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With Coronavirus forcing many consumers to stay at home, eCommerce is becoming the hottest trend in the retail industry. Not only can small eCommerce businesses recoup their losses from 2020, but they can also help stop the spread of COVID-19 going forward. In short, eCommerce will likely be the foundation of shopping in the near future.
However, this begs a few very important questions about the nature of eCommerce, mainly how you can launch an eCommerce store, and most importantly, how you can ensure that your eCommerce store will see fast and reliable growth.
In the following guide, we will answer all of these questions and more. If you want to launch a fast-growing eCommerce store and don’t know where to start, you’re in the right place. So, let’s get started!
How can you launch an eCommerce store?
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Plenty of larger retailers have been doing eCommerce for years. For example, eBay and Amazon are two businesses whose primary purpose revolves around eCommerce. Both websites function as eCommerce stores where you can buy and sell just about anything. That said, you don’t have to be a giant retailer to launch your own eCommerce store.
The Step-by-Step Guide to Starting an eCommerce Business
Despite what many people think, starting an eCommerce business is actually easier than it sounds. It just requires a business plan and a little bit of starting capital. Fortunately, you don’t have to be a millionaire to start an eCommerce business.
First, you need to figure out the mechanics of owning and hosting a website. There are plenty of great website creation tools out there, so don’t worry if you’re not extremely Internet-smart. There are platforms that make it extremely easy to start an eCommerce site in a matter of minutes and make it grow using various plugins. They provide templates and basic hosting services to get your website up and running.
As soon as you’ve started this process, you’ll likely hit a point where you need to make a very important decision. What will you call your eCommerce store? Finding a name isn’t just about thinking of a creative title to represent your brand. You also have to make sure to find a name that isn’t already taken by someone else.
Most eCommerce website hosting services give you the ability to search available domain names (the name that appears in your URL) and purchase one that you like. You’ll generally have to pay a yearly subscription to maintain ownership of your domain name. If you aren’t satisfied with the prices your web hosting service offers, there are plenty of other ways to buy cheap domain names, too.
Once you’ve picked your name and established ownership of it, you’ll need to start designing the layout of your eCommerce store. As previously mentioned, web hosting services make this process relatively painless. You can choose from preexisting templates and make alterations as you see fit.
Once you’re satisfied with the design, you just have to start adding in the products and/or services. This way, people can simply click on what they want and be taken straight to the checkout. Once people start making purchases, you’re officially in business!
Developing a Fast-Growing eCommerce Store
It goes without saying that eCommerce is a competitive market, especially with large retailers taking up a majority of the space. So, you’ll need to find ways to make your eCommerce store stand out. One way to do this is by taking advantage of the best SEO practices, as well as narrowing down your audience and getting help from the best players in the game.
Optimize Your eCommerce Store for SEO
An eCommerce store is pointless if nobody can find it. Let’s say that you want to open an electronics eCommerce store. You’ll be competing with every other electronics eCommerce store, which means you’ll need to create content (generally through blogs or high-quality landing pages) that will draw people to your website.
For example, if you want people searching for “best wireless headphones,” then you should create valuable content that is optimized for this search term. If you feel a little lost with SEO best practices, you can always enlist the services of an eCommerce SEO company. These professionals will be equipped with the latest SEO insights to help your site rank better on search engines.
Find a Niche
Let’s continue with the example of an electronics eCommerce store. You’ll be competing with giant retailers like Amazon and Walmart, as well as mid-sized electronics retailers ABC Warehouse and Geeks.com. So, to make an impression and carve out a segment of the market, you’ll need to find a niche and establish brand credibility there.
For example, if you want to stand out (and even help your SEO efforts), you’d be better off starting with a subset of the electronics market, like high-quality computer parts or refurbished mobile devices. This way, you’ll narrow down your competition and have a better chance to get discovered by potential customers.
Partner with Experts
Starting a new business of any kind is a daunting task. Therefore, you may want to find experts to help grow your business. Just putting up a website will not guarantee traffic or growth. So, feel free to try out eCommerce growth and conversion services to see how you can improve your business. Much like SEO, these services will help you build a high-quality website that actually gets traffic and has room to grow.
Conclusion
While starting an eCommerce store is easier than ever, maintaining and growing an eCommerce store takes time, money, and dedication. Don’t feel discouraged if your business doesn’t immediately take off. Simply work on it as often as possible to see how you can improve your eCommerce store. If you follow the tips above, you’ll have a thriving eCommerce business in no time!
