Setting up an eCommerce store is a hugely popular way of making money online. Perhaps you already have a product, and want to set up an eCommerce store to sell it to the world or, you are looking at venturing into the commerce business soon.
Setting up an eCommerce store can be a huge opportunity for small businesses looking for growth. Not only does it bring a steady flow of income, but it also allows you to reach out to a broader range of target customers to grow your business. Several creative professionals and small businesses have been using Pixpa to create a professional eCommerce store to sell their products online.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through all the essential steps you should take to build a profitable eCommerce business.
Let’s begin.
Planning Stage:
Define and describe what it is you’re selling. If you’re a creative business owner, sometimes it may be hard to put a label on the work you do. In that case, you can start by classifying your product as one of three broad categories – a physical good, a digital object, or a service.
Asking the following questions will help:
· How is your product useful to people?
· How is it different from other similar products?
· Can your product be divided into variants such as sizes of prints, length of photography tours, digital image resolutions, etc.?
· Do you need a Newsletter, Blog or personalized emails to educate your customers on making the best of your product or service?
· Who is your Ideal Buyer? What keywords would be most likely to move her to act (make a purchase/enrol for a service)?
· How should you decide the prices for your product and its variants?
Find the Market Demand for your product
If you want your sales growth to be real and not fluff, you have to build a realistic estimate of how many people really need and are willing to buy your product. If you have a flair for research, you could prepare a questionnaire and conduct a survey.
Most marketers, however, rely on industry reports prepared by experts. Creative individuals are often left clueless because their products are unique and the market for which has not been researched extensively. In the latter case, a lot of effort is required in identifying why people would want your product and then marketing it as a solution. Here are some examples.
Photographers can sell online prints as calendars, diaries, music covers, tee shirts, coffee mugs, and so on. Similarly, illustrators and designers can create visual stories, comic books, videos, stock graphics, and so on.
Look at how Competitors are doing
One of the best ways to learn whether your product is in demand is by watching the competition. If your product is new, you can compare how other creative businesses are marketing their creations. Study the words they use to describe their product. What is the customer need that they are fulfilling?
We recommend making a list of competitor websites. Then collect the keywords and core sales pitches they use. Use synonyms and alternate phrases to market and sell your own work.
Describe your process
Knowing your process may be the most important part of the planning stage of store creation. As a business concern, you have to assess how viable your running work model is. This is the stage where you look at the ways you obtain your product, package it, and deliver it to your customer.
Are there more economical ways to achieve the same results? Could your product be manufactured in-house instead of having to buy them from a supplier? Are you better off by investing in a storage location, or should you have products fulfilled and dropshipped?
Cost considerations are of topmost priority and could be the difference between a profitable venture and a bust.
Photographers, designers, architects, artists would need a slightly different model as they provide a different class of service.
People want photographs because they have an emotional attachment to people, pets, events or memories. That is why family photographs, travel albums, wedding, and graduation photos are treasured. You can tap into this emotion, for example, by marketing aesthetically created souvenirs of an event.
Writer and artist, Jessica Abel, says that you can combine two business models to make money: Sell cheap prints on mugs and tee-shirts to a lot of people and sell expensive artwork to a wealthy few.
If you want to do the math, you can start by finding out how many people are keen and willing to pay for your work. One way to find out how many people have shown interest in a particular keyword is to use Google’s Keyword Planner. You can also discover related keywords when making copy for your store content.
Acquire a Domain Name
Choose a name for your brand. Then you can buy a domain from a hosting site such as GoDaddy, Namecheap, and so on, accordingly. Naming your business can have a cascading effect on your evolving reputation and should be picked with care.
It makes no sense to use something that is hard-to-spell, too long, or too generic. Ideally, your brand name should invoke a particular feature of your product. It should be easy to remember. It should also not be so limited in its meaning so as to shackle your venture from scaling up.
Suppose you call your wedding photography business ‘Weddingphotosonline’. If in the future you partner with a product photographer, you can no longer use this name to describe your trade.
