A Complete Guide: How to Build, Launch and Grow a Profitable Online Store.
limited to shops in the market. They are reaching a new level of Online Stores. Before we start talking about how to build an Online Store, let’s learn a little about what E-Commerce actually is.?
Meaning
E-commerce or Electronic Commerce is defined as the purchasing and selling of goods or services via the Internet, such as buying clothes, shoes, electronic items, or other articles on an online platform, in other words, E-Commerce is a process where a businessman sells goods or services to the consumer with help of an electronic medium.
If we talk about the advantages of E-Commerce, then there are many. E-commerce provides benefits like:
- One other exceptional advantage it offers is convenience. E-commerce totally removes the time boundary between buying and selling goods. E-commerce is accessible to every individual for buying and selling of goods or services. A customer can shop 24×7. It does not have working hours like a shop.
- E-Commerce gives traders a global scope. It removes the barrier of distance. Now transactions can be made anytime irrespective of time and distance, in the virtual world.
- E-commerce will considerably reduce the transaction cost. It omits many fixed costs of managing a proper shop in the market.
- E-Commerce removes the maximum of the middlemen/ intermediaries from the transaction process. It reduces the cost as well as helps to develop a personal touch.
Every coin has two faces. Similarly, everything has advantages and disadvantages. Moreover, E-Commerce’s advantages blur out all its disadvantages.
Why E-Commerce is necessary.?
Nowadays, competition and convenience both are increasing at a very high rate. Customers no longer want to get out of their homes and shop. They want to just sit comfortably at home and shop from their own homes. This is why E-Commerce acts like a solution for both buyers and sellers. If you are still giving a thought to expanding your business over the internet. Then search no more the following reasons will convince you how E-Commerce is beneficial for your business.
- By offering great products 24X7 along with online customer services, blogs, social media, and many more. Your business is no longer restricted to one single shop. You can have access to a large area. E-Commerce allows you to expand your business to a great extent. It is an ideal way to take your brand from the traditional to the international level.
- An online store means customers can visit your store any day, anytime according to their convenience. These days people generally don’t have enough time to visit physically to a shop for shopping. Everyone wants to save time. Because of the convenience provided by E-Commerce, people can shop anytime and save their time.
- E-commerce can help you to increase your profits. As you are now dealing globally, the demand for your goods will increase automatically. Since E-Commerce is so popular among the people, you’ll be targeting global customers who will help get your business up and running. That will lead to a noticeable increase in your profits.
- The suppliers can decrease the cost of managing their inventory of goods with E-Commerce. They can save a good amount of operational costs.
- E-Commerce helps in minimizing many expenses that a businessman has to bear with a physical shop in the market. It helps the businessman to eliminate the expense of renting a shop, hiring personnel, traveling costs, and many other costs.
Commencing an E-Commerce business is a difficult job and requires countless steps and judgments that need to come together at the right time. Starting an E-Commerce business is an investment. Building an E-Commerce business demands more than picking a brand name, recording product listings, and starting to trade products online. It’s not like one theory that will suit every Business Structure. Every business needs a unique plan. Even the best business ideas can fail to succeed if you aren’t driving enough traffic to your site. Making E-Commerce a great success takes a lot of out of you. You need a lot of planning and decision-making skills to bring your E-Commerce business store to the top. The following steps will guide you on how to start an E-Commerce business.
Step 1: Choose a Product of Your Choice
The very first step is to choose a product that you want to sell or offer to society. Select a product or service that you can provide around the globe. You need to analyze the needs and wants of the customers. Customers are the king of the market. You need to offer them the kind of goods or services that they are willing to buy. If you are not giving the customers what they want there is no point in expecting your E-Commerce business to be a success.
Step 2: Evaluate your Idea
Once you are final with your idea/ plan. Now it’s time to evaluate your idea. You need to check if it is possible to implement your idea into the physical world. It should be
- Logical
- Practically possible
- Fits your budget
- Matching the needs/ wants of the customer.
If your idea satisfies all these needs then you have a good idea for an E-Commerce business and you are ready for the next step.
Step 3: Time to Answer Your Questions
When you are done figuring out what exactly you want as your product, it’s time to answer those questions that follow your idea. What will be the name of the store? Do you need a storage/warehouse? Who are your competitors? Who will be your customer?, Who are already buying the products you are going to sell? and so on. You need to take a deep breath and take some time to find answers. Do some research, go with your instincts, and find out how do you want this to work out.
Get a good name that is easy to pronounce and spell for your online store and make it catchy so that people find it interesting. There are some factors that you should consider while coming up with a name for your Online store.
Get a name that is:
- Easy to pronounce and spell.
- Holds some meaning
- Catchy
- Original, not copied
- Not too long
Come up with a good name that has all the qualities mentioned above. And get ready for the next step.
Step 4: Complete the Legal Obligations
Now you have to put some effort into making your Online store official/legal. In order to make your online store official you have to:
- Get your Business License
- Get your Employer Identification Number
- Apply for Licence and Permits
When all the legal work is done it’s time to pay some attention to the display of your E-Commerce Website.
Step 5: Layout of the Website:
E-Commerce Website Design plays an important role in brand recognition. Website Design, Features, and other facilities give a reputation to E-Commerce Business.
- Choose a theme/template
- Display of the Website Design
- A help/ chat box for communication
- Easy Navigation
- Attractive Design
E-Commerce Website Design is an important aspect of the Online Store as it is the part that your customers can see and use. Try to make it as simple as you can and be creative to present your idea. So far we have done some hectic work, but now it’s time to do some work that will be fun.
Step 6: Get into the Market:
All the efforts that you made, are going to pay off now! It’s time to bring the product that you choose in the market. You’re all set to “open your shop”, upload your products and let your customers buy them. Now is the time to start selling and earn a good amount of money.
