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How To Start and Grow Your E-Commerce Business

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By Chris Alarcon

Operating an e-commerce business is a rewarding experience. However, venturing into online selling without a plan can hamper your chances of success. You may ask yourself, “Where do I start planning? What does it truly take to operate an e-commerce business in today’s age?”

Thankfully, we’re here to help answer those questions. This post will teach you how to start and grow your e-commerce business!

Let’s dive in.

Define Your E-Commerce Business Idea

Before entering the e-commerce world, you need to define your business idea. Defining your business idea will ensure you have a clear vision of what you want the business to be and determine if it will be successful.

By doing this, you’re finding your niche in the e-commerce market and learning how to do it better than the rest.

This step takes a bit of brainstorming and research, but soon, you will be on your way to financial freedom.

Choosing Your Right Product(s)

Choosing your product can seem like the easiest part of creating an e-commerce business plan, but the truth is that it takes quite a bit of forethought.

To find the right product for your business, you need to do some market research and sense what you are passionate about. Deciding what to sell means more than purchasing goods from a supplier.

You are identifying which market you want to tap into. Consider selling and creating a new business from various niche markets and products.

If you are unsure of what products or which markets you would like to tap into, here are a few examples:

  • Clothing
  • Home goods
  • Children’s toys
  • Homemade and handcrafted items
  • Digital services

No matter which product or market you choose, performing research is critical.

Validate Your Idea

Once you’ve decided what your product will be, you must validate your e-commerce business idea.

This process entails researching to ensure an audience for your product, learning about the market’s problems and why they are facing them, and finding out how to solve them. You should also see if there are potential trends you can capitalize on.

Answering the questions above will give you the insight you need into whether a business will succeed.

Any business idea can sound ground-breaking at the moment. But moving forward is put on hold until you validate it by ensuring that there is a market for your product or that you can create the need for it.

Define Your Target Audience

Beyond discovering if there is an audience for your product, you will also need to define your target audience.

Is your audience the younger crowd that enjoys and needs trendy items and marketing? Or is it an older audience that prefers straightforward marketing and practical products? Of course, the gender, income level, and general location of your audience also factor in.

Further, you must know your intended audience’s lifestyle factors, interests, wants, and needs.

Implementing a solid definition of who your target audience is will help you shape your marketing approach and tailor your product offerings.

This definition will give you a sense of direction before jumping into the launch of your product or business. Then, you can visualize the prize you should focus on.

Brainstorm What Will Set Your Business Apart

Brainstorming how your business will differ from competitors is vital.

You need to give potential customers a reason why they should choose you over what else is available currently. Without a solid aspect that sets you apart, your business can become lost in the sea of emerging e-commerce businesses.

Research Your Competition

Knowing what sets your business apart from others in the market is critical. That’s why we also recommend spending a substantial amount of time researching your competitors.

To start researching your competitors, pretend you are a potential customer and search for the popular keyword and search queries pertaining to your business.

Then, take note of the pages with the highest rankings, as they will be your main competitors. Don’t stop there!

Dive into your competitors’ social media accounts and note how they brand and market themselves on the platforms. (Also, don’t forget about Amazon!) Use the infamous online retailer as a database to identify similar product offerings.

After you gather all of this information, organize it into a spreadsheet, listing the top competitors for your business.

Build Strong Branding

Branding is everything when marketing your products and your e-commerce business. It conveys the overall message that your company believes in and offers.

For example, brands like Nike will use motivational language to motivate their established customer base and draw potential customers.

But what does branding entail? How do you build your business with strong branding?

Building a strong brand doesn’t have to be costly; it simply takes consistency, planning, and research.

Audience Persona

Your audience persona is what customers will come to know your business for.

As previously mentioned, companies will utilize specific language to convey a message regarding branding. That helps build a company’s persona and brand identity.

You can implement your brand persona in all forms of marketing, from the colours you use in the marketing campaign to the vocabulary you use in social media posts. This implementation will help formulate the characteristics and emotions customers associate with your company.

When you are creating your persona, remember who your target audience is. For example, the persona for a brand like L.L. Bean will not have the same effect on a younger modern audience.

Brand Voice

In addition to vernacular and language, brand voice is critical for conveying your message. It will further tell your audience what your company is and what it can do for them.

This branding portion focuses explicitly on the language and vernacular part of the branding strategy.

To create a strong brand voice, you should first figure out how you want customers to feel when interacting with your brand’s online presence.

If a relaxed vibe is what you are going for, a laid-back tone and casual language are what you want when creating e-commerce marketing materials.

But on the other hand, if luxury and glamor are the vibe of your company, sophisticated language with flowery descriptions is what you need.

Social Media Branding

In our digital age, branding efforts extend into the social media sphere with most audiences, including older generations. In short, social media is the number one place to reach potential customers.

Your brand’s social media presence should be more than posting advertisements and product launches. Engaging with your audience is critical for building rapport and further ingraining brand voice, persona, and identity.

You can increase your audience engagement by hosting polls, commenting back to followers, and organizing live streams where they can interact with you and your company.

Brand Identity

Finally, we reach brand identity. This encompasses your voice, persona, and social media presence. It gets into the fine details of your visuals and content choices that will set you apart from your competitors.

With a proper brand identity, customers recognize your brand through adverts and social media posts without seeing your company’s name.

