How To Start An Ecommerce Store: 22 Ecommerce Store Owners & Experts Share Their Advice

Ecommerce is massive, with thousands upon thousands of people having created successful e-commerce stores. And in this day and age especially, with many malls closing down and COVID-19 keeping many of us locked up, it’s hard to see e-commerce not continuing to grow as analysts are predicting:

So how do you create a successful e-commerce store? That’s a tough one, and there are loads of pitfalls if you’re trying to create an e-commerce store for the first time. And to make things worse, a lot of the advice out there is written by people who have never actually ran an e-commerce store and are just rewriting generic advice they’ve heard before.

That’s why we’re publishing this compilation of stories, tips and advice from actual e-commerce store owners, plus reputable agencies that have advised numerous successful e-commerce stores. In each of the submissions below, the advice given has actually been implemented and tested by the person writing it. Many of the people who have commented for this piece are also highly successful, with many e-commerce stores you’ll see listed below having done many millions of dollars in revenue (we’ve listed the store or agency links for each contributor).

To put this together I had put out this query on some of the journalism sites I belong to:

For online entrepreneurs who have started a successful ecommerce store, what’s your story and what tips/advice do you have for people looking to start their own ecommerce site?

I am also reaching out to different e-commerce store owners, and will continue updating this article when good new advice comes in.

For now, here are the main points people have put forward:

    • Launch with a “very narrow, specific set of products”, as going to broad will make it very difficult to compete with the big players. By focusing on a niche you have the potential to become a market leader (link)
    • Consider contacting a professional to advise on marketing costs (link)
    • After you have some customers, nurturing your existing customers and turning them into repeat buyers is far, far better than spending marketing dollars trying to bring in new buyers — so do everything you can to build brand loyalty (link)
    • Listen to podcasts from other entrepreneurs (EDITORS NOTE: in the background, while working — don’t pretend listening to podcasts is a substitute for actually getting stuff done) and check out courses on Udemy and Skillshare to learn (link)
    • Updating your site can be a pain, so consider how easy that’ll be when choosing your platform. In that regard, Woocommerce (based on WordPress) is recommended (link)
    • Write a compelling story about why you started your store (link) and put it at the top of your site (link)
    • You’ll want a reasonably diverse range of traffic sources as relying on just one (eg, if all your traffic comes from Instagram influencers) makes you vulnerable. Getting traffic from a couple of different social media platforms, plus a couple of different paid advertising channels is much better (link)
    • If you’re technically competent, a free open source shopping cart may be best (with this you host on your own server and install and manage everything yourself), otherwise go for a fully hosted shopping cart like Shopify (link)
    • Different platforms can handle different amounts of traffic. According to one contributor who had appeared on Shark Tank, Shopify is much better than Magento for this (link)
    • You’ll have to keep updating your site as you get more visitors. To help manage the work, consider a project management software like Trello (free) or JIRA (link)
    • For SEO, create better content than your competitors (include more current information, even infographics, and videos) (link)
    • If you can, advertise locally and hand-deliver products (link). This can be very effective in getting loyal, repeat customers
    • Consider creating a YouTube channel for showcasing your products in video form (link)
    • Make sure your site is mobile responsive (link, link)
    • Do your keyword research (link)
    • Think about long-tail keywords you can target (link)

And finally, if you’re an e-commerce store owner yourself, please submit your story here. 🙂

My name is Tim Grinsdale. I own an e-commerce company called TOAD Diaries. We produce personalised and customised diaries and planners.

Here are my thoughts on your request:

The first step is to find a web development team that can supply your needs. In our case, because of the type of product we sell, we needed a highly-skilled team to build custom-website.

- From there ensure you have a strong USP. It will help when reaching out to people within your niche and bring something of real value their audience.

- Use the so-called 'Long-Tail' of SEO. This was extremely effective in our start-up year

- We optimize our site around more specific Long-Tail keyword variations. For example, 'Day per page 2020 diaries', as opposed to simply '2020 diaries'.

- We saw this tactic work extremely well with keywords such as 'custom organizer' and 'design your own diary' in our start-up year.

