Online businesses leverage billions of internet users around the globe. Reaching these users means that you don’t have to have a large market near your home town or country.
Owning your own business is both a rewarding and frustrating endeavor. If you aren’t careful, it’ll be more frustrating than rewarding.
Keep reading to discover how to build and grow your business with an e-commerce website.
1. Decide What Your Business Will Be
The first step in creating an online store is deciding what you will sell. Many would-be entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking any product will do. They embark on building a business just to find several months and hundreds of dollars later that their product doesn’t sell.
The first place to start is with a niche. A niche is a sub-category within a business category. For example, if the category is fitness, a niche within it would be fitness during and after pregnancy. Narrowing your focus, reduces competition and improves the odds that people who want your product will find it.
Brainstorm a list of your interests. Plug each word into a keyword tool to find words related to it. From here you’ll find the competition and search volume. Keep a running list of the information you find. You’ll want to cross-reference it to discover if there is a niche that wasn’t as obvious.
You can also start by listing problems to solve from the list of your interests. The niche you choose shouldn’t be so competitive that you’d have a hard time surviving. Use Google Trends to discover how the subject/keyword trends over time. You want to have a positive upward trend over the course of a year.
2. Build an E-commerce Website
The next step is to build an E-commerce website as your virtual storefront. It should be intuitive and easy to navigate for your potential customers.
Choose a name for your website that is memorable and relevant to your business. When you choose a website builder, the domain and hosting are included. When you build a customized website, you’ll need to purchase a domain and web hosting.
Website builders are easy for beginners and for a limited number of products. The issue with builders is that sites are based on premade templates. This means that your website has to fit what’s available.
A custom website maximizes on user experience and expresses your brand voice the best way possible.
3. Drive Traffic to Your Site Through Ads & Content Marketing
Now that you have a brand new site, it’s time to promote, promote, promote.
There are many ways to do this. Not the least of these is through paid advertising. Paid advertising is a great method of promoting your business but once the ads are gone so is the attention.
When you utilize content marketing for your site, you take advantage of free search results. Using search engine optimization (SEO) techniques, you drive traffic of those searching for your products.
The most popular form of content is written content.
Blogs have been so popular at this that there are now 500 million on the web. Video as a form of content is quickly gaining popularity. After this, infographics encourage sharing among readers.
Varying your types of content is the best approach to gaining attention for your brand.
4. Measure and Make Improvements
Finally, when you start a business, its important to keep a record of what is working and what isn’t. Measure every source of leads for your business. The emails, chats, calls, and orders you get all tell a story of how your marketing efforts are paying off.
Make improvements on your system as you discover things that work and don’t work. This will help your business continue to grow over time.
Are You Ready To Get Started?
Without doing the proper research, starting a business can turn into a very expensive headache.
Before opening your doors, discover if there is a market for your product. Keyword tools like Ubersuggest and Google Trends will help you gain insight into how a niche performs.
Build an e-commerce website that is easy to navigate and visually appealing. Then fill it up with content related to your topic. Use SEO techniques to take advantage of search engine results and get people to your page.
Finally, always be improving.
Click here to discover how a custom design can boost your business.