Visuals and Content

To establish your brand’s identity, you will want to choose your brand colours, design your logo, create content creation guidelines, and formulate your strategy.

Your branding guidelines should entail information about marketing copy, colour palette, brand story, and image guidelines.

Your strategy should also entail plans for reaching your intended audience through stylized branded content and marketing materials.

If you need help formulating these guidelines and plans, professional brand strategists are available on freelance marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr. They can help take your current vision and turn it into an actualized plan.

E-Commerce Websites

Next, incorporate that information into setting up your e-commerce website.

Your company’s website is a hub for selling your products to customers and establishing a home base for all things relating to your brand. In addition, this website is the place for driving your brand voice, persona, and identity into the hearts of established and potential customers.

So, remember to strictly enforce your brand guidelines when building and maintaining your website.

Again, if you need help building an e-commerce website, you can find website builders and your brand strategist on platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork.

Create Your Shipping Strategy

If you are running an e-commerce business with physical products, like clothing, home goods, or kids’ toys, you must create a shipping strategy that gets the product to your customers safely and efficiently.

First, you must determine if you will transfer the shipping costs to your customers or factor shipping into the product’s price and offer free shipping. Offering flat-rate shipping is also an option.

Additionally, no matter which shipping cost method you choose, you will want to keep a database of the weight of your product(s). This data will help you consistently track the price of shipping your products when it is dependent upon their weight.

Finally, you need to source your packaging materials. From boxes to envelopes and wrapping materials to filler, your packaging should help safely deliver the product to the consumer and leave a lasting impression with its presentation.

If you have downloadable digital products to sell online, you will want to find the best platform and software for delivering these materials. Consider these top five:

  • SendOwl
  • Shootproof
  • Shopify Digital Downloads
  • Fetch app
  • Digital Product Delivery

Each has unique offerings, and depending on the type of digital products you sell and your target audience, some will be more suitable than others.

Launch Your Business

After choosing your products, formulating a brand identity, creating a website, and developing a shipping strategy, it’s time to launch your e-commerce business!

Although you have accomplished so much already, the adventure is still ongoing because you need to start selling products.

When launching your business, it’s critical to remember that anything can happen, and you may have to reformulate your previous plans. But don’t be too quick to jump ship; the plan was created for a reason. You simply want to open yourself up to new possibilities.

From here on out, your mission is to achieve financial freedom, which sometimes requires testing variables to improve performance.

Market Your Business

After getting your business up and running, you must increase your marketing efforts to ensure your business grows.

But unlike decades past, with your online business, physical advertisements on billboards and in print newspapers won’t cut it. So instead, you need to learn the ways of e-commerce marketing.

Learn Basic SEO

Learning the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) is your ticket to boosting your business among the Google ranks.

Have a Baseline

To start venturing into the world of SEO, you need to have a baseline.

By utilizing a service like Semrush, you can see your domain overview, and it will tell you how visible your business/webpage is on mobile and desktop apps. Its domain overview section covers all the data and analytics you need to understand where your business currently stands.

Know Your Keywords

Additionally, you will want to research and learn the most prevalent keywords and search queries for your type of business. You can then use this information to create content that will help lead shoppers back to your website.

Discover The Power of Backlinks

Backlinks are also essential for creating online traffic for your business, as they are links to your website from other websites.

The more links you have from trustworthy and high-traffic web pages, the more search engines like Google and Bing will see your business and website as valuable and reliable sources.

But the most critical component of all when it comes to basic SEO is staying informed. SEO is an ever-evolving world that takes ongoing reform to remain successful.

Blog Consistently

While looking for the best ways to market your e-commerce store or business, you may have seen the phrase “content is king.” But what kind of content is best?

Blogging is one of the best forms of online content for marketing your business. By publishing blog posts consistently and utilizing the keywords and search queries that pertain to your business, you can increase your chances of climbing the Google ranks and accruing more backlinks.

Your blog posts should always surround topics pertaining to your business.

For instance, post frequent blog posts about what’s trending in fashion if you have a clothing business. Or, if it’s a digital service company, publish articles that discuss the benefits of utilizing a service like yours.

Implement Social Media Marketing

We live in the golden age of social media, and if you’re searching for more customers, you need to utilize Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and more.

You can do this by posting relevant branded content frequently. Your social media content should also utilize hashtags to help further increase your visibility among your target audience.

Like SEO keywords, hashtags can help lead potential customers back to your page, and the more interaction you have on a post, the more likely you are to appear on Explore and For You pages on social media.

Build and Grow an Email List

Building and growing an email list is the best way to create a direct line to your customer base. You can ensure they return and purchase more products by staying in touch with them.

But people prefer to keep their personal information, like email addresses, private. So how do you grow an email list?

You need to offer a deal in return for a customer’s email. Whether it’s free downloads or special sales offers, customers will take note of what you are willing to give in return.

Analyse Your Results

Adapting your e-commerce business to the ever-evolving world is crucial for long-term success.

After spending time in the market and gathering data, you should analyse your results. You will want to look at critical metrics, like your popular products.

Once you notice consistent growth in your business, you will want to optimize your online storefront for high-scale volume. Think about performing the following as your business grows:

  • Display popular products on the front page.
  • Manage fluctuating stock volumes by sending email invitations and allowing backorders.
  • Allow for more checkout options: guest checkout, abandoned shopping cart reminders, etc.
  • Match your brand and website messaging to the current market.

