12 STEPS TO SET UP YOUR ONLINE STORE FROM SCRATCH AND POSITION IT!
eCommerce development has made significant progress in the past few years and is booming every passing day. According to Statista, the industry has topped sales worth $2.3 trillion in 2017 and is expected to hit $4.8 trillion by 2021. The growth of this industry is increasing at a double-digit percentage each year. This is the reason more and more businesses are setting up their online presence.
As an expert eCommerce development agency, we have helped many brands increase sales through electronic commerce and today, through this article, we present you 12 key steps that will guide you in starting your eCommerce site from scratch. Have a look!
1. Choose Your Legal Form
Before launching your website and open an online store, you must have legal status. You can start by becoming a self-entrepreneur if you have a small business, but once you have exceeded the limits imposed, you will have to register your business legally. To choose your status, which is the most adapted to your business, you can ask an accountant for advice.
2. Write a business plan
Here we are not really talking about the business plan, but rather about drafting the specifications to know where you want to go and what options you want to integrate into your eCommerce site during its design.
3. Carefully choose your e-commerce provider
To create your eCommerce site, you will need a specialized eCommerce development agency that will not only take care of the design but also about the setting of your online store. Your service provider must be in tune with your project. Also, he must master the techniques and solutions that you want to put forward in your site.
In order to choose your eCommerce development agency, you must refer to its path, its antecedents and its old collaborations. This is important because it tells you the capacity of your future partner.
4. Evaluate your market
Beyond verifying the viability of the project, market research is a great way to identify potential customers and create buzz. In this step, you need to conduct a thorough market analysis with an aim to define the competitive value of your target and the interest it represents in relation to the consumer potential. You must also study the offers of the competition and the cost of the products to be able to define your own price. A good method is to start social market research, using an online questionnaire designed with Google Forms.
5. Select the eCommerce platform
To save time and money, it is better to select a popular eCommerce development platform. The two significant platforms recommend for eCommerce development are Magento and WooCommerce. Select the one depending on your needs. Both the platforms facilitate the integration of add-ons and third-party tools such as payment processing, inventory management and auto-respondent etc., hence, make a good option.
6. Take charge of hosting your e-shop
Hosting on servers allows you to store and secure your data. There are three types of hosting: shared hosting (several sites share the same server), dedicated hosting (you have your own server) and finally, the cloud where you have several servers. To choose, discuss your requirements with your eCommerce solution provider and consider the cost of hosting along with the performance of your site.
7. Choose the domain name of your e-commerce site
Before uploading, you must assign a name to your site. This will not only reflect the product or service you want to sell, but also convey your brand image. While selecting the name of your future site, consider these 3 points:
- Be simple and easy to pronounce: The name of your online store must be both short and easily recalled.
- Be different: In your specific field, you must choose a name that differentiates you from your competitors to stand out in the market.
- Available: Make sure the name you have selected is still available on the search engines.
8. Find good suppliers
An important step is choosing suppliers for your store. Your success depends on the quality of your supplier so, do not be limited to one supplier – it’s better to pick 2-3 reliable firms (even if cooperation with one of the suppliers does not work out, you will have an alternative). Collaborate only with reliable and trusted firms (to seek such suppliers, seek advice from other businessmen or look for information on the Internet).
9. Select your payment method
What secure payment solutions do you want to offer your customers? Credit card, PayPal or transfer? Know that by providing these three means of payment, 99% of Internet users can buy from you.
10. Create a product catalog
Write attractive product sheets for the consumer while considering SEO. Two elements are particularly important to treat an offer: the photo and the description. Air your product listing, give the main features, use the crisp and quality photos. When writing, put yourself in the consumer’s shoes and ask what he wants from your product. Three hundred words are enough to seduce the user and the search engines.
11. Manage inventory
Inventory management is an essential aspect of creating an e-commerce site as it allows you to have an insight into the incoming and outgoing goods flows of your company at any given moment. There are two ways of managing products’ stock details i.e. manual and automatic. For manual entries, you can use tools such as Excel sheets and for the automated system, you can integrate third-party tools such as ERP software with your site that take into account the outgoing stock during purchases and the incoming stock when receiving orders from suppliers. It handles the processing of your orders in real-time and allows the synchronization between your e-Commerce site and your commercial management.
12. Establish your e-marketing strategy
In this last step, the most important thing is to increase the visibility of your site to be seen by a large audience. You can especially make you known through social networks, SEO on Google or the listings on the directories of online stores. Finally, you can also offer promotions on your site or set up a loyalty program. There are other digital marketing options too that you can opt for such as AdWords, Facebook Ads, email campaigns and so on…
As you can see, setting up an online store is a very laborious process. Following this checklist will help you develop the proper process to launch your online store and be proactive with your SEO and marketing.
If you need us to help you start up your online store, knock at us. We are only a click away from you!
