If you are thinking about starting your eCommerce business, this is probably the right time. The ecommerce industry is growing from just under 13% of retail sales in 2017 to 17% by 2022. This will likely put many traditional retailers out of business which can create new opportunities for people like you.
If you want to make full sense of this boom, here are a few tips for you to get the right start. If you follow them well, these steps can assure initial success with your store.
1. Choose the right E-Commerce Solution to build your website:
There are well above 100 platforms ready to be used to make your e-commerce website. Some of them are easy to use and quick to setup, while some are very robust. Of all the platforms available, Woocommerce, Magento, Shopify are the most commonly used. Others include Bigcommerce, Volusion, and custom-made websites. Finding an experienced E-Commerce Development Company is essential to assist in this.
# WooCommerce:
WooCommerce is the e-commerce extension of world’s largest open source website platform, the Wordpress. According to Alexa data, it is the most preferred e-commerce platform on the web now with 36% of the top 1million e-commerce sites in the world.
While Wordpress was initially created to help the blogger community, later branching out into static and dynamic websites and eventually e-commerce, WooCommerce continues to be a favorite among many e-commerce enthusiasts.
Advantages:
- It is a free powered with over 900 free e-commerce templates, ready to use.
- It is totally flexible in terms of coding and you can virtually make any changes on this platform according to your needs.
- Since it is the most widely used platform, there are already enough plugins available for almost every use either free or with negligible fees.
- It is the most SEO friendly platform simply because it was made for the SEO driven bloggers and retains those optimized traits.
# Shopify:
This Canadian company has made e-commerce business a household affair. Every student or part-time professional finds Shopify the easiest choice to setup an e-commerce site. No wonder this is the second most common platform on the web among all e-commerce websites.
Advantages:
- Extreme ease to set-up.
- Thousands of sales enhancing apps available wither freely or as a paid subscription drastically helping you to achieve sales.
- Light and ease of use and navigation with the optimized template.
- Free hosting along with the normal package and an SSL certificate in case you are using the subdomain for your site name further reducing your domain cost.
Cons:
- It charges a monthly subscription of $29 + 2.9%+ $0.30 as transaction fees for its lowest package.
- Though it is SEO optimized, it does cannot match the fluidity of WooCommerce or Magento in terms of site customization or SEO optimization.
- Limited customization options as the templates are ready to be used according to the needs.
- Additional upsells are generally higher in this case as a tradeoff to the ease of use.
# Magento:
eBay’s Magento is the perfect choice for entrepreneurs who want to scale up.
Advantages:
- It is easily the most scalable platform, considering ease of use.
- Security and structure wise, it hosts thousands of products, yet keeps the site optimized by search.
- Though it ranks third largest in Alexa top 1 million websites overall, it is the market leader at 29.1% for overall all e-commerce sites.
- Customization options are far more sophisticated than WooCommerce of Shopify.
- Extremely professional look and feel.
- It is highly Search Engine Optimized, given it can handle large volumes of products and traffics other platforms cannot.
Cons:
- It is not a beginner’s user-friendly platform, but perfect for tech-savvy starters.
- Though the community edition for small and mid-sized businesses is free, the add-one and hosting will be incurring monthly cost.
- Enterprise edition depends on the size of your business. To find out the specific price for your store, you have to contact with Magento specialists to request for a quote.
2. Research your niche well:
A lot of entrepreneurs are looking for niches which are still untapped and there is not much competition. Finding the right E-Commerce Website Development Service is key.
- A niche, which is low in competition, will automatically need more marketing costs from you to raise awareness about the niche among your target audience.
- Market testing will be a separate affair because in competitive niches, your other competitors are also spending to grow the whole category, even for you. Getting a small pie of an already large niche can be another option to look at.
- If you somehow are the first mover in a potentially untapped niche, there are dividends to reap from it.
- If you have researched well, you also know where and how to reach your customers, how to influence them, making yourself the niche leader.
- Even for highly competitive niches, there are still positioning which most of your competitors have overlooked, good niche research can let you have a positioning that can make you the winner.
3. Decide on your marketing strategy:
One should be clear about the marketing strategy he/ she wants to give you. Given social media is a requisite, which social media exactly one wants to stress on will again alter the site design.
- Instagram for example is a very visual platform. If you decide to drive your traffic through Instagram, you need to design your site with similar layouts and a visual narrative so that the visitors do not feel an environment shock when they land on your site, similarly for YouTube etc.
- Facebook does not allow affiliates, sexual or any other sensitive ads, if you are in one of the sensitive categories, you might as well plan it out early.
- Finding complaining people in your niche is a very easy way to find buyers and influencers. Basically, those people who are actually not present with the present options in the market now can be your first targets.
- SEO is a long term means of driving traffic. It is free but powerful. Blackhat methods can be profitable but not sustainable therefore should be avoided.
Call 484-892-5713 or Contact Us today to know more about top steps to take before starting your eCommerce Business.
