Launching an ecommerce business is a very complex task and involves a lot of steps which must be managed and planned professionally.
Some of the steps to build, launch and grow your ecommerce business include
- Create a business plan
- Select your products and services
- How to source your products or services
- Branding
- Get a mobile friendly/ responsive website
- Competitive analysis
- Prepare a marketing plan including advertising
- Establish KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)
- Growth expansion plan – scale your business
Ecommerce is evolving faster than ever with the rise of mobile commerce or m-commerce. Opening an online business involves numerous tasks and decisions that need to come together ultimately in order to complete your business idea. To make this procedure a little simpler, we have compiled a list that advises what you need to research, build, launch and grow your business online:
1. Create a business plan:
If you will not put your ideas, queries and concerns on paper, then you haven’t spent enough time on your business model. Writing a proper business plan may seem you hectic but it will surely save your time and money in long run. It keeps you ready for new opportunities and potential challenges. So what actually should be included in a business plan?
Knowledge: Write it down what you know about the particular business and what not?
Resources: Your money, partner and employees are the main resources to make your business successful.
Road Map: It will help you to set clear goals for your ecommerce business.
Viability: This is the most important step in your business plan. You should have a better understanding of the viability.
2. Select your products and services:
At this stage you must determine what you are going to sell or offer within your particular online business. It is important to consider the latest trends and popular fashions among your targeted age group with reference to your own personal interests in order to boost the success rate of your business. You should also consider what’s too common in the market and what you don’t have enough of, to increase the number of your customers.
3. How to source your products or services? :
After finalizing your product idea, you must now determine how you will obtain your particular product. You must consider where it can be sourced from, with the lowest price and best quality. How far is this sourcing location from you and how long will it take you to receive that product? These are all important points to consider when determining how best to receive your product.
4. Branding:
Come up with your business name, logo, tagline and the steps involved in registering your business officially. Besides this, you need to think about web hosting site to book your unique business name. Don’t forget, your brand is your identity.
Proper branding will help you to develop reputation in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers.
5. Mobile-Friendly/Responsive Website:
Make sure your website is user-friendly and specifically mobile-friendly, meaning that it resizes to display uniformly and appropriately on any size browser from any device. A large portion of web traffic comes from smartphones and tablets, so Google has made this criterion directly correlated to how high your site ranks in its search engine — pay attention to it if you don’t want to be left behind.
6. Competitive Analysis:
Try doing a little research, along with some experimentation in order to determine who your strongest competition is going to be, both long term and short term. Through this, you can implement ideas to counteract this competition and increase your success rate.
7. Prepare a marketing plan including advertising:
When you have decided upon your particular products, it is important that you weigh up how successful your products will be? You must determine the demand for this particular product as well as its sustainability in which you attempt to understand if that particular item or product will remain popular or will its demand decrease in the market. The target market for your product is also vital to consider as these will be the group of individuals to whom you will be advertising your products and services.
8. Establish KPIs (Key Performance Indicators):
Develop the strategy which will help you to achieve Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), business goals and milestones. Examples of KPIs include revenue growth, Cost Per Lead, average order value, Customer Lifetime Value, ROI, organic search growth, conversion rates, social media reach, mobile traffic conversion rates and more.
9. Growth expansion plan – scale your business
At this stage you must develop the most effective means of shipping strategies for your store as well as entering into a professional store grader that will assist you and inform you on errors in order to eliminate any errors before your launch.
During this stage you must continuously manage advertisements which can be promoted through the means of social media networks including Facebook, Google Plus, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, LinkedIn and more. You must also be organized in managing customers and their needs and requirements so that you can sustain happy long lasting customers for your successful online business.