Note that the more unique your name, the easier it will be to buy a matching URL. Names such as Yahoo! And Bing worked because they were short and catchy. However, for most businesses having a business keyword in the URL delivers better Search Engine Optimization.
Brand your Presence with a Logo
A logo is a visually appealing way to showcase your brand. Logos typically appear on every store page header. They can be a short and easy-to-remember means to build brand awareness.
A logo appears as a thumbnail where text would seem intrusive to the visitor experience. They can be placed in social media, call-to-action-buttons, or on business directory listings.
Here’s one way to create a free logo online.
Implement a Structure for your website
To create an eCommerce store of high quality, implement a hierarchical structure. This means that products are neatly arranged in simple but meaningful groups. Each group should have an easy-to-understand heading that doesn’t lead to confusion. Visitors should easily be able to find what they’re looking for.
Broad categories should lead to specific sub-categories. These, in turn, could contain further categories and eventually lead to a landing page for the individual product. The landing page is an SEO specific page that lets users discover the product via a search engine like Google or Bing. The more important function of a product landing page is to convince the visitor to buy that product.
The purpose of structure is to help a visitor quickly create a mental map of your website. After all, you want the buyer to be able to navigate the site without getting lost. So, menus should clearly be visible on every page.
Don’t make too many menu items, however. If you have many product categories, use submenus with a ‘plus’ icon to show the user that there’s more.
Use a Search Bar to help the user instantly find what she is looking for with a single click. Instant gratification is a huge motivation and makes for easier conversions.
Formulate and Apply a Pre-Launch Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Strategy
Your store launch should be preceded by a long-term (6 months to a year) SEO strategy to be visible to the maximum number of people on the internet. SEO methods help you rank your website higher on a search engine result page. But the techniques take time to mature and show results.
You can start publicity for your proposed store launch even before you create your website. Start talking about it on social media, Instagram, Facebook, or anywhere you have a portfolio set up. Gaining people’s attention and getting recognized is all about building trust and reputation.
So, start blogging independently. Give your fellow creatives advice on the process to follow while creating the art. If you are a collector of vintage products, tell people what makes a curio valuable. Talk about the steps required for restoring an item’s sheen and polish.
Write Product Descriptions that Connect
Convincing a visitor to buy doesn’t always follow reason. You can rattle off all the reasons why your product is awesome, but people will ultimately make buying decisions based on emotions.
As surprising as this list may sound, fear, guilt, and competition are as effective emotional triggers as trust, value, leadership, and time-saving usefulness. Other triggers include instant gratification, a sense of belonging, and a need to emulate trends.
If you create a marketing story that employs one or some of these triggers then you’re statistically more likely to get a sale.
To ensure that you’re pitching the right story, know who your audience is. Initial research would have helped with that.
Use language that is natural and tone that is consistent. Make your copy brief and scan-friendly. Use keywords for SEO.
Create Meaningful Product Photographs
High resolution, interactive images provide visitors with a virtual look and feel for the product. Because your site users cannot touch or reach around your digital product, you must make up for this shortcoming by using multiple angles and shots.
· Break down complex products into components. Tag or label parts in a separate screenshot for ease of understanding.
· Ensure that the background is clean, preferably white, to avoid distractions.
· Clean and consistent lighting, contrast and saturation make for vivid images.
· Edit the image to ensure that there’s uniform padding around the image.
· Depict how the product can be used where possible.
· 360-degree rotation and zoom features can be used for images where users stand to gain a significantly greater understanding.
Choose an eCommerce Hosting Platform
When it comes to choosing a store hosting site, few platforms cater to the unique needs of creative entrepreneurs. Creatives need a store builder platform where they can both showcase their galleries and connect an online store to sell their work. They should be able to control their own SEO strategies and implement seamless digital campaigns.
The right store should enable you to acquire new clients professionally.
- Store pages should be attractive and easy to edit.
- There must be some visually appealing, customizable themes to show off your eCommerce vision.
- There should be a built-in method of accumulating a mailing list through a newsletter or promotion. Use this for email marketing.
- Customers across