Launching your E Commerce store is frankly not always an easy task. However, let us outline a few strategies you can use to launch your own E Commerce store.
Planning
- Identify your niche
It is the most important step in first to determine what you would like to sell. If you go too narrow , you would not see much demand. If you go too broad , you would run into competition with existing players and trust me, the competition is extremely high.
- Sourcing your products
If you are not already selling your products offline , you would need to think about where are you going to source your products from. Is it from in-house manufacturing or purchased from a wholesaler. You would also need to consider the lead time between customer order and your sourcing time.
- Market Research
You need to determine that if your product really has a demand . Without good market research you would be throwing darts in dark. Market research may involve asking around , checking with potential customers, reading research reports etc.
- Legal Requirements
Some places require additional legal requirements for you to be online. GDPR is a primary requirement for example when you wish to sell or market in EU countries. You would also need to understand anti-spam regulations
- Budget identification
You would need a substantial budget in order to for example set up a store ( even though large marketplaces provide almost free placements). You would need to take photographs, pay expert to write good product descriptions and pay ongoing and / or fixed cost based on your software requirements
- Break even planning
Since an ecommerce project involves resource management including money, you would need to plan as to when the fixed and running costs will be recouped. That means either doing calculations yourself or involving someone with accounting knowledge.
- Technology
Technology is the most important component of the E Commerce store. Even if you are using an established marketplace, you would still need to know technical nuances like setting up an store, understanding how to read reports, how to list products etc.
If you are planning to run your own store, then you would need a partner or a vendor with sufficient technical expertise to handle deployments and various changes.
You would also need to be updated with latest technological trends related to new developments like search engines deploying Artificial Intelligence. Your product ranking may be affected because of that
You would need to learn about Search Engine Optimization to make sure that search engine respect your product pages and send the traffic to them
Execution
- Setting up store
Once you have all the information regarding how to set up your store or set up your website, you would need to
- Purchase a domain
- Install and configure e commerce store software
- Add product information
- Integrate with payment and fulfilment gateways
- Add pricing information
- Add shipping policies
- Integrate with shipping vendor
- Stocking and inventory
- Finding place to stock your inventory
- Make agreements with vendors for supplying raw materials in time
- Design store to put your stocks in
- Provide easy access for inward and outward shipping
- Payment and Gateway processing
- Understand the charges for payment by individual gateways
- Decide on the payment gateway vendor
- Form an agreement with them
- Integrate your e commerce store with their gateways
- Test before going live with test data
- Logistics planning
- Connect with shipping vendors
- Identify logistics vendors based on your cost structure
- Finalize agreements on shipping
- Marketing and advertising
- Decide if you want offline or online advertising or both
- Set up social media accounts
- Set up Google ads account in case you wish to run google ads
- Print flyers if you wish to market your store offline
Post Launch
- Fulfilment of order
- Pack the order in suitable container
- Inform shipping vendor of pickup
- Change status for customer post pickup
- Perform inventory number modifications as needed( or configured automatically)
- Monitor orders for deliver
- Handling of returns / complaints
- Respond to customer complaints in a timely manner
- Be respectful of their concern
- Check if the replacement or refund is based on the policy
- Arrange pickup of the item as agreed upon
- Connect with logistic partner for pickup of the item
- Verify item condition upon return
- Arrange for replacement
- Customer behaviour analysis
- Determine which customer makes more purchase
- Or which customer buys high value items
- Or which customer returns more than usual
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