No matter what your results are after performing an annual analysis, being prepared to make a few changes is always wise.

FAQs

How Do You Start an E-Commerce Business Without Money?

You can start an e-commerce business without money in a few different ways. One of the best and easiest ways is to sell your expert service.

Whether you are a great writer, marketer, virtual assistant, or graphic designer, you can create an online e-commerce business today with zero or minimal start-up costs.

You can also start a drop shipping business, where you have an online store that customers can order from, and the supplier does the product fulfilment directly. AliExpress or Alibaba are popular suppliers for such storefronts.

How Do You Start an E-Commerce Business on Amazon?

Starting an e-commerce business on Amazon is simple.

First, you must choose what kind of products you want to sell; the possibilities are endless when you choose Amazon as your e-commerce platform.

Afterward, you must sign up for an Amazon seller’s account and select your business model. Wholesale, private label, and retail arbitrage are the most popular.

Once you have the basics covered, it’s time to start listing your products, send them to Amazon to handle storage and shipping, and then market yourself.

What Does an E-Commerce Business Do?

An e-commerce business is a business that sells goods or services online. These goods and services can range from writing and graphic design services to clothing retailers and home goods storefronts.

What Are The Four Types of E-Commerce?

What industry leaders commonly refer to as the four traditional types of e-commerce are business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and consumer-to-business (C2B).

Each type has specific traits and offerings that set them apart. The most common type is B2C.

Is E-Commerce Really Profitable?

E-commerce can be an incredibly profitable business venture. But if you’re looking for an entirely passive way to generate income, this venture isn’t for you.

Running an e-commerce business takes time and dedication. You have to be willing to devote all of your time to managing the business and potentially marketing yourself to thrive.

How Do You Start up an E-Commerce Business?

Suppose you want to start up an e-commerce business. In that case, you must follow a plan to define your business, create a branding and marketing strategy, and perform market analysis regularly.

Free and low-cost start-up options exist whether you want to sell a service or a physical product.

No matter what e-commerce business you decide to open, be prepared to dedicate a lot of time to starting it. However, it is a rewarding venture.

Start Your Journey to Financial Freedom Today!

Whether you want to operate a small business like a small-scale online retailer or an industry-leading digital service, e-commerce is a way to set yourself up for future financial freedom!

All it takes is time and dedication to ensure smooth sailing in e-commerce. So why not start today?

Start researching your ideas, get to know the current online marketplaces, validate those ideas, and start drawing up a plan.

By Chris Alarcon

Sourced from Parent Portfolio

 

 

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How To Start and Grow Your E-Commerce Business in 2023

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By Chris Alarcon

Operating an e-commerce business is a rewarding experience. However, venturing into online selling without a plan can hamper your chances of success.

You may ask yourself, “Where do I start planning? What does it truly take to operate an e-commerce business in today’s age?”

Thankfully, we’re here to help answer those questions. This post will teach you how to start and grow your e-commerce business!

Let’s dive in.

Define Your E-Commerce Business Idea

Before entering the e-commerce world, you need to define your business idea. Defining your business idea will ensure you have a clear vision of what you want the business to be and determine if it will be successful.

By doing this, you’re finding your niche in the e-commerce market and learning how to do it better than the rest.

This step takes a bit of brainstorming and research, but soon, you will be on your way to financial freedom.

Choosing Your Right Product(s)

Choosing your product can seem like the easiest part of creating an e-commerce business plan, but the truth is that it takes quite a bit of forethought.

To find the right product for your business, you need to do some market research and sense what you are passionate about. Deciding what to sell means more than purchasing goods from a supplier.

You are identifying which market you want to tap into. Consider selling and creating a new business from various niche markets and products.

If you are unsure of what products or which markets you would like to tap into, here are a few examples:

  • Clothing
  • Home goods
  • Children’s toys
  • Homemade and handcrafted items
  • Digital services

No matter which product or market you choose, performing research is critical.

Validate Your Idea

Once you’ve decided what your product will be, you must validate your e-commerce business idea.

This process entails researching to ensure an audience for your product, learning about the market’s problems and why they are facing them, and finding out how to solve them. You should also see if there are potential trends you can capitalize on.

Answering the questions above will give you the insight you need into whether a business will succeed.

Any business idea can sound ground breaking at the moment. But moving forward is put on hold until you validate it by ensuring that there is a market for your product or that you can create the need for it.

Define Your Target Audience

Beyond discovering if there is an audience for your product, you will also need to define your target audience.

Is your audience the younger crowd that enjoys and needs trendy items and marketing? Or is it an older audience that prefers straightforward marketing and practical products? Of course, the gender, income level, and general location of your audience also factor in.

Further, you must know your intended audience’s lifestyle factors, interests, wants, and needs.

Implementing a solid definition of who your target audience is will help you shape your marketing approach and tailor your product offerings.

This definition will give you a sense of direction before jumping into the launch of your product or business. Then, you can visualize the prize you should focus on.

Brainstorm What Will Set Your Business Apart

Brainstorming how your business will differ from competitors is vital.

You need to give potential customers a reason why they should choose you over what else is available currently. Without a solid aspect that sets you apart, your business can become lost in the sea of emerging e-commerce businesses.

Research Your Competition

Knowing what sets your business apart from others in the market is critical. That’s why we also recommend spending a substantial amount of time researching your competitors.

