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The world is no longer the same. The new digital world has dramatically influenced the e-commerce industry and forced business owners to use technology to start an e-commerce business. Since the pandemic, most people are opting for online shopping today more than ever, and it’s a perfect time for you to think of an online store to meet your evolving business needs. E-commerce businesses have shown tremendous growth in recent years. With the easy availability of internet services and smart devices like phones, tablets, etc., people spend a lot of time surfing the internet. Therefore, more and more people are shopping from home using their mobile devices.
Under these circumstances, if you have a plan to start an e-commerce business, then it is the right time to launch the store. It needs proper planning and a good business idea to launch your business online, and therefore we have compiled a checklist for starting an e-commerce business. Once your e-commerce store is set up and launched, it is easy to handle all the operations and is profitable as well. Let us take a look at the e-commerce requirements list:
1. Select a Good Business Name
Your brand will be known by its name, and selecting the name is one of the most important things to do (usually ignored). So, it is highly advised to devote some time, think about your product, and find a decent and unique name for the business.
2. Select and Secure your Business Name Domain
After selecting the business name, the next step is to finalize your business domain name and securing it. Try to find the domain name exactly as your business name, and in case you didn’t get the same name, settle for a name that is most relevant to your business and the URL so that the audience can remember your business quickly.
3. Selecting the E-commerce Platform
After selecting the business name, business domain, and URL, the next step is to find the right platform to launch the e-commerce store. There are many e-commerce platforms available in the market for free, as well as paid to launch e-commerce stores. Magento, Shopify, WordPress, and a few more are some of the most popular e-commerce platforms used by most successful online businesses.
4. Know About your Audience
Knowing your audience is extremely important for many reasons. Knowing the target audience and segmenting them according to their demographics, gender and other factors is needed to design the marketing campaigns and to set the sales goals. So, segmenting the audience and knowing everything about them needs to be on the to-do list for starting an online e-commerce business.
5. Choose the Website Layout and Design
Once everything is finalised, the next step is to choose the design of the website. The design of the website should be simple and user-friendly. The customers should quickly find out the products they want and spend a lot of time in navigating the website. It is only possible if the website design is simple, attractive, modern, and user-friendly. Use appealing colors, enticing slogans, and pictures to enhance the overall visual beauty of the website.
6. Select Supporting and Relevant Extensions
Once you have selected the e-commerce platform, website design and layout, the next important thing to focus on is the number of extensions that will be added to enhance the user experience of the customers. Usually, all the e-commerce platforms come with some basic extensions to support the e-commerce store. Also, they have many paid extensions to increase the popularity of the store further. It is recommended to have paid extensions for enhancing the functionality of the website. These extensions help in increasing SEO, security, safety and much more.
7. Do SEO of the Website
Search Engine Optimisation holds great importance in increasing the ranking and popularity of the e-commerce store online among the target audience. Online websites greatly depend upon the search engines for new customers to be able to find them. Therefore, it is suggested to optimize the website during the initial stages of development and design. It is easier to launch the optimized website than to launch the website and then optimise it.
8. Have the E-commerce Website Optimised for Mobile Devices
It is important to have the website optimised for mobile devices and different browsers like Firefox, Chrome, Safari etc. It will help the customer browse the website whenever they want and on the device, they have in hand at the moment. It will help in increasing the popularity of the e-commerce store among the target audience.
9. Social Media Presence
Once the online e-commerce store is launched, promoting it in the right way on the right social media platforms is extremely important. Various studies have shown that people spend a lot of time every day on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc. You can even create a buzz on these social media platforms by posting your product’s pictures before the launch. You can start your business pages before the launch of your e-commerce store.
10. Focus on Content Marketing
Content Marketing plays a crucial role in popularising the products among the target audience. Writing informative articles about your products and giving insights about the benefits of your products for potential customers is an effective way to build your audience. Therefore, content marketing of the products can even be done before the launch of your e-commerce store.
11. Provide Good Customer Service
The online e-commerce stores which provide active and effective customer service are always in the top list of all the potential new and returning customers. Helping customers with easy returns and exchanges is expected by the customers. Along with having a FAQ page, having a dedicated email address where the customers can send their queries and get a response is extremely important to make them realize that your company values the customers the most.
12. Choose the Right Time to Launch the Website
The date and time to launch the website play a crucial role in the success of the business. The best time to launch totally depends upon the product you are selling. Just be sure that the day you select is not an important day like a major holiday etc. Being mindful of the time and date to launch the e-commerce website is of utmost importance for the business’s success.
13. Run Paid Advertisements
Bringing your e-commerce store in the notice of the target audience is the best way to get your target audience to notice your e-commerce store. Facebook and Google allow businesses to run targeted ads to reach a wider audience. Just make sure that you have launched a fully functional website before running ads to promote among the audience.
14. Use Good Analytical Tools
Once the e-commerce store is launched and is running online, the next step is to keep a check on the data. It is crucial to analyze the audience behavior, what is working for the business and what not to make informed decisions about the business in the future.
15. Keep Track of the Competitors’ Actions
Having a list of competitors is smart and a must to stay ahead in the competition. It is essential to keep an eye on the competitors’ activities to have in notice what all strategies they are following and the changes you will need to bring in your business.
16. Choosing the Right Technology Partner
Another important thing to keep in mind while launching the e-commerce business successfully is to choose the technology partner that provides the best support and solutions to the e-commerce store. Take proper time to discuss the project with the partner and know its support throughout the process. Another thing to keep in mind while choosing the technology partner is that it should be transparent with you throughout the process so that you are on the same page and know what is going on.
By keeping some important things in mind before launching the store and keeping up with the latest trends, there is no reason that will not help in the successful launch of the e-commerce store.
If you are looking for an e-commerce platform to launch your store, our team can help you launch it using world’s leading e-commerce platforms empowered with the latest extensions.
