An Easy Checklist For E-commerce Business Startups

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The world has moved towards online sales in a big way. The events of 2020 have accelerated this trend even more, and it looks as if there is no turning back now. With this in mind, a lot of people are starting e-commerce stores of their own. While this is a great idea, and you can often launch one with a limited budget, you still need to ensure that you are doing it the right way. After all, you will find yourself facing stiff competition on all sides. Taking this into account, here is a checklist of some of the things that you need to bear in mind before you get started:

Choose Your Business Name

All of your marketing and promotional activities will center around your business name, so make sure you choose one that adequately reflects your company and everything that it has to offer. Since people will be searching for you online, you don’t want it to be too difficult to spell. While clever wordplay can sometimes be a nice touch, you don’t want to try too hard. Ultimately, you want to make life as easy as possible for your customers when they are trying to search for your business online.

Establish the Domain Name and Website

Ideally, your domain name needs to reflect your website as closely as possible so that people can find it by typing it into the search bar. You can then get to work designing and building the website. There are many platforms that aim to make this as straightforward as possible to do yourself, but you may want to enlist the help of a professional depending on your technical skill level. If you are looking to give this a boost, you could always take a course, such as AWS certification training. Remember, while the design of your website should be stylish, this shouldn’t mean that it loads slowly or you sacrifice integral aspects, such as the navigation.

Choose Your Selling Structure

Some people choose to house all the products on-site, while others will take part in what is known as ‘dropshipping’. Both approaches have their own individual positives and negatives. When you take care of your own stock, you need to first have enough space for it. Then you need to think about all the proper security and insurance provisions to ensure that it is all properly protected. On the plus side, you do have direct control of it, and you are able to send it out whenever needed. As for dropshipping, this means that you use certain partners to dispatch your products. You have the obvious advantage of not needing to invest in anything directly, so there is a limited amount of risk here. You also don’t need to worry about the storage space to hold everything. However, you are very much reliant on these external partners and you can bet your bottom dollar that customers are going to blame you directly if anything goes awry with their order.

Start Your Marketing Activities Early

There are several aspects involved in marketing, but you should start all of them at the earliest possible opportunity. Even if your site is not yet ready to launch, it is still a good idea to start generating a buzz around it. For example, you can easily start up your social media profiles and begin trying to accumulate some followers. Similarly, you can start writing a blog as this is useful content to share, as well as being helpful to the overall SEO of the website. Of course, you may not want to begin more serious marketing, such as online ads and PPC, until you are ready to launch. When you do kick off your business activities, it is a good idea to include an introductory offer or a welcome bonus of some kind to introduce the world to your brand and everything it has to offer.

Invest in the Right Software and Hardware

While an online business can be launched with just a laptop and a stable internet connection, you may well find that you need a little bit more to give yourself the best chance of success. So, research your software options thoroughly before making your choice. While there are many good programs that are available for free, you shouldn’t worry about being too frugal at this stage. Sometimes, the better software options are worth paying for. You may also find that your old hardware options are simply not cutting it and you need to invest in the latest technology for a higher level of performance. Alternatively, you may feel like you need a degree of separation between your business and personal lives, so you may decide to invest in a phone, or a laptop that is just meant for business purposes.

Increase Your Customer Loyalty

It is certainly an exciting moment when you start generating some sales. However, your best course of action is to make sure that these customers come back to you time and time again. There are several ways of increasing customer loyalty. One of the most effective is by creating an email list for them to sign up for. Of course, you don’t want to bombard their inboxes, but some well-placed messages can prove to be highly valuable in creating the loyalty that you seek. Then you have all your social media accounts, which give you a direct means of communication and a way of nudging your customers back towards buying your products.

This checklist gives you some of the basic ways that you can get your online store up and running. Ultimately, you need to put a lot of focus on the design and build of the website, and ensure that you start marketing at an early opportunity. Not only this, but you have to consider carefully what you are going to sell and how well it is going to appeal to potential customers.