To start researching your competitors, pretend you are a potential customer and search for the popular keyword and search queries pertaining to your business.

Then, take note of the pages with the highest rankings, as they will be your main competitors. Don’t stop there!

Dive into your competitors’ social media accounts and note how they brand and market themselves on the platforms. (Also, don’t forget about Amazon!) Use the infamous online retailer as a database to identify similar product offerings.

After you gather all of this information, organize it into a spreadsheet, listing the top competitors for your business.

Build Strong Branding

Branding is everything when marketing your products and your e-commerce business. It conveys the overall message that your company believes in and offers.

For example, brands like Nike will use motivational language to motivate their established customer base and draw potential customers.

But what does branding entail? How do you build your business with strong branding?

Building a strong brand doesn’t have to be costly; it simply takes consistency, planning, and research.

Audience Persona

Your audience persona is what customers will come to know your business for.

As previously mentioned, companies will utilize specific language to convey a message regarding branding. That helps build a company’s persona and brand identity.

You can implement your brand persona in all forms of marketing, from the colours you use in the marketing campaign to the vocabulary you use in social media posts. This implementation will help formulate the characteristics and emotions customers associate with your company.

When you are creating your persona, remember who your target audience is. For example, the persona for a brand like L.L. Bean will not have the same effect on a younger modern audience.

Brand Voice

In addition to vernacular and language, brand voice is critical for conveying your message. It will further tell your audience what your company is and what it can do for them.

This branding portion focuses explicitly on the language and vernacular part of the branding strategy.

To create a strong brand voice, you should first figure out how you want customers to feel when interacting with your brand’s online presence.

If a relaxed vibe is what you are going for, a laid-back tone and casual language are what you want when creating e-commerce marketing materials.

But on the other hand, if luxury and glamor are the vibe of your company, sophisticated language with flowery descriptions is what you need.

Social Media Branding

In our digital age, branding efforts extend into the social media sphere with most audiences, including older generations. In short, social media is the number one place to reach potential customers.

Your brand’s social media presence should be more than posting advertisements and product launches. Engaging with your audience is critical for building rapport and further ingraining brand voice, persona, and identity.

You can increase your audience engagement by hosting polls, commenting back to followers, and organizing live streams where they can interact with you and your company.

Brand Identity

Finally, we reach brand identity. This encompasses your voice, persona, and social media presence. It gets into the fine details of your visuals and content choices that will set you apart from your competitors.

With a proper brand identity, customers recognize your brand through adverts and social media posts without seeing your company’s name.

Visuals and Content

To establish your brand’s identity, you will want to choose your brand colours, design your logo, create content creation guidelines, and formulate your strategy.

Your branding guidelines should entail information about marketing copy, colour palette, brand story, and image guidelines.

Your strategy should also entail plans for reaching your intended audience through stylized branded content and marketing materials.

If you need help formulating these guidelines and plans, professional brand strategists are available on freelance marketplaces such as Upwork and Fiverr. They can help take your current vision and turn it into an actualized plan.

E-Commerce Websites

Next, incorporate that information into setting up your e-commerce website.

Your company’s website is a hub for selling your products to customers and establishing a home base for all things relating to your brand. In addition, this website is the place for driving your brand voice, persona, and identity into the hearts of established and potential customers.

So, remember to strictly enforce your brand guidelines when building and maintaining your website.

Again, if you need help building an e-commerce website, you can find website builders and your brand strategist on platforms such as Fiverr and Upwork.

Create Your Shipping Strategy

If you are running an e-commerce business with physical products, like clothing, home goods, or kids’ toys, you must create a shipping strategy that gets the product to your customers safely and efficiently.

First, you must determine if you will transfer the shipping costs to your customers or factor shipping into the product’s price and offer free shipping. Offering flat-rate shipping is also an option.

Additionally, no matter which shipping cost method you choose, you will want to keep a database of the weight of your product(s). This data will help you consistently track the price of shipping your products when it is dependent upon their weight.

Finally, you need to source your packaging materials. From boxes to envelopes and wrapping materials to filler, your packaging should help safely deliver the product to the consumer and leave a lasting impression with its presentation.

If you have downloadable digital products to sell online, you will want to find the best platform and software for delivering these materials. Consider these top five:

  • SendOwl
  • Shootproof
  • Shopify Digital Downloads
  • Fetch app
  • Digital Product Delivery

Each has unique offerings, and depending on the type of digital products you sell and your target audience, some will be more suitable than others.

Launch Your Business

After choosing your products, formulating a brand identity, creating a website, and developing a shipping strategy, it’s time to launch your e-commerce business!

Although you have accomplished so much already, the adventure is still ongoing because you need to start selling products.

When launching your business, it’s critical to remember that anything can happen, and you may have to reformulate your previous plans. But don’t be too quick to jump ship; the plan was created for a reason. You simply want to open yourself up to new possibilities.

From here on out, your mission is to achieve financial freedom, which sometimes requires testing variables to improve performance.

Market Your Business

After getting your business up and running, you must increase your marketing efforts to ensure your business grows.

But unlike decades past, with your online business, physical advertisements on billboards and in print newspapers won’t cut it. So instead, you need to learn the ways of e-commerce marketing.

Learn Basic SEO

Learning the basics of search engine optimization (SEO) is your ticket to boosting your business among the Google ranks.

