How To Start An E-Commerce Business

Starting your own E-Commerce business can be the key to your independence, doing the work you love on your own terms. With a little bit of hard work and consideration in the setting up process you can create a store that will generate lots of traffic, and more importantly, income. Our complete guide will show you the best practices, and the options you have available to you. The choices you make will depend on where your skill set lies, and your level of technical competence in various disciplines. You do not need to be a master of any particular discipline to succeed at making an online store, a good work ethic will be the driving force in your success.

A CONSIDERED START

Being keen to get started is a good thing, but there are serious considerations to be made before you can begin this process. There are a couple of decisions you will have to make before the building process can begin, because they will be a lot more difficult to change later on. The first is the name of the company. Picking a good name is an increasingly difficult task because most common domain names have already been purchased, and the best names typically fetch a higher price. This is where we need to get creative. It is good practice to include the name or category of the products you sell in the name, along with an individual identifier. For instance, we sell tote bags, so we have totes in our company name. It’s usually a tricky task finding a suitable name, so we recommend spending some time on this, throwing ideas around, and using a domain checker like this one to see if your preferred name is available.
Once you’ve settled on a domain, you will need to decide which platform you are going to use to create your website. There’s a lot of choice available to suit all skill levels, with pricing varying across the board. This is another decision that you unfortunately have to make early, and your most likely going to stick with it because changing your platform later will be a pain. Take into consideration the following:

• Your current skill level and what holes in your skill set a particular platform can plug.
• Where you want your business to be in the future, and if your platform choice will support your expansion plans.
• Running costs. Solutions with less development work involved will typically cost more to run, but will save your own time.
• How serious you are. Are you going all in and want to make your e-commerce store a full time gig? Or do you just want to make some money on the side?

PICK A PLATFORM

Fortunately, there’s an option for everyone when deciding with platform to use to host your online shop. Each option has it’s own strengths, weaknesses and limitations so carefully consider your platform choice as it will dictate the direction of your business. We’ll run through each option so you can make the right decision first time.

Option 1 – Join a Platform Amazon / Ebay / Etsy

Hopping on an existing platform like Ebay, Amazon or Etsy are by far the easiest, and least time consuming ways of getting into e-commerce. Both have huge audiences that almost guarantee you will get eyeballs on your products. If your selling generic or common products online as a distributor, you should be comparing Ebay and Amazon, looking at which suits your product type, carefully considering the fees that apply to these services and what your potential profit margin can be. Lots of people make a good living from selling on Ebay or Amazon, but you will be required to sell a lot of products continuously to see  a profit, with both platforms developed in such a way that you need to shift a lot of stock to see a healthy profit. A platform like Etsy is a great option if you are a creative or artist that wants to sell the things you make online. Easy and intuitive tools and a discerning audience that loves to buy handmade and uncommon items could potentially make it the perfect platform for you. However, if your creating a product that lots of either people are creating, (for example, jewellery) you may struggle to stand out from the crowd. The main bonus with all of these existing platform solutions is not only are they the easiest to setup, but they are also the easiest to move away from. If you decide to go fully solo later, you can potentially setup a Ebay/Amazon/Etsy store to begin with, whilst you create your own separate venture on the side, choosing to release it when it’s ready.

If you want to begin with a part time business, or lack the nerd knowledge to do a more technical implementation, this can be a great way of jumping into e-commerce. We recommend browsing Etsy to see how the thousands of sellers on there display and market their own products, and the creative tactics they use to differentiate themselves from everyone else. Just be aware that by joining an existing platform, you are playing to someone else’s rules and your success is at least partially in someone else’s hands.

Pros

Easy to setup
Easy to move away from
Almost no technical skill required

Cons

Selling fees & monthly fees usually apply
Limited search visibility
At the mercy of the platforms success

Option 2 – All in One Hosting & E-Commerce Platform Squarespace / Wix

Stepping up a level in complexity, solutions like Squarespace & Wix are here to help you create a fully customisable online store, without level 10 coding knowledge being a requirement. These solutions are a great middle ground for wannabe shop owners looking for their own hosted store, but without the time or skills to put one together. These solutions provide all the tools you need and will host your website too, all for a monthly fee. Here you can create an e-commerce solution that looks that part, and can get all the potential benefits of SEO (more on that later). These kind of platforms have pre-made templates that can be adjusted to your liking, with intuitive tools that give the effect of a professionally made website, without the need for coding. Using a service like this will also be a much less buggy experience compared to more custom options, and typically have great customer service too. If you want your own www, but don’t want to struggle, this is a great way of creating a website that has a lot more than just basic e-commerce functionality. You will be able to create your own blog, have all your social media integrations, and not have to worry about stuff like CDN’s, SSL and hosting, as everything is included. These platforms typically have a modern and fluid look that we come to expect with websites today, so be careful to customise in such a way that doesn’t make you look like every other hipster that does exactly the same thing as you, unless that’s what you want.

You will have to dedicate a little of your time getting everything setup, but not nearly as much as creating your own site from scratch. This is the recommended solution for small businesses that want to sell stuff on their own site.