- We also pick up sales from other landing pages throughout our site using this strategy.

--Tim Grinsdale, TOAD Diaries

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#tim

1. Find a shopping cart that will work for you. I personally have tried about 30 over the years. Ultimately I have settled on Woocommerce in Wordpress as it offers the most solutions.

2. Invest in your shopping cart and website. Either take the time to learn how to do it, or hire people long term to do it.

3. Do not wait until it is perfect to launch. Launch when not perfect, and continue to improve. I see to many beginners who never actually launch because their store is not perfect.

4. Invest in SEO - Search Engine Optimization. Your site will not do anything if nobody can find it.

5. Invest in Social Media. A social media campaign must be ongoing and can be a big impact on your ecommerce store.

Our ecommerce store, Kustom Koozies, was started in 1998. We have invested heavily in the site and work hard on SEO and Social Media. Even though we have a store front, 90% of our business comes through our store.

We have rebuilt the store 4 times over 22 years on different platforms as technology has improved.

--Bob Liddle, Kustom Koozies

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#bob

1) Do in-depth keyword research

Using the right keywords on your site is super important when trying to get yourself to the top of google as these are what tells google how people can find it. When I first started The Dice Dungeon, I had no idea about keywords or what they achieved, and why they are important, and was left scratching my head when my website was listing on google. There are different strategies for keywords but my advice would be to start by focusing on two or three and building your landing page around those keywords. You can use websites such as semrush (which is free) to research what your competitors, who are on the first page, are ranking for. You can usually tell by how their introduction or first paragraph on their website says. Make sure you spend that extra bit of time researching keywords as that little bit of extra time could have a massive impact on how you rank. Learning about SEO in general is important. I spend countless hours tweaking things to try and get that couple of extra ranking positions. It's a slow and ongoing process but I believe the more time you put in, the more you get out of it, and you will start to see some rewards. We originally focused on metal dice UK which after a few months, we now rank on the front page for. Don't give up, it takes time!

2) Don't overlook your mobile site.

In 2020 more people than ever are browsing ecommerce stores on their mobile phones. So far in 2020, more than 75% of our traffic has come from mobiles, making it incredibly important that your mobile site (more so than your desktop version) is optimised and easy to read, navigate through and loads at a reasonable speed. You will lose out on sales if you do not have a good mobile site.

--Ben Wilson, The Dice Dungeon

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#ben

If you’re starting, it’s not easy. But, focus on the thing that makes you different and push it visually on your new website.

For us, the emphasis was always on our heritage and getting the story out to our customers.

Usually, businesses hide that “About Us” page somewhere in the footer, not to be seen. For us, that is the core of our brand, and we pushed “Our story” right on the top of the menu.

The design reflects your brand, don’t neglect it and compromise while you’re building a new website.

--Stephen Lever, Parka London

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#stephen

We create home and pet products and sell them online via Shopify and Amazon. I'm the daughter of the founders. I'm happy to share what's been impactful for us during our first year selling online:

1. Invest time in your SEO strategy; content is still king. Write highly valuable articles and publish them on your website with actionable tips for your customers and ideal audience.

2. Set up a review strategy. Google reviews are highly impactful for Google Ads. You need to reach 50 Google reviews for the stars to show up under your ad - hugely increases your clickthrough rate on ads.

3. Know your brand's story and don't be afraid to share it. We're a family owned business and we make sure to share that with our audience whenever possible, so they know they're dealing with a small, local brand and not a large company. There's a big difference in the style and feel of buying from a family-owned company.

4. Send out a monthly newsletter with occasional deals & coupons. Be sure to give relevant information to your customers. For example, during Covid-19 we've put our Lavender Rosemary hand soap on sale and emailed our customer base to let them know.

5. Focus on your returning customer rate. Once you have a customer, ideally you'd love for them to buy from you again and again. Focus on customer satisfaction and providing great products.

--Kasia Manolas, Whyte Gate Inc

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#kasia

Thorough testing: Before launching that product, make sure you’ve got all bases covered in terms of testing it out. Invest money in in-depth analyses and work out all bugs. You wouldn’t want to launch something that is of inferior quality and risk having your professional reputation take a massive hit.