Have a Baseline

To start venturing into the world of SEO, you need to have a baseline.

By utilizing a service like Semrush, you can see your domain overview, and it will tell you how visible your business/webpage is on mobile and desktop apps. Its domain overview section covers all the data and analytics you need to understand where your business currently stands.

Know Your Keywords

Additionally, you will want to research and learn the most prevalent keywords and search queries for your type of business. You can then use this information to create content that will help lead shoppers back to your website.

Discover The Power of Backlinks

Backlinks are also essential for creating online traffic for your business, as they are links to your website from other websites.

The more links you have from trustworthy and high-traffic web pages, the more search engines like Google and Bing will see your business and website as valuable and reliable sources.

But the most critical component of all when it comes to basic SEO is staying informed. SEO is an ever-evolving world that takes ongoing reform to remain successful.

Blog Consistently

While looking for the best ways to market your e-commerce store or business, you may have seen the phrase “content is king.” But what kind of content is best?

Blogging is one of the best forms of online content for marketing your business. By publishing blog posts consistently and utilizing the keywords and search queries that pertain to your business, you can increase your chances of climbing the Google ranks and accruing more backlinks.

Your blog posts should always surround topics pertaining to your business.

For instance, post frequent blog posts about what’s trending in fashion if you have a clothing business. Or, if it’s a digital service company, publish articles that discuss the benefits of utilizing a service like yours.

Implement Social Media Marketing

We live in the golden age of social media, and if you’re searching for more customers, you need to utilize Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, and more.

You can do this by posting relevant branded content frequently. Your social media content should also utilize hashtags to help further increase your visibility among your target audience.

Like SEO keywords, hashtags can help lead potential customers back to your page, and the more interaction you have on a post, the more likely you are to appear on Explore and For You pages on social media.

Build and Grow an Email List

Building and growing an email list is the best way to create a direct line to your customer base. You can ensure they return and purchase more products by staying in touch with them.

But people prefer to keep their personal information, like email addresses, private. So how do you grow an email list?

You need to offer a deal in return for a customer’s email. Whether it’s free downloads or special sales offers, customers will take note of what you are willing to give in return.

Analyse Your Results

Adapting your e-commerce business to the ever-evolving world is crucial for long-term success.

After spending time in the market and gathering data, you should analyse your results. You will want to look at critical metrics, like your popular products.

Once you notice consistent growth in your business, you will want to optimize your online storefront for high-scale volume. Think about performing the following as your business grows:

  • Display popular products on the front page.
  • Manage fluctuating stock volumes by sending email invitations and allowing backorders.
  • Allow for more checkout options: guest checkout, abandoned shopping cart reminders, etc.
  • Match your brand and website messaging to the current market.

No matter what your results are after performing an annual analysis, being prepared to make a few changes is always wise.

FAQs

How Do You Start an E-Commerce Business Without Money?

You can start an e-commerce business without money in a few different ways. One of the best and easiest ways is to sell your expert service.

Whether you are a great writer, marketer, virtual assistant, or graphic designer, you can create an online e-commerce business today with zero or minimal start-up costs.

You can also start a dropshipping business, where you have an online store that customers can order from, and the supplier does the product fulfilment directly. AliExpress or Alibaba are popular suppliers for such storefronts.

How Do You Start an E-Commerce Business on Amazon?

Starting an e-commerce business on Amazon is simple.

First, you must choose what kind of products you want to sell; the possibilities are endless when you choose Amazon as your e-commerce platform.

Afterward, you must sign up for an Amazon seller’s account and select your business model. Wholesale, private label, and retail arbitrage are the most popular.

Once you have the basics covered, it’s time to start listing your products, send them to Amazon to handle storage and shipping, and then market yourself.

What Does an E-Commerce Business Do?

An e-commerce business is a business that sells goods or services online. These goods and services can range from writing and graphic design services to clothing retailers and home goods storefronts.

What Are The Four Types of E-Commerce?

What industry leaders commonly refer to as the four traditional types of e-commerce are business-to-consumer (B2C), business-to-business (B2B), consumer-to-consumer (C2C), and consumer-to-business (C2B).

Each type has specific traits and offerings that set them apart. The most common type is B2C.

Is E-Commerce Really Profitable?

E-commerce can be an incredibly profitable business venture. But if you’re looking for an entirely passive way to generate income, this venture isn’t for you.

Running an e-commerce business takes time and dedication. You have to be willing to devote all of your time to managing the business and potentially marketing yourself to thrive.

How Do You Start up an E-Commerce Business?

Suppose you want to start up an e-commerce business. In that case, you must follow a plan to define your business, create a branding and marketing strategy, and perform market analysis regularly.

Free and low-cost start-up options exist whether you want to sell a service or a physical product.

No matter what e-commerce business you decide to open, be prepared to dedicate a lot of time to starting it. However, it is a rewarding venture.

Start Your Journey to Financial Freedom Today!

Whether you want to operate a small business like a small-scale online retailer or an industry-leading digital service, e-commerce is a way to set yourself up for future financial freedom!

All it takes is time and dedication to ensure smooth sailing in e-commerce. So why not start today?

Start researching your ideas, get to know the current online marketplaces, validate those ideas, and start drawing up a plan. 

By Chris Alarcon

Chris is the founder of Financially Well Off, the blog for people looking to reach financial independence and stay inspired along the way. Go from being stressed and in debt to growing your net worth. Grab your free guide here.

