It would be a pretty good assumption that if you are reading this, you have just started your journey into e-commerce. Am I right? Don't worry, we have all been there, and we have all made a million mistakes our first time, and sometimes our second, and even our third attempts at online business.
So what got you here to read this? My number one answer would be frustration. Correct?
You are frustrated because you found something or someone on the internet that told you it was so easy to setup an online business and make anywhere from a few dollars a month, up to enough to replace your day job, however it hasn't really gone to plan, and at this exact moment in time you're feeling beaten, demoralised and ready to pack it all up and call it a day.
There's just one thing stopping you... hope. You are hoping that the next article you read, or the next podcast you listen to will be the goose that lays the golden egg, and provide you with everything you need to succeed. Sorry, this isn't going to be that article.
What I am going to do is first tell you that e-commerce IS NOT a get rich quick scheme where the money just appears for very little work. If it was, everyone would be doing it. Wait, everyone is doing it. But 99% of the people that start an e-commerce business will quit, because it all seems too hard. And this leads to my first, and probably the most important tip:
1. Online Business IS HARD.
Yep, there you go. I said it. This is no get rich quick scheme. The money won't just grow on a tree for you. You will have to seriously commit a lot of time, money and effort to have any hope of making your dream work. I've seen stats that suggest less than 10% of online businesses ever succeed, however I believe "success" is in the eye of the beholder. What is success to you? That's what's important. The take home from the "less than 10% of online businesses ever succeed" is this... people give up because they believe they have been sold a lemon. They think the marketer was lying to them when they convinced them to get started in online business. Well, this is partly true. Good marketers will tug at your heart strings, re-ignite a fire for a dream, or "show you the money" how other people have done it.
What they fail to tell you is that its hard work, and that you need to find that magic thing that everyone wants in a mountain of never ending possibilities. My next tip relates to this.
2. Niche Down
What the hell is "niche down" I hear you ask?
Niche down means find a product or service, from here on called your niche, that targets a very specific market and focus on that specific thing. DO NOT try to sell everything including the kitchen sink to everyone.
Let me ask you this... why do people buy online when they can most likely buy the same stuff from a bricks and mortar store? Answer: because your bricks and mortar stores are not experts in the product, and your customer is looking for the expert, or authority in the niche they are seeking. Let's use an example here, albeit a simple one. Lets say your niche is shovels. You could go to Bunnings and talk to some one there about shovels, however the chances of finding an expert on shovels in Bunnings is almost zero. Why? Because their staff are required to be Jack of All Trades, Masters Of None. They need to have a basic understanding of a large range of products because Bunnings stock a large range of products.
So when people do a google search for shovels, they aren't necessarily looking to buy a shovel, they are looking for someone to tell them which shovel they should use for which purpose. They are looking for an expert, an authority on the subject of shovels, and hopefully they find you.
And they find you because you have built an online store that tells google and all the other search engines, and customers doing searches for shovels, that you and you alone are the person they need to connect with.
I've previously written an article called "Niche Marketing - Finding Your Thing" and its worth a read.
The number one mistake I find with new online business owners is they latch on to the concept of dropshipping from the likes of aliexpress or alibaba and they add products that either appeal to them, or have a good volume of sales. There is no thought process in this method whereby you are considering how you are going to be identified as an authority in a niche, because you haven't chosen a specific niche, and you have no idea about the product.
3. Dropshipping Versus Holding Your Own Stock
For those of you who don't know, dropshipping is the concept where you find suppliers who are prepared to ship a product direct from their warehouse to your customer, saving you the need to buy, hold, sell, and ship the stock yourself. The way it works is quite simple: you promote the suppliers products on your website, and when someone orders the product from you, you place an order with your supplier for that product, with the delivery address being that of your customer. Your supplier will charge you a premium, or dropship fee for this service. If all goes to plan, your customer pays you, you pay the supplier, and the difference between them is the amount of profit you have made from that sale.
Here are a list of significant drawbacks of the standard dropshipping model:
a) delivery times: most dropshipping wholesalers for the products you will be looking at will be based in Asia. Why is that a bad thing? Well, when your customer orders something from you, and they think you are in the same country they are in, they will expect delivery of their product within a few days, whereas dropship orders from Asia will generally take two to three weeks to arrive. In this time, your customer has become agitated that their order is taking so long, so they chase you up looking for their delivery, and in some cases, more frequently than if you held your own stock, they will want a refund even though their product is already in transit. At best, you will get your order delivered and completed, but most likely will not retain the customer as a repeat buyer. Note: repeat buyers become the life of your business in the long term.
b) quality issues: if you don't hold the stock, how do you know the quality of the item your customer is going to receive? How do you know the quality of the packaging the order will be shipped in? The simple answer is, you don't know, and the problem with this, like point "a" above, is that you will get higher than normal dissatisfaction from your customers, and as such, you will be asked more frequently to provide a refund.
c) lack of individuality: remember there are literally millions of online businesses, and a large percentage of the startup ones use dropshipping to get started. So you and who knows how many other stores are selling the exact same products, using the exact same pictures, and the exact same product descriptions. See tip 2 above about being the authority, the expert, the one that stands out from the crowd.
d) price and availability: you are at the mercy of your suppliers with regard to the price and availability of your products. If they stop making your product, you are out of business. If they hike up the price, you are out of business. Yes, this applies to traditional wholesalers to some extent, but once you purchase the stock from a traditional wholesaler, you have the control on its price, and its availability.
