E-commerce 101: How to Launch Your Own Business Online
Online sales through e-commerce exploded during the pandemic period and, even if growth stabilized upon reopening, many consumers who were not very accustomed to technology became familiar with this new purchasing methodology.
Along with the opportunities to expand into multiple existing business channels , it is convenient to start new business activities based exclusively on online:
- sale of physical or digital products of own production b2c or b2b
- sale of white label physical or digital products
- dropshipping sales
Of all the ways to successfully launch these types of businesses, doing so with a proprietary e-commerce certainly means obtaining results in the short term and at low costs.
Once you have understood the business model , the products/services to sell, identified the potential suppliers , the logistics and all the characteristics of the brand (name, positioning, logo, packaging, etc.), the first step to follow is choosing the platform for the website: our advice is to use Shopify and here you can find out why.
In a second phase, it is necessary to proceed with the creation of the e-commerce user interface which, in addition to reflecting the brand identity , must have as its main objective that of selling consistently, find out more here .
Along with the website, you should not neglect the creation of social channels and content , both organic and for paid campaigns .
Once social media has been populated and an editorial plan has been drawn up, you need to create interest in the new reality : to encourage this, you can think about having family and friends share the content, contact newspapers (local and non-local) with press releases or test influencers (micro and macro), based on the budget available.
The first interactions can also be obtained with paid marketing campaigns , planning different strategies based on the type of product/service, for example:
- launching customer acquisition campaigns on social networks and search engines to study market reaction
- launching lead generation campaigns to contact the first interested parties and receive feedback to improve the site/offer/communication
- launching lead generation campaigns to obtain newsletter subscribers and implementing a sales funnel with an ad hoc email sequence
Find out how to avoid burning your advertising budget here .
If you have followed all these steps correctly and are able to sell and at least recover your costs, you should now have a business built from scratch with lots of future potential !
