How To Build, Launch And Grow Profitable Online Store?

So have you decided to move on to online store?

That’s a smart step. Moving towards online store will not only expand your business but also doubles the profit of your store.

But question is how to do it?

Don’t panic!! Here are the guidelines for building, launching and growing of your online store.

Read on:

One of the biggest tasks for any new ecommerce entrepreneurs is to identify the product and how to sell it online. And here we came up with an answer for this.

Identify The Product To Sell:

Find the right passion for your product:

We hear all the time that business person need to follow their mind, not their heart. But with ecommerce, this is not the case, here following passions can be great news for a brand; whether they are your own or those of your customer or anyone. When consumers are passionate about something they will often spend more money. And it will generate your need then. And this is what you want.

Like if a person is fond of music, then you can search various tools of the music which gave pleasure to the customers, and can sell them easily, because they are your targeting customers.

How And Where To Look For Product Ideas:

Write a plan:

Making a plan is a good start. So, First of all you have to make a proper business plan how to execute your ideas in a proper and systematic way. So that, if you miss something in near future, you can go back to your plan and update yourself.

Where to identify your need?

Now you have to think, where you can get your product ideas, which you want to sell online in the market. You can start it with your own need.

Look in your nearby:

In today’s scenario, to stand in the competitive market is not so easy task. For this, you have to be unique in everything, from ideas to your approach.
For this you can seek help from your nearby. Like if some lady is well perfect in stitching work, but she is unable to reach out to crowd. So here you can generate the ideas to promote her on a social platform, this can be your unique approach for generating your business too.

Social networking sites:

In today’s world, everyone is connected via social sites; this can be Facebook, WhatsApp, integral anything. Here you can increase your social awareness and can find your product ideas also.

Like on these sites, there are several groups consisting large group of people. So you can go there, search for their demand, and then search for influencers and come up with your new and freshening ideas.

Obtaining The Product:

Till now, we have gathered information for which product to sell online and where to get the potential customers for your product. Now moving further, you have to recognize some other points as well like the product which you want to sell, will you manufacture, or you will pay to some other manufacturers. So let’s move forward and discuss these points in detail now.

Make your own product:
Making your own product will give you a level of satisfaction which you will not get if you are purchasing it from someone else. But making also include some advantages as well as some disadvantages, let’s discuss them.

Advantages:

You own your brand: As making your own product, you don’t have to sell your product under some other brands. So you can change it anytime and can update any time according to yourself.

Price control: You can fix the price according to your need; don’t need to depend on third party.

Quality control: You can always make sure, the product produced by you is good in quality, and if it is not you can improve it.

Margins: Margins in your made products are several high as compared to margin you can get from some other manufacturer.

Disadvantages:

Invest more time: In making your own product you have to invest a huge time as it need to be perfect in all surroundings, because in online marketing , there is no sales man who will represent your product to the people, it’s the product only which will give detail to the customers.

Limited product choices: You have only limited resources and skills as per your capability, and this will limit your product choices too.

Buying from Manufacturer:Another option to obtain your product from some manufacturer and sell it under your name. Similarly, it has some pros and cons too.

Advantages:

Low cost: You have to pay limited amount per units to the manufacturer of your products.

Brand control: As you are purchasing the product from some manufacturer, so you have the ability to change your brand too.

Quality control: As some manufacturer, manufactures products for you, you can always ask for the Quality which is not the case with wholesaler.

Disadvantages:

Limited order quantities: One of the disadvantages of manufacturing your own product is limited order quality, as you can ask them for larger quantities but it is always the case of “ball is in my room now”.

Risk: There is always risk for manufacturing your product from some other Manufacturer as what you were expecting may be the produced product is not the same.

Potential for fraud: Possibility of fraud from overseas manufacturer is always at the topmost level. As you can’t even go and check every time.

Buying from Wholesaler: Buying the huge amount of quantities of the product from wholesaler and sell them at your price is a common practice done by every shopkeeper. Wholesaling provides a wide range of opportunities as there are many products available for wholesale. Similarly, it has some pros and cons too.

Advantages:

Brand fellowship: As the product you get from has a good market image, so you don’t have to push hard to sell your product in the market.

Margins: Margins you receive from wholesaler is quiet good, as you are purchasing a large amount of quantities so you can make a good margin too.

Risks: Risk from wholesale is quite low, as the product already exists in the market, so you are not answerable always.

Disadvantages:

Selling already produced product: You are not the only one who is selling same product; your competitors may be selling the same product. So you have to be unique in your ideas, in your approach to grab the market.

Inventory management: When you purchase a product at a wholesale rate, you have to buy certain lots of the product, and if same product gets finished then you have to purchase a whole range not that single product which leads to money blockage.

Setting Up Business:

Now the next most important step is to set up your business, which may have several aspects like setting up your store name, logo, tag line etc. We will discuss each one in detail.

Name your business:
Apart from finding a product to sell online, another difficult step is to find out name for your business. As name is the identity of any store, you have to keep the name in such a way, that it will give overview about your store and your product in one glance only.

Follow are some key points which can be useful for finding out the name of business:

Short and simple: Always keep your business name as simple and short as possible, so that users can always remember it and pronounce it.