Make your site mobile responsive: These days, everyone is on their phones or tablets and fewer people are using desktops. Having a site or product that isn’t mobile friendly can also cost you some points.

Know your SEO: E-commerce is a booming business these days, which means you have a lot of competition. One advantage you can have over everyone is having the SEO knowledge. This can help boost your search engine ranking which brings more eyeballs towards your product/website.

--Jack Wang, Amazing Beauty Hair

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#jack

I run an ecommerce store called SampleMe. One of the greatest hurdles I had to overcome was finding the appropriate platform for the type of products I was selling, which are digital. This should be the #1 priority for those who want to start an ecommerce business, as there are many options that you can tailor to your specific needs. You'll also want to ensure that your platform has built in marketing or extensions that allow you to connect to services like Mail Chimp. Having everything all in one place helps to streamline your processes and spend more time on parts of the business you enjoy.

The next big hurdle is marketing. There are many great FREE marketing channels, and if you showcase your products in video form, YouTube is the go to! Not only can you reach a very large audience, your channel has the potential to become another stream of income for your business. With YouTube we have increased our traffic by 1500% in under a year on the platform!

--Hannah Reinsel, SampleME

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#hannah

I own and run specialist dog treat company, Kip & Twiggy’s (kipandtwiggys.com). We’re a direct to consumer brand selling through our own website and on Amazon.

I have two actionable tips for folk starting out:

If you are just starting out with e-commerce, I’d highly recommend hiring a recognised expert to write about the products you are selling. Ideally this would be someone who is willing to put their name to the article but even if it is ghostwritten you will have a some excellent content that will help your SEO. I run a specialist dog treat company and we hired a vet to write for us. It drives a lot of traffic to our website.

One thing that we did when we first started was to advertise locally and hand deliver our products. I’d definitely suggest this to anyone starting out with e-commerce on a “replenishment model” (where a customer will come back and buy more of your product). I think the personal touch converted a lot of people into repeat buyers. Those early repeat customers effectively covered our overheads in the early days which made a huge difference!

--Ewan McCowen, Kip & Twiggy's Ltd

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#ewan

FH Packaging first started as a word of mouth B2B packaging business and has grown exponentially. For the past 5 years, we have built a well-rounded client base but we had no way of reaching the mom and pop shops. The shops who would only be able to order small QTYs. So the company brought me last year to build, an E-Commerce website.

I am fairly new to building websites from scratch, and the FH Packaging website has come far from when I first built it. There are 4 key points I would take away as far s building a website and I will explain them below.

Business

you will need to display the proper information when running an online business, so terms and conditions, FAQ, Privacy Policy should be thought out and accessible.

Interface

The user interface is very important, We may not have the prettiest website but we make sure we display proper information that is accessible to users. We used to have many complaints about our filters for our products not working correctly and we lost a ton of business due to the fact that customers could not find the proper products they were looking for. Once you finish your build be sure to run your website yourself as if you are a customer, or have someone with fresh eyes review your website as a test run and give them parameters to follow Such as Placing an order, reviewing their order, trying to find the contact page, sending an email, canceling an order, etc.

SEO Basic & Technical

When running an E-Commerce website you have a harder time building out SEO campaigns do to the fact that many other websites also sell the same product such as yourself. We have to compete with other Packaging companies that have the same products and keywords, so we have basically been using the same high ranking content that they have produced and will optimize it to be better, so that would mean either adding more current information, even infographics, and videos. Then we start to basically piggyback off of there traffic.

The technical side of SEO can be a bit meticulous and you should spend a well amount of time to set up your website. When I was building the website, I had to learn on the fly on how Techincal SEO Operated. What helps is investing in a premium host and a premium CDN to reduce the latency on your website. If you are able to set up your CDN with Push Capabilities to deliver static content such as images and videos. That would work even better.

Do the property setup the 1st time so you will not have to go back and do it again.

Marketing

Email marketing is crucial in getting your existing customers the news you want to announce, and important to reel in potential customers with offers and gifts.

