grooming product needs. He just plugs the gap and here is the success story we speak about.
So let’s get started and make you a success story. We are gonna talk about:
An entrepreneur is someone who has a vision for something and a want to create - David Karp, Tumblr founder and CEO
Here what I mean is decide what you're going to sell and who you're selling it to. Your niche will impact the future course of actions when setting up an online store like:
Your niche can be categorized as price, audience, market opportunity.
Coming to price, if you sell cheaper items, more people are likely to purchase, but your Average Order Value (AOV) will be smaller.
If you sell more expensive items, fewer people are likely to purchase, but your AOV will be larger.
Other than this, what also needs to be considered are brand loyalty, popularity, and longevity.
In niches where you have limited brands, consumers’ brand loyalty plays a key role.
Next, let’s move on to popularity. Here you can look for products that are trending, and steadily growing in popularity before starting online store. To help you along, here’s a handy tool: Google Trends. Just plug your keyword in and you’ll be able to see how many people are searching for the term.
Next comes the longevity of your customers.
Now that the sale is moving and you have things in place, the focus has to be on consistency in revenue generation by increasing customer lifetime value where you create strategies to keep adding new customers, and retarget existing customers and keep selling to them.
Dropshipping has many advantages when planning to open online store, and is the ultimate eCommerce store hack. It means you don’t hold on to inventories thereby:
It’s the best option when you are looking for how to start your own online store with no money. Anyone can start an online store with dropshipping, be it a startup, college student, literally anyone.
Now, what about the other option when starting an online store - holding your own products but herein you need to understand certain points:
Pick up a well-researched name to start online storefront that consumers love. Users are picky about each and everything so spend time finalizing what your business name should be. Later go ahead with registering the domain name.
Let me help you with some tips for picking up a name
So what are you going to sell? Use the power of social media, here are the tips on what to sell and how to build an online store from scratch:
Now that you know about setting up the company, your website, product line, let’s talk about how to market, essential steps to starting an online store?
Start Your Online Store with Our Step-by-Step Guide!
Start online stores with minimum money to invest. Building an online store does not need much investment. Here are my suggestions:
So here the breather is you know your product in and out, you know your existing customers, their likes and dislikes. So here what you need to evaluate on how to start an online store:
Now your strongest point, you already have customers and now you just need to inform them and create a hook for them to shop online. How will you do this? What do I need to start an online store? My recommendation:
Solving a customer pain point will always be an effective way to develop a product people want. Pay attention to what problems people are facing with an existing line of products as when you are keenly aware of their pain points, you can easily come up with the next profitable product idea and it helps in building your online store.
Investing in a product you love can reap benefits as you are in complete control of the product, know in and out, Using your know-how to create and position a unique product can be extremely profitable. Let’s take the example of Moorea Seal who turned their passion into a successful online business. In 2010 Moorea, a full-time artist living in Seattle, became self-employed through various creative pursuits: blogging, running her own jewelry business, freelance illustration, and graphic design. In late 2012, she retired early from design to spend more time on her passions and narrow her focus. In 2013, Moorea opened a store on Shopify.
Customer review gives you great insight into what users’ expectations are, what they want and what are their pain points. Are there any trends or interesting bits of feedback you can use as inspiration to develop your next product? Pay special attention to shortcomings and complaints being shared.
How to build an online store? If you have acquired skills through your experience in any specific industry, utilize them. Turning your expertise into your own online business is a smart way to enter the market with an edge.
When consumers are passionate about a particular hobby, they don’t mind investing money in the product they like. Like a jogger may love to invest in a Fitbit watch. This willingness-to-pay can play a masterstroke for you when selecting a line of products.
In the world of digital marketing, you can't be unaware. Know what is trending in the market, utilize the opportunity. Here some tips on how can know what’s trending:
Product validation is very important. You may conduct post sue surveys, ask your test group how they feel about the product, does it work for them, do they like the website design, suggestions they would like to give. Test and implement accordingly.
Checking out online marketplaces will give you insights on what’s trending, customer reviews, price points, unique selling propositions, offers they are playing on. This will help in strategizing what is required. You may go with:
According to a Kissmetrics study, 93% of buyers consider visual appearance to be the most important factor when making a purchase. how to start an eCommerce website? While your complete dependence is on your website, how it looks, how the interface is, is it providing rich user-experience, and much more. So, pay attention to the web design. Some key factors when designing or redesigning your website are:
Offer hassle-free support to your customers both before and after the purchase. Be it providing additional guidance, suggestions while users are scrolling the site or helping them with return or shipping issues. Customer support is a critical factor to increase your user retention rate and for low bounce rate.