Be different: Choose a name which stuck at first sight only, this is the strategy which is needed to be always followed to stand strong in the competitive market.

Choose your domain name: For selling your product online, for your web presence you do need a domain name. For this you need to register your domain name and before registration just check if the domain name which you want to use already exists or not so that your work becomes much easier.

Create your own logo:
Once you have decided your store name, and have registered your domain name, now it’s time to create your logo which will be the face of your company.

• For creating a logo, you can simply go to some professionals who make a logo, so you need to discuss with them and finalize it.
• Another step can be setting up your logo by yourself.

Key points for designing a logo:

• Logo must be as simple as you can do it.
• Logo must be creative.
• Logo should be versatile and memorable.

Build a store:
After creating a logo of your company, you need to build your store, think the way it will look like on website, for this you need to do a photo shoot of your products and store as well.

Product photo shoot:Doing a photo shoot might not be your task. You can hire some professional photographer who can do a photo shoot for you in a better way, the way it should be done. Although it might loose your pocket little, but as said “what is seen is sold”.

Always does the photo shoot of your product from all the angles like front view, rear view, and diagonal view? Because in online market good photo is your only salesman.

Product description: Write product description in such a way that it completely explains your product. For this you can hire some professional writers who can write in more better and precise way, the way it actually should be written.

Preparing To Launch:

It’s a great time, your product is ready, logo, domain name, photo shoot everything is ready. Now it’s a high time to launch your store. For this you have to do certain things like:

How to choose your shipping partners?

You have made all the things ready, but how will you deliver your product to the customers? So here comes shipping. Shipping is the delivery of your product to the customer’s location.

Choosing a shipping partner is not a difficult task. You need to follow the basic steps, and here you go.

• First of all mark down the ranges of your products.
• Then see the reputable shipping partners in your areas.
• Always choose shipping partner which is surrounded nationally, because on online platform, customer can be from any location.
• Compare the charges of different partners and do compare the feedback of their customers, because if they charge low, but they don’t provide good services then it will degrade your image in the market.

How to choose a shipping strategy?

A customer visit your website for the first time, he selects some product from your store, and then goes to buy option. When he added product to the cart, and see shipping charges are not satisfactory to him then he might change his mind and don’t buy the product.

For this, you need to follow shipping strategy so that customer gets satisfied and you too made a profit at the same time.

Offers free shipping: You can set a target for offering free shipping unto particular set of amount or no of items. That will satisfy your customer and will add your profit too.

Charge what you get charged: This is the way of shipping charges, as charged the same amount as partner’s charges from you. This you can do for product which is heavy in weight and size and you don’t want free shipping for them.

Offer flat rates: In this you can offer flat rates on your product. But for this you have to do a some home work, like you have to make a proper list of your products’ sizes as well as weights. This is the best practice adopted by many e commerce traders.

Post Launch:

Actual works starts now. After setting up your store and launching work, you need to do some work. It will be like:

Market your product:
For start ups, online store is a hectic work, don’t worry, we are with you. Now question arises how to do a first sale of your product. It’s a time to get some fruit out of your hard work. For this you need to follow some basic steps:

Google ad words: Google ad words are a tool of Google, which will speed up your sale. In today’s scenario, we all use Google even for small things. So Google ad words are really an important tool. Google ad words is simply to put your add on Google just like putting adds on newspaper.

Get social: Now prepare your social networks or networks which you had already settled. Because social media is the most important tool for any online business for generating traffic and lots of sale.

Face book marketing: On face book, you can even create your own store, and this is a paid service. By creating a store on face book, you will bring consistency to your store and more number of people will be connected to you and will promote your store to others also. You can even join some groups on face book for showing your presence and can promote your business there.

Email marketing: Email marketing is one of the most important tools for marketing the product. For this you can even hire some experts as they are well versed in this. They have a huge database, which can be useful for you sometime. In email marketing, they push laces of emails on their database and
Generate a lead i.e. enquiry of customer for your product.

Sms marketing: Sms marketing is just like the same as email one, only difference comes that here text message arrives to people in place of email.

Web analytics: Web analytics is a tool which will show your customers activity like time they spent on your website, on which page they left your website. These feedbacks are taken to be serious because it can affect your sale.

Drives traffic on your store:

• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Search Engine Optimization is a process of improving the visibility of a website on search engines. In general, the more frequently and higher on the page a site appears in search results, more search engine users will visit your store.
• SMO (Social Media Optimization): Social Media Optimization is the use of a number of social media outlets to generate publicity to increase the awareness of a product, brand or an event.
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising: PPC is a marketing strategy where advertisers pay for each click on their ads. It's a way to buy visits to your site instead of earning them organically. Today, you can find a reputable PPC company in any location you need. For example, a good ppc company can design and manage effective campaigns to reach the right audience, driving meaningful traffic and boosting your visibility and sales quickly.
  
• Blogging: Traffic on the website is proportional to the sales, so to speed up the sale, you need to do blogging. Through blogging you can transform visitors into customers. You may even get media coverage if your blogging goes well.

Conclusion:

However, following this resource should provide you with a clear roadmap to help you build a profitable Online Store.