--Marcos Torres, FH Packaging

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#marcos

At Jowissa we have set up our e-commerce site in 2018. But we realized quickly that we chose the wrong platform. So after just 8 months online we started again from scratch and have set up the webstore Jowissa.com which is still online today. Our key realizations and findings were the following:

As an E-commerce platform choose one of the top 5 leading platforms worldwide. Given their wide adoption you will profit from a lot of ready-made integrations and apps to extend functionality beyond just presenting a product. We chose Shopify and didn’t regret it.

When preparing products to list spend a lot of time thinking about the channels you will want to present them in the future. If you use the right platform your e-commerce store suddenly morphs into your PIMS (Product Information Management System) and you can start to use your product data with other channels like Google Shopping, Amazon Merchant Center, and many more. Tools like datafeedwatch.com helped us leverage our product data and share it with countless more channels than just your own site.

--Simon Wyss, Jowissa

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#simon

I lead With Pulp, a e-commerce design and development agency. We’ve worked with many new and existing e-commerce companies and have learned a thing or two about what makes an Ecommerce brand successful. Sharing a few of these things here:

- Start your marketing ahead of your e-commerce launch. Building awareness and anticipation for an e-commerce business takes time. A content strategy that centers on search and social and precedes the launch by 6 months to a year can help ensure a launch is embraced by more fans

- Lean on popular e-commerce platforms. We’ve worked on Magento and Shopify websites for small clients, like furnitures stores and wholesalers, and larger clients like Sprayground and Focus Camera, and in all cases, Magento and Shopify were very successful choices. This is because an e-commerce platform that’s adopted and has a strong developer community can help offset a lot of development cost and timing. These CMS’s will also have the best user experience as they’ve been tried and tested by so many users, and backed by large organizations. Now, which CMS you choose will depend on the size and scope of your e-commerce business, but definitely lean on the best in class solutions in your respective category

- Your website is a continual work in progress. E-commerce websites are always in flux. As more users hit your site and new user experience trends emerge, you will want to take what you learn and translate it into updates that benefit your website. Having a backlog of features that you regularly sort is a great way to manage this ongoing work. We recommend something like Trello (free) or JIRA

- Give yourself time. If you’ve done the brand awareness ahead of your website’s launch, it’s realistic to anticipate sales. Otherwise, try not to be discouraged if you don’t see any sales within the first few days, weeks, months. After launch, the marketing work really ramps up.

--Husam Machlovi, With Pulp

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#husam

If you’re starting an online business, make sure you focus on researching the platform you plan on using. A big mistake we made was that we originally used Magento, and that proved to be a near-fatal error. After appearing on Shark Tank, we knew that being featured on a highly viewed television show would attract quite a bit of website traffic. In the year leading up to the episode’s air date, we purchased thirty servers, simulated load tests, and invested over $200,000 to make sure the site could handle the massive influx of traffic that would be coming our way. But when the episode aired, the site went down. In the world of eCommerce, uptime means everything! A lot of money was lost that day, and it made what should have been one of the happiest days, one of the worst. Since then, we've switched over to Shopify, and our lives have been made immeasurably easier. We likely would never have had this issue if we had been with Shopify from the beginning. All this to say - patience was definitely learned in a situation where we had to expect the unexpected. We didn’t let that situation sink our company. Instead, we grew our company and surrounded ourselves with excellent employees who would help us continue to grow in the years following.

--Brian Lim, iHeartRaves

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#brian

I am a web consultant for MyWifeQuitHerJob.com, an eCommerce and 7-figure eCommerce blog ran by Steve Chou and his wife. Overall, the summary on how to start an eCommerce store according to Steve can be broken down like this:

Once you have a product to sell with it's specific variations and types, it's all up to what platform that you want to work with.

Free Open Source Shopping Cart – With this option, the source code for your shopping cart is provided to you at no cost but you must host it yourself on a computer server that you manage. This is by far the cheapest solution available but requires some work on your part to maintain. Regardless, you do not need to know how to code but it does help to have some technical knowledge.(osCommerce, WooCommerce, Opencart).