Partner with credible brands, which does not mean only high-end brands, small companies can add a degree of trustworthiness to your enterprise. Highlight all companies you have a partner with which adds to your reputation. If you have a large number of partners, showcase them all. The more partners you have, the more buyer trust you’ll build.
Offer a wide variety of popular payment options for your customers so they don’t have to think twice before making the purchase. Add offers, discount coupons for additional benefits.
Be it Facebook, or a tweet on Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Linkedin utilize every social platform in the most effective way. Here maintaining a content calendar will help you to streamline what and when to post on social media. Engage well with your customers, respond to their comments, add videos, infographics, all adding to your brand loyalty.
Yes, invest your time in blogs, it increases your traffic rather than repeated and consistent traffic. Posts that contain SEO keywords and contain useful information for consumers are likely to rank high in search engine results.
Impact blogs encourage customers to visit your product page, increasing your first-time’s user base.
Use tools, like Google Analytics, to track your customer’s preferences, which channel they like the most, and spend their time the most. For your ease, you can even check out guides on Facebook advertising, Instagram advertising, and Snapchat advertising to start online storefront.
How to start an online store? Do you know almost 97% of customers look at product reviews before making a purchase? It means providing social proof and review is crucial. A study has found that 88% of consumers say they trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Break down ratings into factors like design, quality, comfort, delivery service, fit, pattern, and many-core factors that customers may find helpful.
As online sales are all about user-experience where users can touch and feel the product initially, they rely a lot on other customers’ reviews. Before making a purchase.
How to set up an online store? After “mobilegeddon“ on April 21st, 2015, Google has started using responsive web design as a ranking factor. This means that any businesses with a responsive website will find this is adding to their higher search rankings on Google and fetch benefits of responsive design.
Your online store has to receive traffic in order for purchases to happen. The key to generating traffic? Search engine optimization. By incorporating SEO keywords into your product titles and descriptions, your site is more likely to rank higher in search engine results. The increased visibility is the key ingredient for greater site visits and more conversions.
Online shoppers have come to expect a certain standard that they have grown accustomed to on Amazon. However, if free shipping is not possible, keep it visible and clear. It is most likely at supposedly higher free shipping rates to let customers move out of the buying process. Transparent shipping prices help comfort users and make converting easier as there is no fear of hidden fees. There is an actual incentive now to increase order size and complete your order, so users can capitalize on the free shipping deal.
Don’t shy away from reaching out to individuals in your industry that can help you reach more buyers within your target audience. You can create product buzz by networking with trade experts, merchants as they can leverage their experience to make you connect with the target audience. Sellers should consider reaching out to:
It’s a buying pattern that customers look through multiple sites, compare prices, options, quality, delivery time, and much more. So never miss upon keeping an eye on your competition. Check out their product page, policies, shipping process. Get on with major marketplaces and see how they operate and what are their benchmark rates. How they have designed their product catalog, landing pages, cart, payment page, customer support page.
When was the last time you checked up on how images are performing, used your site to check upon customers who can’t touch or feel the product? It is the visual aspect, product detailing, that makes them buy the product. You need to make the most out of the two-dimensional screen to communicate the features and attributes of your products. Images impact your conversion rate and so it is critical to look into the kind, size, of images you are using. Give attention to some of these factors when setting up an online store:
We love offers, discount coupons, plus one offer:) So don’t forget to design incentives that drive customers to use their cart and make the purchase. Create pop-ups offering discounts, show coupons when a user adds the product to the cart. Create big billion days where you offer great discounts, or gift cards, maybe some combined product offers. The key to how to start an online store successfully is staying ahead of your competition and working continuously on increasing the lead funnel and also user retention rate.
Organic word-of-mouth marketing enhances your eCommerce business. Be part of the discussion happening on social media with respect to your product as it serves as social proof. Online buyers love sharing what they love, understand this and make use of it in the best way.
What trending nowadays is influencer marketing and the internet is packed with influential bloggers, journalists, entrepreneurs, and vloggers. Find the right one that has a great audience in your industry, send them free samples, and connect with them to influence your product and open online store.
Market your product on another website and pay only when a sale is made. You pay them a percentage of any sales that originate from their efforts. Track their marketing efforts by providing a unique hyperlink or coupon code. The great thing about this selling strategy is that you only pay if you make a sale.
Join Online discussion forums and social media groups to share advice, tips, gain industry knowledge, and also mark your presence as an expert. Where will you get the details, just check on social platforms like Facebook, Google and you will get all details related to upcoming forums.
With Reddit, you can attract a large number of dedicated followers and customers who love taking and exchanging ideas about related products and services.