4. Learn Your Trade
Please, I beg you, don't be like everyone else and throw a few products on a website and think that people are just going to flock to your store and take you up on your amazing deal.
If you have ever heard the phrase "build it and they will come" from the movie Field Of Dreams, do me a favour and forget it. Wipe it from your mind, as this is furthest from the truth when it comes to online business. With literally billions of websites on the internet these days, and the number growing exponentially every day, the chances of someone finding you, and then having confidence in your level of authority on your niche to want to place an order is extremely slim. So when someone does comes to your site, you have but a moment to demonstrate your knowledge on your niche, and your ability to service their needs.
So what's your trade? Your trade is retail, website design, marketing, search engine optimisation, and human psychology. Not only do you need to find a niche, you need to be able to design and build a website that has a professional quality feel, and you need to be able to understand the psychology behind what makes people want to complete a purchase. This can include things like domain name selection, logo design, overall site colour palette and feel, image selection and placement, button colours, font selection and sizes, discounts, deals and offers just to name a few.
Some tips on learning your trade:
a) don't reinvent the wheel: competitor analysis is critical. I cannot emphasis this enough. If your competitors have been established for a long time, and have good market share, then you need to study them closely. This doesn't mean copy and plagiarise, it means take the concept of what works and use that for your design. For example: if they use bold colours, use bold colours, if they use subtle colours, use subtle colours. If they have Free Shipping over a certain amount, consider free shipping for your orders over a certain amount. If they use lots of pictures of people using their products, get lots of pictures of people using your products and include them on your site. If they have lots of quality content, I know they will so don't skip this one, you needs lots of quality content. Get ideas on blog posts, once again without copying or plagiarising, and write your own posts.
b) listen to podcasts from experts that have succeeded already. Personally I like a podcast called Side Hustle Nation by Nick Loper. Pat Flynn is another great podcaster with a podcast called Smart Passive Income.
c) there are literally hundreds of youtube videos on getting started. Find someone who teaches the way you like to learn, and watch as many youtube videos as you can.
d) if you are using an e-commerce platform like Shopify, they have an incredible help/support network to be able to answer all your questions.
e) facebook groups are another avenue for finding experts. Depending on your niche, or your website platform (woocommerce, wix, shopify etc) there are lots of groups available to help. A great one in Australia for Shopify users is Shopify Businesses Australia, and Woocommerce Community is a good one for Wordpress/Woocommerce users. This concept also applies to groups for buy now pay later such as Afterpay, zippay etc.
5. Get A Good Domain Name And Use It For Email Too
It continues to blow my mind how people choose to use a default domain name or a gmail email address. You are a professional, so make your website professional.
Google has answered this with a guide to domain name do's and don'ts.
6. Write Good Content and Learn SEO
SEO or Search Engine Optimisation includes a few key processes, but essentially works on the concept of writing good quality content relevant to your customers, to demonstrate to the search engine that if they place you at the top of the search results, you are going to be the best site to answer the customers question. Search engines need to be able to demonstrate that they understand the users query, and they show this by giving the best results the highest ranking in the search engine results pages (SERPs).
Keywords are important to understand when it comes to ranking. You need to have a very strong understanding of what it is your customer is looking for, or asking the search engine when they enter their query, and include these words (called keywords) in your content.
For example: let's go back to our shovels example: You could write content about all the different types of shovels, with a separate article for each one. You could have an article for post hole shovels, gardening shovels, concreter shovels, square mouth shovels, long handles shovels etc. So if you wrote an article about concreter shovels, you can use keywords relevant to concreters and their work so when they have a question about a shovel, your article is the first in the SERPs.
Why is this important? The following table shows the click through rate of results on a Google search. As you can see, if you are in position one, just over 43% of people will click on your link, with a significantly diminishing click through rate the further down you rank. If you aren't in the top ten, you pretty much won't be seen.
Google Search Position 1: Click through rate of 43.32%
Google Search Position 2: Click through rate of 37.36%
Google Search Position 3: Click through rate of 29.90%
Google Search Position 4: Click through rate of 19.38%
Google Search Position 5: Click through rate of 10.95%
Google Search Position 6: Click through rate of 10%
Google Search Position 7: Click through rate of 5.28%
Google Search Position 8: Click through rate of 4.13%
Google Search Position 9: Click through rate of 4.13%
Google Search Position 10: Click through rate of 3.11%
I have previously written an article on SEO for beginners you may wish to read.