Sourced from WEALTH OF GEEKS

 

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Traffic Is Not Your Problem: How To Grow And Scale An E-Commerce Business

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By Matthew Stafford

You might think I’m crazy to say that traffic is not your problem, but I’m going to prove that to you in the following paragraphs. I’m also going to show you how to profitably grow and scale your e-commerce business using the traffic that is already coming to your store.

I’m the chief marketing officer of Build Grow Scale, an e-commerce education company, and have been working in e-commerce for almost 10 years now, alongside my partner Tanner Larsson, who has been doing it for over 19. When we partnered up on our first e-commerce store five years ago, I was really good at Facebook Ads, and he was really good with private-labelling products, so we were a perfect match. We started off well, but we weren’t very profitable, no matter what ad strategy I used — and I knew how good my ads were based on my previous ad success.

There had to be something else that we weren’t seeing. If it wasn’t the ads, it had to be the store. The only way to figure out what was happening on our store was to look at our Google Analytics data.

I started diving into the data and even paid someone to teach me how to better interpret that data. Immediately, we started detecting leaks on the store left and right. Very soon I realized that the more we worked on the store, the easier Facebook Ads got.

My biggest “aha” moment happened when I found that our site’s load time was 13 seconds and our site’s bounce rate was 90%. I realized that we were struggling to be profitable because we were paying to get people to the site, but 90% of them were bouncing because the site was so slow. Only 10% were actually seeing the website.

I did the math and realized that if I could reduce our 90% bounce rate by just 10%, I would be getting twice as many eyes for the same amount of money, effectively cutting my traffic cost in half and instantly becoming profitable.

Think about this: Let’s say I spent $500 to bring 1,000 visitors to our site. That means that our cost per visitor is 50 cents, right? Wrong. Here’s my epiphany. Our site’s bounce rate was 90%, meaning that out of those 1,000 visitors, only 100 actually saw our offer.

So, in practical terms, we were paying $500 to get only 100 people to our site, making the true cost $5 per visitor. That is 10 times more expensive than we’d thought. It’s no wonder we weren’t profitable.

Now, let’s say we cut that bounce rate to 80%. That means that out of 1,000 visitors, 200 people would see our offer, which means that our traffic will cost $2.50 per visitor. A minuscule reduction in the percentage of people who bounce could cut our actual traffic cost in half.

Realizing this, I immediately hired a developer, and we went to work. We did a 15-hour marathon during which we reduced our site’s load time from 13 seconds to 1.87 seconds, and instantly, our bounce rate went down, and our conversions more than doubled.

From there, I started asking myself, “What else can I do? What other 10% improvements can I make that will double my results?” After doing that a few more times, our store performed much better, and we started selling thousands of units per day.

At this point, I hired a Google Analytics expert. We realized that we’d been looking at very surface-level data. That’s why we began using Google Tag Manager (GTM) in conjunction with Google Analytics and started getting granular. GTM allowed us to track everything that was happening on the website and unlocked a whole new level of data that we could use to optimize our store.

The more I learned about collecting and reading that data, the better I became at optimization. The more I focused on optimizing our store, the better our ads performed, and the easier they were to run. It was a powerful upward spiral. To make sure that this wasn’t just good luck, I decided to volunteer and do the same for two of my good friends, who both saw excellent results.

The way you profitably grow and scale your business is by focusing on optimizing your store first before burning money on running more and more traffic to a broken store. You cannot control the traffic, but you can control your store.

Before optimizing, ensure that Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager are set up properly and report accurately. You can only improve what you measure, and Google Analytics is how you’re going to track the changes in your metrics that result from your optimizations. This will also give you an idea of what you should optimize first.

I recommend you optimize your store backward, beginning with the checkout, then the cart page, the product page, the category page and, finally, the homepage. Start with the checkout because it’s closest to the money, so any fix there will mean a much bigger lift than a fix on your homepage, for example, which is many steps away from the purchase.

Finally, I recommend that you run A/B/n tests for any more significant changes you want to implement on your site. Make sure you test changes that alter user behavior rather than insignificant changes like new button colors. Run your tests for a minimum of two weeks and no more than one month. If you have a hard time finding leaks on your website, do 10 to 15 user tests using any of the tools out there, and you’ll likely discover issues that you can fix.

Why would you bet on something that you can’t control over something that you can? In fact, you are probably already better at traffic than you need to be. Focus on your store instead. Optimize before you maximize.

Feature Image Credit: getty

By Matthew Stafford

Matthew Stafford is CMO of Build Grow Scale, an e-commerce education company. Read Matthew Stafford’s full executive profile here.

Sourced from Forbes

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7 Reasons Why Online Invoicing Is Good for Your E-Commerce Business

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By Mark Thomasson.

As you surf the Internet and read various posts about e-commerce, you can often come across the term future. Many authors refer to e-commerce as a business field of the future.

However, the current trends are such that we can freely say that the e-commerce future has arrived. Only in the EU, 65% of Internet users shopped online in 2015. This advent of Internet shoppers sets new requirements in front of e-commerce entrepreneurs. They have to advance their financial management and add new software features to it. One of the most practical options for them is undoubtedly online invoicing. There are many advantages of such tools, but we’ll try to narrow it down to 7 key benefits.

