According to statistics, e-commerce sales are predicted to hit $6.5 trillion by 2023. Based on those data points, digital commerce has a great and growing opportunity, especially now when the world is increasingly moving online. In this article, Sweetcode Lab, in collaboration with Kilo, provides you with six simple steps to help you launch a successful online shop.
The first step is to decide what you want to sell.
You probably have an idea of what you want to sell. If not, ask yourself: what type of product interests you? Next, you should find products in the segment you choose and explore products from A to Z.
– What makes your products unique?
– How do you stand out from the competition?
– What problems does your product solve?
– How can your product or service be used?
– What’s your unique selling proposition?
Then, it would help if you found out who your target audience is.
– What do your target customers want to know?
– What challenges or pain points are keeping them up at night?
– Where do they live?
– What age and gender?
Make sure that your product matches customer needs.
Let’s take a look at this step on Kilo example:
Kilo is a small family-owned, local company that adores nature and travel. The company wants to give happiness, flexibility, and pleasure from an amazing experience by creating unique and affordable posters for your home.
– What makes products unique?
Unique art photography prints which are of museum quality.
– How do you stand out from the competition?
Our posters are unique and inimitable because the business owner makes all our photos.
– What problems does your product solve?
Kilo solves the problem of where to get unique wall art that shows the love of our country’s nature.
– How can your product or service be used?
Our museum-quality posters are made on thick and durable matte paper that allows hanging on a frame and without. To let customers decorate any space.
– What’s your unique selling proposition?
Our key is in the uniqueness of the photographs and the museum quality of the products.
Another critical step is Competitive Analysis. Competitive analysis can help you learn the ins and outs of how your competition works and identify potential opportunities where you can out-perform them.
The following way to launch a prosperous store is to select an e-commerce platform.
Your website is the face of the brand, so take your platform thoughtfully. Furthermore, some electronic commerce platforms don’t require programming knowledge. We have prepared platform venues for you that you might like: Shopify, Wix, or WordPress + WooCommerce. Several of them charge a monthly fee, while others are free. They include charges based on a percentage of each transaction. So choosing a platform carefully that is well organized and cost-effective at the same time.
One of the more popular platforms for startup businesses is Shopify. Kilo is also based on this platform.
Shopify has a lot of advantages that help us launch a promising startup, and now we want to share them with you. The most important thing is you don’t need any technical expertise to set up the basic shop. The admin interface is user-friendly and straightforward, and all the features are logically structured. Another Shopify strength is powerful SEO features that may help you to reach your target audience. All you need is a product to sell. In addition to this, Shopify suggests more than 100 store themes for every taste.
Developing the kilo shop, we decided to choose a minimalistic and simple theme that would not distract users from the products. And fit into the overall mood of the brand.
Next, you have to come up with a name for your brand and connect a domain. Again, remember that the brand name is an essential element to catch the piece of luck. Select a few and check if such shops already exist. Anyway, you can try to use the name generator for inspiration. Make sure your brand name will attract the audience.
A couple more steps you need to do are customize the product catalog, payment form and add delivery information. When you find the top product that you want to sell, feel free to add new positions, get them into different sections, and charge the quality and characteristics you provide on the e-commerce platform.
Then fill the payment form and proceed to set up your delivery information. It’s the preliminary information for the customers because all people want to take reasonable control of the delivery process and ensure that the product will be delivered on time.
And lastly, you need to promote the brand and website. A promotional strategy should never be ignored. When you analyze your audience, you will understand what social media they use. However, don’t ignore platforms like Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and other social networks. We have covered more on this topic in one of our articles.
Promoting your products is significant hard work to achieve success on the Internet. So keep your social media profiles fresh and active!
What about Kilo shop?
We chose Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest as the main platforms for the promotion. Because here we found our audience. In addition, these platforms allow us to create quality content that fully demonstrates the benefits of our products.
And… You’ve done it! And from now you are a fully-fledged expert on how to open an online store. Before we leave you, remember don’t wait for the best time to do it. Go ahead and start an online business today! If you need any help with opening your shop, whether it’s a brand, logo design, marketing, or development for your future website. Say Hello! We are available for your ideas.