7. Build Backlinks
What are backlinks? The internet works on the concept of linking webpages together, so that a user can move from one piece of content to another. There are essentially two types of links, internal and external. Internal links are links between pages on a single website, while external links are links from one website to another. These external links are more commonly called backlinks. So, a backlink is simply the name given to a link from one website to another. Search engines like Google use backlinks as a ranking indicator because when one website links to another, it tells Google that the website believes the content to be of credible and of value. It's kind of like a word of mouth referral in real life. Both high quality, and a good quantity of backlinks will help to increase a websites ranking position and visibility in search engine results pages (SERPS).
My article Backlink Basics can provide you with a heap of information about backlinks.
8. Use Correct Image Sizes, Meta Tags & Descriptions
When using a platform like Shopify, it's important to understand the correlation between image size and container size. Shopify has a preferred/recommended size for images to fit within the "containers" assigned for images. If your image is too small it will blow it out and look pixelated, if it's too large it will be slow to load and be cropped.
If you have multiple images for the same size container, collection images for example, make sure they are all the same dimensions and size, so they look uniform on your page.
The meta titles and descriptions are what search engines use to determine the value of an image. They are also the information presented to a user when the image is unable to be downloaded. Having the correct, relevant and properly sized meta tags and descriptions is important.
I have written an article about optimizing Shopify Image Sizes.
9. Remove Any Unused Content When Using A Template
Big rookie mistake this one, leaving incomplete content that has been supplied as a theme template. Many platforms these days will offer themed templates to get you started on your web design. Some are free, the better ones (usually) come at a cost. Either way it's important to make sure you proof read your site before making it live, because there is nothing more unprofessional than a website that still contains template containers prompting you to "insert content here" on a live website. If you aren't sure, go over it two or three times, even ask someone else to look at it for you too.
10. Create A Shipping Policy
Your customers want to be confident they will get what they order. A shipping policy helps define expectations. This document will clearly articulate the freight methods (carriers) you will use, the time frames you will commit to having the order ready to be shipped, and the estimated timeframes for delivery. If you cant provide estimated timeframes for delivery, a link back to the carriers website can help. You should also state that you will provide a tracking number for their order, and you should make sure you supply this when the order is processed. These few things are more critical than ever when dropshipping from overseas, as you will ease the frustrations of your customers if you have been clear on delivery time frames up front.
11. Create A Refund Policy
You need to put your customers at ease in relation to what happens if products don't arrive, are damaged when they arrive, or are the incorrect items when they arrive.
You need to be reasonable with your policy, and understand the legislation in your country regarding refunds, exchanges and cancellations. In Australia, this information can be found on the ACCC website.
12. Create A Privacy Policy
Many customers these days want to know what you are going to do with their information once they give it to you to place an order. There are templates available for this, so find one that suits and make sure you fill in the blanks relevant to your business.
13. Create Terms Of Service
Terms Of Service in its true sense refers to a legally binding agreement between two parties relevant to a service being provided. In the online world, terms of service tends to refer more to a disclaimer regarding the website owners responsibilities and liabilities. There are templates available for terms of service, so find one that suits and make sure you fill in the blanks relevant to your business.
14. Create an About Us
Why is an "About Us" important? Because it adds to the authenticity of your website. It is yet another example of a demonstration of your authority on your niche. Not withstanding this, google frowns upon websites that don't have an About Us, and it could therefore have a negative impact on your search ranking. It is important to be succinct and clear, and don't waffle on about the kids and the dream. A good About Us usually talks about your ideal customer and how you can service them.
15. Use "we" instead of "I"
A common mistake is to refer to you as an "I", instead of a "we". Your business and your brand, although it may start out as just you, is more than an "I", as your partner, kids and mentors, suppliers etc all contribute to your business in some form. Using "we" or "us" comes across as more professional, as more of an authority, and is so much better if/when it becomes time to sell the business. Having a business focused on an individual is risky, and I would recommend avoiding this even if it seems right for now.
The only time I would change my thoughts on this is if the person is the brand, such as a musician or artist.
16. Look At The Detail
Simple things like the favicon (the icon in the tab on your browser) for your site, whether there are copyright or "powered by" sections added from a template in your footer. You should also consider how your site looks on desktop AND mobile, as the number of mobile users is ever increasing.
Conclusion
I hope this information has given you enough of a head start to remove some of unknowns, but please consider this only the beginning of the journey. To be successful in any venture requires commitment, dedication and a lot of hard work. It won't be easy, but it will be worth it.
Should you find any of these topics overwhelming, please reach out to us, as we can help you improve your store.
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