To Ecommerce Success from the Scratch

Going to open an online shop and think you’ve worked out an ideal plan? Don’t hurry up. There must be something you’ve definitely overlooked. Remember that eCommerce like any other business requires fundamental marketing knowledge and excellent strategy.

Here you’ll find initial steps to take before creating an e-shop. In case you’ve already opened your store, you’ll also find some tips to be extremely useful and worthy:

1. First of all think the way to convert your shop name into an attractive URL. Keep in mind that your exact name can be already taken, so select the most appropriate short URL variant. Your online address is a core detail without which the puzzle of a successful ecommerce business will never be completed.
   
   
2. Create your merchant profile so that your store can successfully process all kinds of transactions. In order to be competitive in the market your shop should support all popular payment methods, otherwise your potential customers will prefer the store where they can easily pay for the selected products.
   
   
3. Choose the quality platform to build your online shop and hire a professional designer to make it customer-friendly and easy-to-use. Poor usability will definitely play a bad trick on you. You won’t have a second chance to make a first impression, thus if visitors are not impressed with the store navigation or can’t quickly find the products they are looking for, they are unlikely to come back. Develop your website so that customers clearly see the path from a product to the checkout page.
   
   
4. In case you decide to use Magento – one of the most popular open-source applications for e-shops, you should know that it has a module structure. It means you can easily upgrade your native functionality with various plugins. There are a lot of developers who provide their extensions for online merchants.
   
   
5. Carefully work out your promotional strategy. Keep in mind that each group of customers requires individual approach. Elaborate your pricing policy, think over discounts, bonuses, special coupons, email newsletters and other tools motivating your customers purchase more and making them loyal.
   
   
6. Apply SEO for your website. Optimize your content so that your products will be shown in the highest search results. Use relevant keywords, write corresponding meta descriptions and place meta tags. Making your source friendly for search engines, you dramatically increase your chances to be noticed, thus driving more targeted traffic to your online store. To track the effectiveness of your SEO efforts as well as the relevance of your landing pages use web analytical tools. It will help you quickly find out what perfectly works for your store and what doesn’t.
   
   
7. As soon as you make sure that everything in your store functions like a well-oiled machine, pick up the appropriate date for your store opening and start a proactive campaign promoting this prominent event.

Now you can sigh with relief – you’ve created a really good online store. But don’t relax too much as your competitors never sleep.