Pros

All technical stuff included out of the box
Intuitive design tools
Good customer support

Cons

Fees apply
Difficult to move away from this type of platform
Site can end up looking cookie cutter

Option 3 – Separate Hosting / E-Commerce Woocommerce / Bigcartel / Magento

Choosing to host your website separately from your e-commerce solution gives you the freedom to pick and choose from all the services that are available, and opens up the door to just about any plugin, expansion and all the extra flexibility that comes with it. WordPress is the largest website creation tool around, and can be paired with an e-commerce plugin like Woocommerce or Shopify to create your own web store. In addition to this, extra plugins can be used to add even more functionality, with a solution available for just about every addition you can think of. To use this option, you will need buy a hosting package first, then use a website builder in conjunction with an e-commerce plugin. There’s also themes available for a one time purchase fee that will  dictate how your website will look, with many well developed themes out there on the market, most of the coding work is taken out of the equation, with only your personal modifications added later if necessary. We recommend this solution if you want to create your website your way, and need room for potential expansion later on. Take a look through the most common e-commerce plugins to find out which one suits your workflow best. It’s a good way to get stuck into web design and will give you a much better overall understanding of how websites work.

Once you have a store and workflow up and running, the running costs of this option are very low, with a yearly hosting fee being typically the largest fee you will face. The biggest drawback of a solution like this is the potential for bugs to arise when using a combination of plugins, themes and additional code. If something doesn’t work as expected, you can often be left on your own to find a solution, however outside help can be hired if necessary.

Pros

Huge choice of plugins and themes available
Low running cost
More room for expansion if needed

Cons

Potential bugs can be difficult to solve
Support level varies hugely
More development time needed

So, you’ve decided on a solution and have created the foundations of your new store. It’s time to create some products and get selling! The first thing to do is to look at what your competitors are doing, taking note of how they display their products, describe their products and what price they are selling for. You need to be able to position yourself correctly in the marketplace to ensure your audience will gravitate towards your products. Being fully aware of what you are selling is key to displaying it correctly on your site. If your product is overpriced and not well presented, it simply won’t sell.

Not only do you have to impress potential customers but you’ve also got to keep search engines in mind when creating products. SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is the art of attracting a search engine (typically Google) to your website by clearly describing what you are selling and indexing your pages in a certain way so that is easily navigable by search engine robots. We’ll run through how to impress potential customers and ensure your site will be listed as near to the top of Google as possible.

ATTRACTING CUSTOMERS

How your products look visually is key to conversions, as humans will gravitate to a well photographed product. This doesn’t mean you have to be a professional photographer, but having a lovely product image will definitely improve your click through rate. Most modern smartphones are capable of taking web ready photos, so try to experiment with different angles, lighting and backdrops to see what works. If you’re already a selfie snapper, you probably already have some of the skills needed for product photography. Take a look at competitors photos, see how you can improve on them or put your own spin on it. Grabbing the attention of the buyer straight away could be the difference in a sale.

Social media is a tool that can help spread the word of your store and products, and by creating interesting posts you can get hundreds, or even thousands of clicks on your website. Most young people now are generally competent at using social media and understand the inner workings of it, so use this experience to your advantage and promote your stuff!

Email marketing is a good way of ensuring repeat business, by letting previous customers know that you have a particular product on sale, or are launching something new. Just be sure the way you obtain the email addresses is above board, as GDPR laws are now stricter, and prohibit the obtaining of email addresses with the owner’s consent. By having a mailing list you can get your very own loyal fanbase, and by emailing them you will guarantee more clicks to your site.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION

Search engine optimisation has become such an important factor in creating websites, there are whole industries dedicated to the practice. There’s already a huge amount of information out there about SEO, and it’s definitely worth understanding at least the basic good practices, so you won’t have to go back and re-hash work at a later date. There are many factors involved in SEO, mainly to do with how you word your listings that will make a huge difference to how much you are visible on Google. First, make sure the title of a product includes what the product is, for example, if you sell tote bags, include the words ‘tote bags’ in the product title. Next, write lengthy and accurate descriptions of your products, covering all the bases, so the potential for your page to show up in multiple searches in increased. Doing some keyword research is a great way to give you a better idea of what people search for when looking for your products, as many people will use different terms. There are various paid tools available if you want to dive into this, with Moz and Ahrefs being the most common. These tools allow you to research keywords, examine competitors sites thoroughly and see how many other sites are linking to yours. Whilst were on the subject, backlinking is another important SEO element to consider. The more links from other websites that are pointed to yours, the better, generally. Every website has it’s own domain authority, and a link from a high authority website will work wonders for your search rankings. Acquiring good quality links to your site does take hard work, but is worth the investment in the long run. There are many ways to do this, like guest blogging, press releases and posting on other sites, that can all potentially get a good quality link.

OTHER THINGS TO CONSIDER

Site Speed

Potential customers will typically not spend long on a website, and will quickly leave your site if they are not finding what they need, or are made to wait for things to load. Seconds count when optimising your site, and depending on the solution you have picked, site speed will be a factor to consider. If you’ve picked one of the out of the box solutions, congratulations you have less to worry about in this department and can focus on making everything look pretty, but if you have a more technical implementation, you will need to constantly make sure your site is running as quickly as possible, making as many optimisations as you can to keep things moving. Whether it’s compressing images, using a CDN, or limiting the amount of scripts that need to load on a page, site speed is an important consideration, as not only will your customers value a smooth experience, but Google will penalise you for being slower. If you need to consider site speed, we recommend searching for related articles to get yourself up to speed on how it all works.

Easy Checkout Process

Similarly to site speed, you will lose customers if you make them wait. Most would-be customers are used to checking out in just a few clicks, so if you have lots of information to fill out, or a convoluted check out process, you will lose them. Keep everything as optimised and as user friendly as possible, and compare your process to that of a larger retailer. Only a consideration for a custom implementation, the plugins you use for taking payment and recording information can make or break the overall site experience.

Keep It Secure

Absolutely every website is vulnerable to attack, so keeping your website as secure as possible is important. You must use a https: when creating a store, which can be obtained by acquiring an SSL certificate. This ensures that information is encrypted on your site. Vary your passwords and make them difficult to guess too.