There is no better way to talk about your product and service than blogging. Touch your user pain point and offer them solutions like 25 best ways to decorate your home under 5000/- and many such ideas. Blogging also gives you content to share on social media and helps you rank in search engines.
How are you going to inform the target audience what you are launching, about any special offerings, special discount days? According to DMA, email has an average ROI of $42 per $1 spent. Building your email list, however, costs very little. Having a list of emails from previous and potential customers means you can get your information, products, and content into their personal mailboxes.
How to start your own online store profitably? Sponsoring an event is a great way to mark a niche. Ensure you sponsor the right event. Look at what is the theme of the event and is it relevant to your services, how many attendees are there, the portfolio of the attendant, what is the marketing activity the event company will be doing, and is it going to benefit you.
If you want great content and get more eyeballs, interview an industry influencer. Firstly you get a lot of fresh content, secondly, it fetches you an audience who love hearing from the interviewee.
Use this pay pay-per-click advertising network and mark your presence on nearly every Google search results page, YouTube video, and partner website when starting online store.
The main advantage of selling wholesale is the cash flow no matter the profit margin.
Sales conversion rate
Your conversion rate, quite simply, is the percentage of visitors who make a purchase.
Email opt-ins
How to start an eCommerce store? Email marketing is one of the most powerful tools eCommerce stores have to drive repeat business.
Customer lifetime value
Your customer lifetime value is a metric of the total you earn from a typical customer throughout their life.
Customer acquisition cost
Naturally, it costs something to acquire a new customer. This value is called your customer acquisition cost.
Revenue by traffic source
By calculating your revenue by traffic source—a metric that shows you which channels send you actual customers, as opposed to visitors who never buy.
Average order value
Your average order value is, quite simply, the average value of each purchase. To discover yours, divide the total value of all sales by the numbers of carts.
Shopping cart abandonment rate
This metric is the percentage of shoppers who add items to their shopping cart, but then leave your store without making a purchase.
To run your very own survey, you can make use of online apps like Survey Monkey to create online surveys. It will fetch you invaluable feedback about what the customers feel about your product.
Making connections on LinkedIn has great potential to increase your network. You will discover an array of opportunities with other companies, suppliers, and related websites.
How to start an online store? Using Pinterest, Instagram, allows you to take a slightly different approach to engage with consumers rather a more personal approach with a lot of creativity. Take pictures of your product, make videos, tell stories the audience loves it. With Facebook, you can do a lot by creating your business page and let people talk about your product.
Emails work wonders, it’s a great tool to inform your customers about what’s coming up and what they can expect at the store. Create a list of existing users, prospective users, new users and send customized emails.
If you are selling fashion jewelry in partnership with a clothing brand by creating a customized campaign, it will be a helpful strategy for both. Create partnerships with other brands to cross-promote.
Boost your digital engagement, it’s an effective way to get that extra edge. Use vibrant images, videos, share your story. It actually works!!
Train yourself about every aspect of SEO, or get a dedicated person to do that for you. An effective SEO strategy will pour you leads, a high social presence, regular followers thereby optimizing your conversion rate.
People who love shopping online also love digging into our interesting content related to what they are looking for. Create content that helps them make a purchase decision, they find interesting and helpful. You will gradually develop a great fan base.
Using Google Ads for search engine marketing helps you bid on keywords so that you can show up on top of search engine results pages.
Create your advertising plan carefully. If you have a maximum digital audience there is no point in spending money on billboards, newspaper ads. Get quotes to advertise on digital platforms like if your analytics reflect maximum traction from Twitter plans spending some bucks on the platform. It definitely will benefit you.
My parting word on how to start an online store :
Don’t wait, the moment is now, just plan, research, and execute.
Want us to help you with a framework for the launch of your online store, share your vision!!
Interested in Starting an Online Store?
H
Nice motivational content.
D
I like this article, it speaks about every aspect of opening an online store.
J
I have an offline store that I am planning to get online. Need more information on a good web design and proposal.
A
Can you guide me over to a professional marketing agency that can take care of all digital advertising for me?
Z
Can you explain more about Google ads?
E
From where can I fetch more details over industry influencers for a fashion brand.
K
What is your company’s framework for creating an engaging web design and how much do you charge?
A
Right said that if you have professional experience in a domain make it your strength. Play on your expertise.
A
Need a recommendation for a website design company that offers an end-to-end solution for eCommerce website building and marketing.
K
A comprehensive article that covers all the factors related to online store setup, thanks!!
H
Irresistible! Thank you so much for this kind and good service.your services is better than better.