We’ve all been through this. We created the sketch of an online shop, we made our plan, we gathered the necessary materials and we invested time, money and energy. And then the big day arrived, when we opened our doors to the clients. This is a crucial day for us, and we’re at our first business, we’re ready to tear down mountains. We’re mentally prepared, beginning with day one, to not cope with our clients. But then we come to see that the first day is not quite how we have imagined. And then we slowly start to learn about Ecommerce. So this is what we’re going to discuss today.
But before getting down to business, we need to define the concept of Ecommerce
According to Wikipedia, E-commerce is a transaction of buying or selling online. Electronic commerce draws on technologies such as mobile commerce, electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems.” Basically, any purchase that is made using the internet is considered to be online trade.
Why is it important to inform and educate myself about Ecommerce?
It’s enough to take a look at the madness that took place on Black Friday 2017.
“„It’s for the first time in the history of Black Fridays when we had over 30% sales shares made with a card in total transactions”, declared Tudor Manea – text that is taken from the above link. Also, in 2017, the online sales started to substantially increase. It’s obvious that the online environment starts to win ground, not just in Romania, but worldwide. It’s enough to take a look at Emag or Elefant, if we speak at a national level, or Amazon, at an international scale, in order to see the obvious tendency in the world of commerce.
Therefore, you’re going to have to inform and educate yourself as much as possible regarding everything Ecommerce related, otherwise you’re going to face certain difficulties to simply stay on the market. It’s just like in the real world, if you don’t inform yourself in a certain field, your business will simply be set to fail.
Where do I begin?
Just like any other new adventure that begins in the world of entrepreneurship, you’re going to need a well-documented plan what you will stick to as much as possible (we’re not hypocrites to tell you to follow it entirely, since there’s no plan that can be executed 100% correctly, with no external inferences). Here are a few essential steps towards planning your online business:
Decide upon which product or products you want to commercialize.
It’s not enough to just decide upon starting an online shoe shop. Here are two essential questions that you can ask yourself in this regard:
- Why do I want to open an online shoe shop? Like a general rule, if you want to have a prosperous business, you have to think about what the community needs, not just about how to fill your pockets. And if you find out the purpose why you want to open an online shop, regardless of its profile, then the whole planning is going to become a lot easier. You have to know why you want to do what you want to do.
- What sort of products will I commercialize? Here we’re going to relate to the first question, because once we establish the purpose, the question to “why” we want to begin this journey, we can easily establish the needs of our community. And this way it’s simpler to discover the method through which we can satisfy that need and implicitly have profitable business.
Define clearly what the profile of your clients is.
I know at first this might sound a bit silly, but you have all the chances to be surprised the moment you find out who actually accesses your online shop. Most of the times, the profile that we make up in our head doesn’t really align with reality. To give you an example from my own experience, a shop that dealt with construction materials imagined that the profile of its buyer has to be a true handy-man who chops his own wood and hunts for food. The kind of guy who carrier the materials bear handed. Ok, maybe this is a little exaggerated but you got the idea. My big surprise came when I found out that the actual profile of the buyer was along these lines: male, 35 years old, 2 kids, lives in the city and has graduate studies. Most likely, living a corporate life, or someone working in IT who is looking to build a house outside the city.
Regardless of the situation, I’m sure you caught the idea. It’s fair to say that these two profiles, the imagined one versus the real one require entirely different campaigns.
How can I find out what is the profile of my client? There are plenty of methods and some of them available online. And in case you want a professional third party to do this for you, we invite you to leave us a message. If you click here you’ll see parts of our portfolio and see for yourself what we can do for your online shop.
Ok, before taking a look at your services, what simple and efficient advice can you give me for my online shop?
Just because they’re free, it doesn’t mean they’re worthless. On the contrary, the advice we’re going to give you will spare you of a lot of time spent on studies.
- Invest in SEO. Whether you invest in your training or you go to a third party to deal with the SEO, this tool is essential for any site, regardless if it’s about Ecommerce or not. We talked in more detail about SEO here.
- Publicity campaigns. You can be the best within your field but if nobody ever heard of your existence, you will remain an anonymous genius. That’s why promotion is essential for any field. We’ve talked more about publicity campaigns here.
Now that you’ve found out all these things, what’s the most valuable information you received within this article? We are waiting for your feedback at the comments’ section 🙂