Fully Hosted Shopping Cart – This is the easiest and most straightforward solution available. By paying a 3rd party company, they will handle everything for you including managing your shopping cart, hosting your website, maintaining your servers etc… You literally don’t need to worry about anything in regards to keeping your website up and running. (Shopify, BigCommerce).

Hybrid Fully Hosted Shopping Cart – If you already run a website and want to add ecommerce functionality to it, then a hybrid solution like Ecwid or BigCommerce might be the right solution for you. (Bigcommerce and Magento).

Each of these platforms have downsides and upsides to them. With free open source shopping cart, you have A LOT of flexibility and can do what you want - but this usually requires a developer and infrastructure to setup. That can be costly and you might not have any experts to fall back on (especially if you hire freelance).

With Fully Hosted cart, you have everything done for you (you just need to provide the content, images, pricing and a credit card). However, it ends up being fairly substantial cost and with certain companies like Shopify owning your site if you decide to terminate their service agreement.

Hybrid is a combination of both.

After you sort out that infrastructure, you will want to finalize your logistics (shipping and handling) and then begin your marketing in earnest.

--William Chin, MyWifeQuitHerJob.com

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#william

You need a diverse range of sources for attracting customers to your store. Relying on one means (e.g. Instagram) will eventually limit you. You may think you can rely on social media to drive all your traffic, but you'd be surprised how quickly a simple update can change how customers see your posts. And now with the real push towards paid advertising, you can't always control who sees your posts organically.

Unfortunately the idea that if you 'build your store and the customers will come' is simply not true. Ecommerce is becoming a very saturated place (but for good reason - there's an abundance of opportunities). You need to be spending just as much time on marketing your brand and store as you are uploading new products.

Invest the time and energy into making your website search engine friendly.

Create an email list and actively work at building your subscriptions. Email marketing is a very powerful tool. Focus on one or two social media platforms you want to excel at (don't spread yourself too thin trying to master them all - it takes a lot of time and if you're starting out, you often are thin on resources and people power anyway). The same can be said for paid advertising.

--Leanne Lee, Blue Bungalow

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#leanne

My number one piece of advice to new e-commerce store owners is to craft a compelling story. It's never been easier to start a business, which means the competition in most markets is stiffer than ever. Customers have plenty of options in almost every category, and if your story doesn't resonate with them, they aren't going to shop with you. I highly recommend all aspiring business owners read the book Building a StoryBrand by Donald Miller to help hone their messaging.

--Caroline Podgurski, BirdRock Baby

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#caroline

We initially started out on a ecommerce platform called Wix roughly 2 years ago, therefore we are quite recently to the game of designing our very own e-commerce website. However all the work was done inhouse with myself the owner and ofcourse after a couple of bumps and hiccups on the way we shifted over the wordpress in the end. Unfortunately for an ecommerce website we have got to take into account a couple of factors:

1. Cost of Running

2. The number of elements required to run the ecommerce website

3. Speed of the website/host

1.Cost of Running:

Indeed cost is one of the major factors involved and for a a start up ecommerce website, your average providers such as shopify/wix/sqaurespace will give you everything you require at a relatively affordable cost. However what we have found as an ecommerce store we required plugins, you may ask what are plugins? These are just extensions you may require to improve the facility the website offers. A Plugin can generally involve you requiring an integration with another platform such as shipping which is a simple example. Unfortunately where these providers listed above will make their money is when you require these plugins, there is usually a small cost per month applied to them and before you realise you could be paying will over an average website would pay.

2. Number of Elements Required

This leads us nicely on expanding on the plugins. Generally if you can keep the plugins it is increasingly beneficial for you search engine ranking, however all websites will have a plugins. As mentioned above a simple example is a plugin required to integrate the shipping details directly to your platform which may require an integration cost. Therefore before starting up a website you would ideally need to factor the cost of these plugins and certainly for the most efficiency we would advise WordPress. Certainly WordPress also has the most tutorials available via YouTube etc.

