8 things to consider before starting a online business

stanton

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Create an online business today is very simple. The hard undoubtedly comes later. The hardest thing is to be among the first in the search engines, getting customers to buy (conversion), and above all, loyalty.

The vast majority of homeowners make the huge mistake, that in the beginning, just think about getting set up your ecommerce at a low price. And once you finish your store, think about what is really important, but it's late.

Therefore, here I present 8 things that you should think or consider before launching your online business.

1. Choose right platform
For me the choice of a platform, is like correctly selecting your partner. Here's easy steps to choose a right platform:
* Testing or try your luck: Yes you create your online business to try his luck, I suggest you choose a platform that brings together some good features, but above all is cheap. In this case I advise Shopify , with around $40/month, you have an ecommerce ready in minutes, or choose WooCommerce, that even you can assemble yourself, because it is very simple. Let minimum risk.
* Ecommerce medium: Yes going to start an online business seriously, but the catalog is not large, nor dont want to spend a pasture, I recommend Prestashop .
* Scalable Ecommerce: When a scalable business is created, it is because you are going for broke. Surely the ideal platform is Magento.

As a tip, I recommend you stay away from solutions with little community of developers and it look dated. That is, choose a cms well supported, with excellent community behind, and has many standard ecommerce functionality. You have to keep in mind that once you decide on a platform, no turning back, because a bad choice you can be very expensive.

2. Accommodation = Optimization
Having a trickle charge your ecommerce is like losing customers, will equal the super cool to be your shop, no one will be waiting more than three seconds to load. For this is not a problem, certainly one of the main causes is the accommodation you choose. Depending on the platform you choose, you may purchase a hosting or another. Almost all platforms, with a shared hosting, as it were, but Magento or Prestashop (catalog of over 1,500 products) need a dedicated or VPS.
Many of my clients, when selecting a hosting, have doubts what to choose, because there are many prices. So it seems important to clarify that parameters are ideal to start your business online:
* With 1 Gigabyte of space, you reach for a start, if you could expand.
* With 1 Gigabyte of data transfer. This means the transfer of information between your views and server, and also the amount of pages you can view all your visitors monthly. Unlimited transfer is almost impossible to obtain, since sites that offer really do not.
* Have a great support, and work 24 hours 7 days a week.
* Requires uptime reaches rates 99.99%, and the remaining 1% for maintenance.
* The type of support, initially comes to you with Linux (it's cheaper with Windows).
* Take the domain in the same company Hosting, as this will avoid headaches.

But everything above you explain what you have to say who will develop the online store, because you will not have enough experience to guess correctly in the election. Yes you want to recommend from experience that hosting companies are better or on this forum exsited an area for web hosting offers.

Apart from accommodation, there are other features that optimize sStore because it will help a lot to get it successfully.

3. Differentiate
Unless your confections your own products, there is a huge probability that your online business has many brands that other stores have. Therefore, you must differentiate yourself, and do not consider another. One of the worst flaws, is to use a template and not personalize it to your taste, to make it look different from others. On the other hand, are the product descriptions, photographs, etc .. All this is normally supplied by the manufacturer, so you have to modify it and change it to your liking. This way you get to be different and not one more.

4. Competitive Analysis
This not only applies to electronic commerce, of course, but any online business, you have to analyze your competitors. Often, researching the competition, you realize the many defects they have, and that gives you many opportunities. What matters is that at the end of the analysis, discover the strengths that will take your business from competition, this will give you a huge advantage. I assure you.

5. Do not just sell
Today, the powers that be in the online business are consumers, because there are so many stores, they choose the one you want. So you have to grab their attention to choose us over others. Many make the mistake of competing on price, but it is a huge mistake. Think that a new seller, will have little room, no mark, no ability to reduce costs, ... etc, so you have to sharpen your wits, and serve your skills and product knowledge to excel. A good strategy is to become an expert in your niche, and provide valuable information to your corporate blog entries. It is not only sell, but to convince. Here's the difference.

6. Do not forget the SEO
When the SEO of an online store starts, it is not at all simple. Unlike the bloggers, an ecommerce SEO is much more difficult. These bloggers, have it easier because they choose a topic and develop unique content, and if it's good it's very easy to have many followers. Thus, having achieved an excellent SEO. Unfortunately, an online business, you have to fight hard in the SEO, and is very vulnerable to the continuous changes in the algorithms of Google. You wonder, because it is so difficult to SEO an online business, it is for the following reasons:

The descriptions of products are usually short, which causes that search engines deem content of "Low Quality".
Combinations, categories or attributes of products, can generate URLs that duplicate content. The solution is to canonize these URLs, to return to the main product page.
The product categories are often span multiple pages and thousands of products. To fix this you should make sure that these elements are indexed correctly.

The SEO is very important to consider before starting a shop, as otherwise you will lose sales and money. Therefore, you should be clear how to optimize your SEO.

7. Team up with your customers
Currently, have a picture and a description of the product, is not enough to sell. What helps to convert and increase sales is to ally with customers and help us with their own product reviews. Customers, to think and to share this product on social networks, manage to sell more than yourself, no doubt. Like it or not, people always will cost you believe the words of the owners of the store. So before you start with your store, team up with clients testing (friends, acquaintances, etc ..), to encourage them to put their review and share your content.

8. Apply Rich Snippets and videos
The Rich Snippets "enriched Fragments" is a special code added to a page describing the type of content you have. Use it, will help much on search engines. In these rich snippets, what works best is to add videos. The user, always choose the online stores including in those fragments.

The most important thing is to have a few things clear before launching an online store, so that we have time to rectify and try and not lose money and customers.
 

elcidofaguy

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Hi Stanton, Nice post! Just one quick thing to add here...

I would also include a pre-pre launch and pre-launch sequence prior to the actual launch... That way you build anticipation, excitement as well as a list of eager buyers prior to opening day... The worst thing that can happen is that after all of your hard work there is nobody there on opening day to purchase your product/service.... In sum here is how I do it:

1) Pre-pre launch: This is when you mention your idea and ask if people are interested... If so ask them to sign up to your newsletter or to become beta testers and in return they either get it for free or at massive discount... This is also a great way to get actual/real testimonials to use when you do finally launch...

2) Pre launch: Your website/product/service is ready... However you should build momentum and excitement before opening it... For the pre-launch sequence create a set pages, videos which talk about the product... For that I would do something like:

- Landing page with explainer video highlighting pain points and solution and to find out more signup/optin for early bird discount...
- Email sequence outling product... e.g. Link to second page/video which provides more info.... as you get closer you provide a final page/video outlining the service/products/benefits as well as the launch day details as well as how long the special offer is valid... I would provide a hidden page with discount to readers on the news list... On final day send out that email letting everyone know you have launched!! ..... and watch the sales role in ;-))

The benefit of this approach is that you build up a list of early adopters, excitement and anticipation as well as buyers on opening day..... In addition it also gives you the chance to beta test your product/service and to improve/fix it before official launch....

Cheers,

Sid
 
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