The rise of eCommerce has had a liberating effect on business. It is no surprise that it has risen in tandem with other business revolutions such as the growth of the start-up and the massive increase in remote working. No longer is it necessary to invest in expensive real estate or to get together a sizable workforce for a business to become a runaway success.
However, if you are looking to get started in eCommerce, then it is worth bearing in mind that business is still business and to succeed you will need a winning product and a wieldy customer interface. In the world of eCommerce, this means great products and a great website. The venture is a lot of hard work, and it remains a fact that the majority of new start-ups and eCommerce ventures fail within the first couple of years.
Advice for Small Ecommerce Ventures
Luckily, even though the phenomenon continues to break new ground, many have been before when it comes to setting up an eCommerce venture and there has been a wealth of advice built up to defer to. Here follows, then, the top eCommerce tips for small business ventures:
Build a Great Website
Of course, this tip is pretty obvious, but what does a “great website” mean for a small eCommerce venture? In actuality, it means the exact same thing as a great website for a larger venture. It is perfectly possible to create a website that is wieldy, shows off your products, and invites traffic (and keeps it there) for a relatively small investment. A great idea is to employ some video marketing on the homepage, specifically emphasizing what your brand offers that others do not. This is the best way to ensure traffic directed towards your site actually stays there.
Promote Elsewhere on the Web
However, a great website is of little use if you cannot get people to visit it in the first place. Accordingly, it is important to promote your business elsewhere on the web. In practice, this usually means social media, which can be an incredibly powerful tool for promoting anything. The type of marketing you conduct here – whether that be through posts, images, or videos – needs to differ somewhat from that which is to be found on your actual website.
The biggest difference is that marketing on your website should be geared towards inviting visitors to stay and explore further. Marketing on social media needs to simply draw traffic. Accordingly, ensure your target customers can get a clear idea of what your business is all about, but leave enough to the imagination in order to encourage them to actually click through and visit your site.
Do eCommerce Fulfillment the Correct Way
When it comes to ordering fulfillment (sending your inventory out to customers), you need to choose the fulfillment model which best suits the small business. Shipping and Handling of Texas, an ecommerce fulfillment service (which you might look at once your business grows) advises that in-house fulfillment is the best place to start. This means packing up and shipping your inventory personally. This will keep costs sufficiently low to ensure that you make the maximum profit in the early days when you need it most.
And so, these are the three most important things to focus on when you are starting out. Have a website that can compete with the best of them, spread your marketing far and wide, and do order fulfillment the right way for small businesses. Cover those bases, and you have a good chance of growing your small business until it cannot be described as “small” anymore.