Planning to Join the eCommerce industry? Are you looking for tips How To Start an Ecommerce Business? It can be intimidating because of the fierce competition a new online store will face. The eCommerce marketplace can feel crowded, and it can be difficult to distinguish your own store from the dozens of other options internet shoppers have access to. However, there are methods for smaller online retailers to compete with larger eCommerce brands.
Use these tips to give yourself an advantage when looking for How To Start an Ecommerce Business
Decide on Your Niche
One of the best ways while looking for How To Start an Ecommerce Business, is to grow quickly by finding a niche in the market. Niches are so powerful for small businesses because it allows them to build a highly specialized audience that general retailers may not appeal to. Let’s take the hypothetical example of a new online retailer that sells shoes.
How To Start an Ecommerce Business? They may struggle to compete with larger online shoe stores if they focus on a general audience. But by specializing in a specific category of shoes (i.e. athletic shoes, high-fashion shoes, industrial work shoes, etc.) they can isolate a more dedicated audience and successfully compete with the larger retailer.
This can be especially effective if your product is locally sourced or created by a craftsman. In fact, garnering local support for your product is one of the most effective ways to earn a reputation for your business.
Many responsible consumers will go out of their way to support a local brand because they want to invest in their community. Products that are handcrafted can benefit from the same logic. People will generally pay more for handcrafted products and will share their experience with your business with others.
Define Your Brand
In order to make your brand recognizable, it needs to be well-defined. The more unique your brand seems the easier it will be to recognize. Brand recognition is crucial for small businesses that are trying to grow their audience.
Consumers should be able to recognize your product without having a logo attached to it. Furthermore, your brand should have a consistent voice. This means that everything your company produces should have the same tone.
Apple is an excellent example of a well-defined brand that uses a consistent voice. Apple is known for creating sleek, polished products that are easy to use and everything they produce reflects this tone.
The packaging Apple uses, the advertisements they make, and even its website have a very professional and sleek feel to them. If you removed the Apple logo from an iPhone, there is a good chance that you would still recognize it immediately.
Credit: Photo by Tim Mossholder
Build Your Platform
How To Start an Ecommerce Business? Your digital platform will also have a major impact on your eCommerce business’s performance. There are several options for building your online store that range from cheap to expensive and simple to complicated. Some of the most important decisions you’ll be making concerning the design of your online store have to do with usability. To be successful, your website absolutely has to be user-friendly.
As previously mentioned, there are plenty of online stores for consumers to choose from and a lousy user experience will encourage them to keep searching.
To create a great user experience you need to anticipate a customer’s needs and meet them before they become an issue. For instance, if your eCommerce site ships a large number of products, then it may be wise to include a USPS shipping calculator. This way your customers can get an understanding of how much they can save on shipping before they checkout. Another way to create a great user experience is by bundling products that are relevant to each other. Seasonal bundles are a good example of this.
A clothing store may bundle together products that are meant to be worn at the beach and have a separate bundle for clothes that are meant for cold weather. This is similar to online marketplaces that display products that are generally purchased together.
Marketing, Marketing, Marketing
Good marketing is arguably the most important tool for business growth and success. Each method of marketing your business comes with its own inherent strengths and weaknesses. Here is a list of some common marketing techniques as well as a brief description of their advantages.
- Email Marketing
Email marketing campaigns involve sending promotional emails to a list of people who have either used your service in the past or have subscribed to your emailing list. The primary advantage of this marketing technique is how direct it is. Very few other methods of marketing allow you to speak directly to an individual. Email marketing does have one caveat though. You can only market to potential customers who have voluntarily given you their contact information.
- Social Media Marketing
Social media is an incredibly powerful tool that all businesses should be taking advantage of. The power of social media is that it allows for two-way communication between businesses and consumers. A business can publicly promote a new product or service and individual consumers can publicly engage with that business by responding to them.
Another advantage of social media is that you can begin building an online community for free on almost any platform. Additionally, social media platforms are a gateway to some of the largest audiences of potential consumers available. Facebook alone has over one billion monthly users worldwide.
Social media also allows you to leverage influencers to build even more awareness of your business. By partnering with influencers that are relevant to your business, you can garner the trust and respect of that influencer’s community. This will not only improve your company’s reputation but also widen its audience.
- Pay-per-click Marketing
Pay-per-click marketing is a tried and true method of marketing assuming you have the budget for it. In this method of digital marketing, you pay a search engine or website to sponsor a link to your website. You pay an agreed-upon rate for every click back to your website. The cost of each click will vary depending on how difficult it is to advertise a key phrase.
- Content Marketing
Content marketing is an organic method of advertising, meaning it is a long-term means of increasing traffic to your website without paying for advertisements. With content marketing, you will produce content that you believe your audience will find informative, shareable, entertaining, or interesting. The most common method of content marketing is blogging.
Keep Up the Good Work
The key to any successful project is consistency. After you have found tips on How To Start an Ecommerce Business, your business carry that momentum into other projects. Explore various avenues for business growth and continue to innovate new ways to set your business apart from the competition. Constantly review past business ventures and use them to inform your next decision.
These are some of How To Start an Ecommerce Business. To know more updates visit Digital Crews.