Fast-processing estimates

While it’s also possible to create estimates in simple programs, such as Microsoft Excel, the modern business market won’t tolerate a process that contains so many steps. The saying “time is money” has never been more relevant than it is today.

Furthermore, it seems that the speed at which we plan and execute business projects will only increase. Because of that, you can’t let your accountant of secretary drag on the creation of your business estimate in low-brow software.

What you need are invoicing tools. Just include all the financial elements of the project into your invoice software and you’ll get a clear picture of the time needed for you to finish it. Therefore, when you send out those quotations to your clients, they’ll get an immediate insight into your timeframe. Plus, they will be given a proactive way to approve your quotes with one click, which usually results in higher conversions.

Automatic invoicing

Business owners should introduce automation wherever they can. It will lead to major savings on manpower and on various services they have to pay for. For instance, if you add an online invoicing solution to your e-commerce website, everything happens automatically. That way, when a client makes a purchase on your website, it’s registered by the invoicing tool. After that, it generates an invoice and automatically sends it to that same client – no waiting in lines, no bank commission fees, just the smooth pleasure of fast invoicing. Not only that you’ll be able to send invoices instantly, but you’ll also have a database of all the invoices sent to your clients. Keeping your business documentation is extremely important for your tax returns and financial reports.

In addition to that, your clients will be more than satisfied with your e-commerce, since they will be able to do everything they need in the shortest time possible.

No delays in invoicing

When you close a deal with a business partner, it’s crucial that they receive all the project documentation as soon as possible. So, in addition to the aforementioned benefit of automated invoice services, using electronic invoices will keep your invoice management from being affected by other tasks. When there are frequent invoicing delays, clients can become impatient. This can further lead to growing dissatisfaction with the way you conduct your business tasks. Let’s say a client has ordered a large shipping from your e-commerce website. They’re waiting for the invoice, so that they can pay you for the purchased goods. If you’re late with invoicing, the shipping won’t be done on time. Consequently, they’ll be late with production, which will result in lower revenues.

Hence, online invoicing will eliminate payment delays, which will keep the trust between you and your clients intact.

Dealing with debtors

The character of online commercial business is such that you have to collaborate with businesses and individuals from the whole world. Individual shoppers don’t have mechanisms to trick you, since they pay for their goods at once. Fellow businesses, however, can do various things in order to dodge their payments. With the use of e-invoices, their room for maneuver is pretty limited. When they’re sent a detailed invoice for every purchase they make online, there’s always a trace of that financial document. They can’t simply throw it in the bin and pretend nothing happened. What’s more, invoice software tools often come with a delivery report feature. That way, you can prove not only that you’ve sent the invoice, but that the other side has received and opened it, as well. Thanks to all those features, you debtors won’t be able to avoid paying their debts anymore.

Global appeal

The opportunity to run an e-commerce will connect you with various businesses. The more international clients you have, the more universal your business forms and documents should be. Moreover, although English is the lingua franca of the modern business world, some of those clients might want to have their invoices translated to their native language. The easiest way to meet such demands is first to come up with an invoice template in English, with the help of a simple invoice generator. After that, you can translate this ready-made form to any language in the world. Still, don’t do it superficially, but hire a professional translator for the given language. Online outsourcing platforms, such as PeoplePerHour and Elance can help you find the right expert for this matter.

Integration with payment gateways

Credit cards are still eligible and widely used means for buying products online. Nevertheless, the importance of online payment services is also on the rise. According to the Global Payments Report, alternative payment methods will take 55% of the e-commerce payment market by 2019. This is largely so due to the tremendous growth in the number of purchases made via gadgets. As a result of those current and future trends, we can expect that invoices will also play a more important role in e-commerce in years to follow. The best thing is that today you can already connect your invoice tool(s)with various payment gateways. This integration of online e-commerce services adds to the improved usability and increased productivity of online commercial enterprises. With the further development of e-commerce innovations behind the corner, it’s high time online vendors embraced invoicing for their transactions.

Inclusion of additional documents

Invoices are only one of the financial elements that have to be included in every e-transaction. Depending on the type of the project and the nature of the business collaboration in question, your client might be interested in other data about your finances. For instance, they might ask you to add some other financial reports. Apart from that, sometimes you’ll have to share your tax documentation, as well. Moreover, your investors might require to take a look at your balance sheet and see how you spend their investments. For all these reasons, electronic invoicing is a perfect way of attaching additional business data to your invoices.

Working on the go

When an e-commerce businessperson uses e-invoices, they aren’t strictly limited to their office workspace. On the contrary, you can perform various financial transactions and invoicing on the go. For instance, if you’re in the middle of an important business meeting, you can check if there are any notifications in your software. That way, you can sort out any emergencies during the coffee break. The flexibility provided by online invoicing solutions enable online entrepreneurs to perform more tasks and increase their workload by working less.

Online invoicing is a perfect option for the future of e-commerce. Since we’re already living in that future, this mechanism of electronic invoice generation and distribution should be implemented by every modern e-commerce business. It will lead to faster work flow, enhanced business management and higher efficiency for every enterprise that starts using this handy financial solution.

By Mark Thomasson.

AuthorBio: Mark is a biz-dev hero at Invoicebus – a simple invoicing service that gets your invoices paid faster. He passionately blogs on topics that help small biz owners succeed in their business. He is also a lifelong learner who practices mindfulness and enjoys long walks in nature more than anything else.

