There is a constant increase in the number of people buying things online. Digital sales are seen to expand rapidly, with a 23.7% growth rate forecast. According to statistics, ecommerce will now account for 8.7% of the overall retail spending worldwide.
The improving statistics are due to an increase in middle class and internet penetration in developing nations. For entrepreneurs, this is the perfect opportunity to start their ecommerce business. But while doing so, an entrepreneur has to keep the essentials of starting an ecommerce business in mind.
Choose an Easy to use Ecommerce Platform
Out of many reasons, a person opts to shop through an ecommerce store because of convenience and experience. By ignoring any one of the two, you deprive experience hungry buyers. Designing a good experience is a critical process and plays an important role to improve the efficiency and conversion rate.
There can be a lot of complications while building an ecommerce website. To save yourself from the time-consuming process and avoid common pit-falls, consider choosing an ecommerce platform. Depending on your business plan, budget and scale of operations, you can choose an ecommerce platform thatÔÇÖs growing continually in terms of user satisfaction and can meet your unique requirements. For instance, if you want to test the market and still avoid spending too much, try an ecommerce platform like YoKart. Other examples include CS-Cart & Magento.
Know your Competitors and Customers
Now that you have given a thought to the ecommerce website, the next step involves knowing your competitors and customers. While doing so, you can start by conducting a keyword based search on Google or any other search engine.
For example, suppose you want to start an ecommerce business in New York and want to sell luxury designer clothing for women. Then you can start by searching ÔÇ£Luxury clothing for women in New YorkÔÇØ and analyse other ecommerce websites.
Doing so, will help you build strategies to face competitors head on.
For the next phase, you can analyse their product reviews and social media followers to see what people are saying about their service/product. This will help you gather the requirements of local audience and forecast product demand as well.
Must read: How to Connect with Vendors for Your Multivendor Ecommerce Store ?
Go Local
Starting small is essential for an ecommerce start-up to survive in a world dominated by major players like Amazon and eBay. Localization is one of those key factors that can make or break an ecommerce business.
One great example of this is the toy powerhouse – Mattel. In its initial days, the launch of Barbie in China was unsuccessful. A lot of research went in studying local audience to analyse where the company went wrong.
Offer the right price
After you know your customers and competitors, itÔÇÖs time that you start offering products on your ecommerce website at prices tuned for your target audience. To offer a competitive price, you have to overcome various operational and other costs to gain market share.
Before finalizing the pricing strategy, consider the different costs, demand & supply, competitor’s pricing, the tax environment, etc. Furthermore, a lot depends on the payment method you will use on an ecommerce website.
For example, in certain developing nations, cash on delivery is the primary mode of payment, whereas, in developed nations, credit cards and debit cards are accepted.
How Can I Launch My Ecommerce Store? WhatÔÇÖs the Cost?
Sales and Marketing
While starting an ecommerce business, marketing plays an important role as it can help your start-up to stand out from the rest of the crowd. During the initial phase, pre-launch marketing does wonders as it enables a new business to generate hype and improve the presence.
Furthermore, with marketing campaigns and discount offers, you can attract targeted traffic and also improve social media followers. Some well-tried techniques that can help you boost your marketing effort are paid advertising, search engine optimization, content marketing, remarketing, etc. Attaining best answering service companies can help with customer queries.
Must Read: How to choose an eCommerce platform for optimal SEO
Besides all tested methods you can use the power of big data to grow ecommerce business. The biggies like Amazon have exploited it to increase their conversion, sales and customer acquisition rate. DonÔÇÖt miss it if you are firm on getting crucial edge over competitors.
Conclusion
Starting an ecommerce business is a challenge but with the right knowledge, you can achieve success. To stay on the right track, follow the above-mentioned steps and gain significant profit in the process.
Send us your queries regarding ecommerce. Our experts can help you with launch and growth issues that stop you from taking any step further.
