At a good hour, many of you will think, this brilliant individual analyst asshole comes to talk to us about how to start in eCommerce. Yes, because things change, and taking the first steps in eCommerce is not like before (I leave the definition of “before” to everyone’s taste, from six months ago to three years ago).
This article is designed for small businesses or micro-SMEs, so if you are you can happily skip it. I have illustrated it with a picture of a kitten. They are so cute. Plus, that’s what a small business is when it takes its first steps in eCommerce: a kitten. Whether he turns into a tiger or not depends on how well or poorly you do at the beginning.
Let’s go to the mess.
I am going to focus on the most common case that arises in my daily professional life: You have a physical store (or you are going to open one) and you want to sell online. OKAY. there are a few gold rules (ok, ok, they are simple basic tips) to start selling online:
How to sell online: what you should do
1. Before jumping into the pool, check that it has water
That you sell a lot of a product in your store does not mean that you are going to sell it online. And it does not mean that you are going to earn the same money with it. So before defining an online business plan, creating a strategy and all that stuff, take the test. And for that you have a fantastic tool. Scratch!!! Amazon!.
Yeah, Amazon is expensive. Now, if you don’t sell a lot you won’t make money with Amazon. Already, price competition is brutal at Amazon. In agreement. But It is the simplest, most practical and cheapest way to do a market test and see if your products really sell.
It is not about dumping your entire catalog on Amazon, but about choose a few ‘top’ products and see how they behave and what the public response is. You will save money on marketing, creating a brand, infrastructure… You can also opt for other marketplaces, but what do you want me to tell you, Amazon is king.
Also, Amazon is a perfect school to learn how to sell online, because it will force you to control your competitors and you will learn what content you should have, how to create attractive descriptions, the importance of good photos, how to analyze and interpret sales results and many other things that will help you find the key when analyzing how sell online.
https:///how-to-sell-on-amazon-in-2019-in-5-steps/
2. If your product sells reasonably well on Amazon, you can take the leap
And if not, redesign itsee what other competitors do and how they describe the product, try different strategies until it sells.
You already have it?. Okay, now we’re going to try to get you to sell it for yourself. The time has come to make the big decision, the most important: how much money are you willing to invest? Because at least the first year, you are going to have to invest and have a lot of perseverance. Don’t expect blockbusters in three months. If you are a micro-SME, it’s time to chop stone. Of course, as we say around here, with sentimental
3. If you spend your entire budget on a superweb, you won’t have any left to promote it
Tip: Little by little. Remember: you are taking your first steps in eCommerce. You still have a lot to learn about how to sell online. Be strong, like Ulysses (or like Luis) and resist the siren songs to set up a supermegafashion megaweb. Also, I have good news: minimalist websites are in fashion. look how it is Zara’s. White background, good photos and absolutely nothing to distract from what you want to sell, which is your product.
You can set up a very simple eCommerce website using wordpress, for instance. Ok, it won’t give you the thousands of options of Prestashop or Magento, but it won’t take you three weeks to learn how to handle the back office either. Remember: we are still hatching. Take the products that sold well on Amazon, add a few more that you know have good results and be careful with the margins. Yes, selling online costs money. And at first, more.
Apart from Prestashop, Magento & company you have options to set up your online store (if it is simple) using cloud platforms. Even the logistics companies themselves offer you solutions that include their own website. You won’t be able to make big design changes and you’ll have few options, but it may be an option to consider to begin with. Remember: Amancio Ortega started with a small clothing storedid not open its first store on Fifth Avenue in New York.
4. As in any store: if they don’t see you, you don’t sell
Being seen on the internet means having a basic marketing plan. You will have to combine the presence in the with paid advertising, learn (or hire someone) about and positioning and know how to interpret the results of Google Analytics. You will have to familiarize yourself with things like plan, plan your content well, open a blog and make videos, lots of videos, which is what wins.
But in addition, you will have to spend money on online advertising. Google Ads and Facebook Ads at a minimum, and from there, it depends on your budget. How much does online advertising cost? Well, it’s actually a question that doesn’t make much sense, since most advertising systems (at least the ones you can afford) work the other way around. You previously define how much you are going to spend, and then depending on how far you want your advertising to reach (geographical, by age, by gender, by preferences or tastes…) more or less people will see it.
5. Integrate online and offline, for God’s sake
that word. Put finely: what you want is to sell, no matter the channel. And for that you have to treat the customer the same in all sales channels. If you think that an online store is a “complement” to a physical store, you are going straight to the hole. An online store is to open-another-store for all purposes. If you prefer to sell in the physical store, as many merchants have told me, “because on the internet I have to sell cheaper and that takes customers away from the physical store”, then DO NOT set up an online store.
If you really believe that with eCommerce you can expand your business and go where you would not go with physical stores, then it is time to take the following first steps in learning how to sell online:
- Integrate your online and physical store. Let people showroom in your store and then buy online, or vice versa.
- Facilitates permeability between both channels
- That people find the same, the same attention, the same advice, the same possibilities to compare and decide in one and the other
- Make your physical store and your online store be one thing
- Use QR codes, tablets, screens, whatever gives you the budget so that your physical store is “intelligent” and make someone who wants to buy online call you to ask a question by putting your phone very big, so that they can find answers on the web itself to your questions and, above all, learn from your online customer and take advantage of that knowledge in all channels.
6. eCommerce is a long-distance race if you are small. Rome wasn’t built in a day
Be clear in which race you compete and with whom. If you are small, you cannot be a sprinter, you have to run marathons. You just won’t have the resources for anything else, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You can always go looking for investors, but let’s imagine that this is not the case.
The most normal thing is that, with few exceptions, at least the first year your eCommerce costs you money. Profitability in eCommerce comes from one thing, and only one: not insisting that you are right about how to sell online and constantly learning from what the data tells you.
The stats, and luckily you’ll have plenty available, don’t lie. If something doesn’t work, try something else. Explore alternative business models. Innovate, even locally. The internet public loves innovations and original proposals, even crazy ones. Being small has disadvantages, what can I tell you, but you have a fundamental advantage: your ability to maneuver is much greater than that of a large company. Seize it.
7. The Great Wall of Logistics
https:///how-to-choose-logistics-for-ecommerce/
Selling online means getting products to customers as quickly as you can. And that costs money. You will have to explore the different eCommerce logistics offers on the market and see which one best suits your needs. This is one of the first steps in eCommerce that many small businesses stumble on.
In addition, you will hardly be able to pass on the total shipping costs to your client. You have to find a balance, I’m not saying that you send everything for free, but appreciate that this cost has to come, at least in part, from your business margin.
It all depends on the demand for your product and the exclusivity: If you are a producer of artisan and organic cheeses, your customer is more likely to be willing to wait longer and pay more for shipping than if you sell washing machines that can be bought in many places.
Don’t forget reverse logistics when considering how to sell online (except if you sell cheese): the customer has the right to return the product, and you have to make it possible for them to do so without incurring an unaffordable additional cost.
This is a brief summary of the first steps in eCommerce. Obviously, there is much more.
Once you have a more or less consolidated sales figure, it will be time to stop again, assess profitability and plan how to grow. In general, except for very exclusive or original products, online sales are profitable when you reach significant volumes of orders. Hard? Like any other business. It takes work, dedicating more hours than a clock at the beginning and, almost always, having professional help to make things easier for you.
Image: ShutterStock and Depositphotos
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