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The Best Tools to Start an E-Commerce Business in 2017

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By Jeff Haden.

Thinking about opening an online store? Thinking about adding ecommerce to your sales and distribution platform?

But not sure where to start?

The following is from Matthew Guay, a Content Marketer at Zapier, the tool that lets you easily connect apps and automate repetitive tasks. (Zapier is also one of my eight powerful social media tools for savvy businesses.)

Here’s Matthew:

eCommerce has come a long way in little over two decades. From the first broken laser printer selling on eBay to Amazon becoming the 8th largest retailer globally last year, it’s hard to imagine the world without eCommerce.

So if your New Year’s resolutions include starting your own business, it’s only natural that an online business might be the first thing you’d consider. The web is the world’s cheapest real estate, where everyone can get Main Street real estate.

But there are so many ways to sell products online, just figuring out where to start can be confusing.

Don’t over-think it. Here are the best places to start a new online store this year. (And if you want more information, this article is based on Zapier’s new free eBook, The Ultimate Guide to eCommerce Software.)

A Stand, a Shelf, or a Store?

First, though, do you really want your own store, or do you just want to sell stuff online? If the latter, you might not even have to open a store.

Instead, you can use the internet’s version of a bazaar or flea market: a marketplace. Marketplaces let you list your products for sale somewhere customers are already searching for similar items.

eBay was one of the original internet startups, and it’s still one of the best online bazaars. You can list just about anything for sale, either with an auction or as a standard buy-it-now product. But it’s not the only one. From specialty marketplaces like Etsy to crowdfunding sites like Kickstarter, there are a wide variety of places where you can list your products for sale.

Or, maybe you’d rather have your product just sitting on a shelf in an existing store, waiting for people to browse and buy it. That’s what Amazon is best at: It’s already the place most people look for products online, and you can put your stuff for sale there, too.

You can even ship your products to Amazon and let them handle order processing, shipping, and more, so you can focus on making great stuff and let Amazon worry about the store.

Either of those styles can work–and can even be a great way to get started selling stuff online. But for the most flexibility, and to sell your products somewhere that showcases your personality and branding, your best option is to start your own store.

And that doesn’t have to be hard, either.

Choosing the Perfect eCommerce Real Estate

If you’re sure you want a store, then you have to decide what type of store. In the real world, you could have a shop in a mall, your own stand-alone store building, or a store built into your factory’s building perhaps with a museum and restaurant on the side.

You can’t quite add a restaurant on to your store online, but you can build a store in a number of shapes and sizes. Say you’re worried your store won’t get enough visitors and want the pre-existing traffic a marketplace would bring–but you still want your own customized store.

Storenvy is the tool you should use to build your store. It’s a marketplace, something like Etsy crossed with Amazon, but it also lets you build your own store complete with its own design and branding. And, it’s free.

For a stand-alone store, there are a wide range of eCommerce platforms you could use, from the super simple to the powerful and complicated. Shopify strikes a nice balance between the two, and is the eCommerce platform that’s likely best for most new online stores. It’s easy to use, starts at $29/month, and includes all the features you could want in a store.

Plus, much like your phone, it comes with an App Store where you can add countless themes and tools to your store and make it work just like you want.

Need a simpler store? Gumroad is perhaps the simplest way to start a store. You just drag a picture of your product into the app, add a description and price, and boom: You’ve got a store.

Or want to build that impressive store and business in one? WooCommerce lets you add a store to your WordPress blog, so you can build a full-featured site alongside your store for the best way to market your products the way you want.

Getting Paid, From Anywhere

There’s one other big hurdle: getting paid. In a real-world store, you’d accept cash, along with perhaps credit cards and checks.

Online, there are far more options. There’s PayPal, the old payments standby that built Elon Musk’s fortune and indirectly brought us Tesla and Space X. It works. Your customers could pay you via their bank, credit card, or PayPal account, and you can route your revenue back into your bank. But it’s somewhat confusing, and you might rather just accept credit cards directly and not have to worry about transferring your money from yet another account.

For that, there are a wide range of online payment processing gateways, tools that can help you accept payments in a wide variety of ways. Amazon Payments may be the simplest. It has similar fees to other payment processing tools, and lets your customers pay using the card they’ve already added to their Amazon account. And, it’ll deposit your revenue to your bank account automatically.

For more features, international credit card support, and your own custom payment interface, Stripe is one of the best choices. It’s a popular payment gateway API that you can integrate directly into your store–one that works with Shopify, WooCommerce, and many other eCommerce platforms without any extra coding.

Want customers to pay you via bank transfers? Dwolla is perfect for that. Or, for more exotic international payments via public transit passes, mobile accounts, mini-mart cash payments, and more, Adyen works with hundreds of localized payment sources so anyone can shop at your store.

Starting a store–or any business–is daunting at best. It’s hard work. With the proper tools and a bit of preparation, though, it’s far from impossible.

Whether you need a shelf for your products or a full-blown store, want to get paid with bank transfers or through mobile carriers, in 2017 it’s easier than ever to run the online business you want.

If you’re Ready to start your first online store, download a copy of Zapier’s Ultimate Guide to eCommerce Software for step-by-step tutorials and tools you need to make your new business venture a success.

By Jeff Haden

Jeff Haden is a ghostwriter, speaker, LinkedIn Influencer, and contributing editor to Inc. Full bio

Sourced from Inc.

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