3. Speed

What we find with all in one platforms like shopify/ Wix/ sqauresapce is that unfortunately they have fairly slow servers. You may ask why this is relevant at this stage? Unfortunately the slower the server, we will find this definitely affects your ranking in search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. We ideally do not want to put in all this effort to find the website does not rank well. Ultimately a poorly ranked website will receive less traffic and therefore the chance of sales is a lot lower.

These are the very basics that personally we would consider, ofcourse others may have different reasons but these are certainly what we considered when we shifted away from Wix and onto WordPress.

--Rizwan Girach, Chessgammon

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#rizwan

I have had an ecommerce store for more than a decade. The most challenging thing to maintain an ecommerce store is to update your ecommerce store with new features as and when the new trends arrive. Over the years I have tried third party sites to have an ecommerce store but had failed because the amount of flexibility these third party ecommerce sites provide when it comes to updating you site up to your requirements is close to zero.

The challenges I used to face earlier were not huge but would delay the time it took to update my site; these tasks would be like how I could convert my single currency ecommerce site to a site that takes payment from different countries and currencies or how I could add a coupon system into my ecommerce store. Then I shifted to WordPress Ecommerce and it has been the best decision of my life as far as my ecommerce website is concerned. All I had to was just install 2 more plugins and tweak the settings according to my liking and I was good to go.

The amount of flexibility you get just reduces the time you spend on updating and upgrading your website.

I would also advise the same to people that if you wish to have an ecommerce site then try Woocommerce (WordPress ecommerce) plugin instead of paying a monthly fee to some third party website that'll have your ecommerce store hosted on their server.

--Ashish H Thakkar, JimmyThakkar.com

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#ashish

After quitting my job as an electrician, I travelled around the world for 6 years straight. Whilst I was on the road, I first heard about the digital nomad movement and started thinking of how I could launch my own location independent e-commerce business.

It took a lot of learning for me to acquire new skills to be able to launch and grow my company. At first, it was a daunting process - but I was committed. Whilst learning all about e-commerce, marketing and SEO I started an eBay dropshipping store to test my new-found skills. Dropshipping was like my first year in college! It was through this learning curve that I was able to develop my own brand, Jungle Straws, with my partner Jamie Skinner. We work with farmers and artisans all over Asia to create a full line of sustainable products that are available through our online e-commerce store.

We are now a thriving wholesale business. We personalise and engrave onto eco-friendly products for other online e-com enterprises, as well as physical stores and events. The company has now been around for 18 months and is valued at $500k.

My first bit of advice would be to never worry about taking that first step.. I knew nothing about e-com when I started. But persistence and the desire to learn new skills that made the past 18 months a reality. The e-com industry changes daily, and there are many new skills to learn and to acquire so it’s important to keep on top of new trends. We’re all continuously learning new skills. As you implement what you learn, it’s important to create your own habits through these processes.

For those starting out, I’d recommend listening to podcasts from other entrepreneurs and e-com start-ups. Also make the most of online training platforms, such as Udemy and Skillshare, to brush up on your skills. Everything I have learned to date has come from these sources and then putting those learnings into action. We all make mistakes along the way, never let that stop you.

--Chris Chalk, Jungle Straws

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#chris

Perhaps the best advice for anyone seeking to set up an eCommerce store comes down to a few things:

Don't scrimp on your marketing spend, but spend every cent wisely.

Make sure your website/store and business model as a whole is highly scalable.

Be wary of overdiversifying or growing too quickly before you've begun to establish your presence and client base, otherwise your resources will be spread too thinly.

Always keep an eye on what the competition is doing; but don't get too hung up on competing on price, particularly when you're new. Identify a new use or demographic niche for your goods and concentrate on targeting this to carve your own place in the market.

Finally, make sure your customer service is excellent, and that you nurture your repeat customers for lifelong loyalty; this is far more cost effective than continually targeting new prospects, and is the key to building brand loyalty and success.

--John Moss, English Blinds

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#john

When starting an e-commerce store, one of your primary concerns should be budgeting for online marketing. If you are new to e-commerce, it’s not easy to estimate all expenses. So it’s better to contact a professional who will help you complete market research and competitive analysis for your business and evaluate marketing costs for at least the coming year. Without a clear understanding of marketing costs, you may face a cash shortage during your launch campaign. Your marketing strategy will significantly depend on the market segment you have chosen. In some product niches, it might be better to create a store on a marketplace like Amazon and pay commission on sale rather than spend a lot of money on marketing before you generate revenue.

--Justin Hawes, K&N Sales

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#justin

Launch your store with a very narrow, specific set of products.

The e-commerce environment is so saturated these days that it is very difficult for a first time site owner to to come along and compete alongside some of the giants that have been around for decades.

It has been much more effective for me to specialize in a very specific product category, become the market leader in that very specific niche, then start adding related products and branching out into other product categories.

--Justin Blase, Ted's Vintage Art

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#justin2

I work for a digital marketing agency, and we have helped many new ecommerce stores get off the ground and achieve massive improvements in ROI. If you’re just launching an ecommerce site, here are some items to cross off your check list:

1. Start marketing before you’ve officially launched. Offer special pricing for pre- orders, and start posting on social media actively to build hype. Identify partners and collaborate for cross-promotion opportunities.

2. Its all about content - story boarding, brand voice and SEO. Make sure that your messaging is strong and compelling. One of the key items is to optimize product listing pages for your keywords. In fact, you should invest in creating custom landing pages for some of your products to drive traffic organically.

3. SEO is king for the long-term health of your store, but it takes time to work. You need sales right of the bat. For that, you need to launch paid search campaigns on Google and Bing. Expand paid search to social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Funnel campaigns on social media like Facebook have been very successful for ecommerce companies and can also get you some early sales

4. Abandoned cart emails! So many new ecommerce sites forget to set these up. Its like leaving money on the table. Reaching out to shoppers who didn’t convert at the very last moment has an incredibly high ROI. For the effort and cost involved, this should be a no-brainer.

--Andy Beohar, SevenAtoms Marketing Inc

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#andy

1. Customize your Checkout Page: To provide a next-level shopping experience to your customers, it’s necessary that you pay special attention to your checkout pages. Usually, the default checkout page has limited options. It’s important that you customize your checkout pages based on your business requirements. There are different ways to customize your checkout page. Some of the commonly used methods are using custom coding and WooCommerce extensions or with the help of a third-party WooCommerce checkout plugin.

2. Optimize CTA (call-to-action) Buttons: The main goal of any eCommerce website is to drive traffic and generate sales. In order to lure customers into taking the desired action that you’ve intended for them, having the right product is not always enough; you also need to be persuasive. And this is where CTA(call-to-action) buttons come into play. A well crafted CTA button can instantly boost your sales. Something that you can do to optimize your CTA button is to use the right phrases that have the potential to drive more clicks. Here are some of the best and commonly used phrases on eCommerce websites: Add to Cart, Buy Now, Join Free, Learn More. Another suggestion is to use contrasting colors in your CTA buttons as an effective call-to-action ensures a good usage of strongly contrasting colors. Note that there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to colors that could help you increase your conversion. You have to play around with different colors and gradient variations to see which of these color combinations encourage your customers to click on the CTA button.

3. Keep Track of your ATC(add-to-cart) Conversion Rate: In order to tackle the issues of shopping cart abandonment, you need to measure your add-to-cart conversion rate. To identify the factors that are driving your customers away from the add-to-cart button, you can use the following strategies: User Testing: This practice involves recording audio and video events of your website visitor’s screen using screen capture software. The recording will help you better understand how customers interact with your website. Session Replays and Heatmaps: One of the best things about Session Replays is that it can be done without the involvement of testers. You only need to view your customers’ interests, where they click, and what captures their attention. Click-tracking heat maps will also let you see where shoppers are clicking. You can use tools like Lucky Orange, and Hoverowl, HotJar for conducting session replays and heatmaps.

--Neil Jose, Acowebs

PERMALINK: https://outwittrade.com/how-to-start-an-ecommerce-store#neil

EDITORS NOTE: In addition to the above, I recommend have a look over this article of e-commerce technology trends.