Step 7: Marketing:
Marketing plays a vital role in maintaining an E-Commerce business, developing a business isn't easy and without the proper marketing strategies, it is impossible to expect growth, earn profit, and stay ahead in the field. However, recognizing the appropriate strategies to promote your business is usually like rocket science.
Marketing brings up uncountable questions that are next to answer without any help. What segment of the customers to target? What platform? How to do it effectively? And so on. Moreover, marketing needs complete attention and focus, you cannot divide your attention with it. That’s why marketing services are provided by experts in the market nowadays.
Marketing an Online Store can be very tricky, it needs a lot of time as well need a lot of knowledge of marketing, how to attract and create customers, effective use of keywords in content, maintaining the website, updating blogs, offering coupons, the list can go on and on. This could be very hectic to handle along with handling Business deals and transactions. That’s where Max Vision Solutions steps in, you can transfer all your marketing responsibilities to us and can completely focus on your Online Store.
It was once said by Bill Gates, “If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business.”
Wanna hear something good? Max Vision Solutions helps you with every single step of starting an E-Commerce Business, not only marketing but with E-Commerce Web Development and e-commerce Website Design. And guess what we are not limited to E-Commerce we also provide Web Apps, Mobile Apps, and Maintenance services.
Max Vision Solutions accompanies you throughout your journey of setting up an E-Commerce Business, from the very first step to the last step, we are going to accompany you.
When you feel you are completely satisfied with the product and name of your choice for your online store, we will help you out with everything to make the process of starting an E-Commerce business easy.
How Does Max Vision Solutions Help?
- Max Vision Solutions starts with the E-Commerce Web Development and E-Commerce Website design with the consent of the client. When the client is satisfied with the name and type of product of the Online store of their choice (we also suggest product headings with keywords to increase the traffic), we start working on the process of Web Development where the functionalities are added to the Website design. In other words, the lifeless site is given existence at this stage and gives your dream life. This process generally takes 4-10 weeks, depending upon the Website designs and Web development to be used.
- Max Vision Solutions can also guide you with Legal Requirements that need to be fulfilled for starting an E-Commerce business. After completing Web Design, and Web Development, we started to work on the layout of the website. Uploading pictures of the products offered, providing their details/ descriptions, etc. We ensure that the features provided with the website are working properly. We give attention to every tiny detail and try to generate the expected outcome. Customer Satisfaction is our Satisfaction.
- Max Vision Solutions presents your products or services in front of the market in the most presentable manner and helps you to create customers. Along with product entries and customer creation, we started preparing for the launch of the Online Store with the help of Digital Marketing. We perform SMO and SEO for your E-Commerce Store to make a perfect position for your Online Store. Giving ads on social media accounts, attention-grasping taglines, and images that would define your E-Commerce business everything is covered by Max Vision Solutions. It generally takes 4-5 months to perform these tasks and create a reputation for the Online Store.
- Max Vision Solutions helps you to get a Web app for your business. Web Apps are those that support the browser settings and run successfully on the browser. We ensure that web apps delivered by us run properly and give satisfactory performance.
- Max Vision Solutions holds great expertise in Phone Applications. We deliver fully functioning and secure apps for IOS and Androids. Let’s face it, in today’s world, every single person owns a mobile phone even small kids own one. This obviously enhances the chances of people using phone applications as compared to websites and web apps. To make the process handy and accessible everyone must have a phone application, that’s where Max Vision Solutions comes to the rescue. Get a phone application for your website from our services.
- Max Vision Solutions is known for its security and maintenance services, not lying, we swear! Every service provided by us is completely secure, and we are saying this on the basis of our client’s feedback. We provide a 3-month free Annual Maintenance Contract after delivery of a web application and cover all the necessary maintenance requirements. Trust us, we won’t let you down.
Technologies used
There are a lot of options available in the market for Website design, Web Development, and other services, but like us, we like to choose the best. The technologies we use are:
- Magento E-Commerce: Magento is one of the best E-Commerce platforms generally used for large-size businesses as it is optimized to work with thousands of products, high traffic, and maximum sales. It is especially used by businesses that are expecting to grow in the future because of its scalable feature. Magento is an open-source platform with a free Community Edition. The Magento community is remarkably vast as it offers endless customization options and more than 2000+ product extensions. Magento is an E-Commerce platform that holds an incredibly flexible nature along with many other additional features that other E-Commerce Platforms lack. Magento can be expensive but it also gives optimal performance with SEO and Marketing features which are completely worth the expense. All these reasons conclude that Magento is the leading and the best E-Commerce platform.
- OpenCart: Opencart happens to be a marvelous E-Commerce system based on the MVC which makes developing extensions and customization process easy. It can be used for businesses that are not vast in nature. OpenCart Web Design has a great reputation in India and has a very user-friendly admin dashboard. Opencart allows us to edit the files in the core of CMS and provides ready-made templates. It also provides an easy way to make changes in your Opencart store.
- Woo-commerce: Woo-commerce is a tool that is used on WordPress. If you have a website on WordPress, then using Woo-Commerce you can add a cart system on your website without any complications. Woo-Commerce allows you to sell your items digitally along with keeping track of the products and managing the inventories with perfect payment gateway integration. This tool lets your WordPress website sell products and services, and if we look at the brighter side then this plugin is absolutely free with beneficial features.
Max Vision Solutions accompanies you throughout your journey of setting up an E-Commerce Business, from the very first step to the last step, we are going to accompany you.
When you feel you are completely satisfied with the idea for your online store, just contact us and we will help you out with everything to make the process of starting an E-Commerce business easy. To initiate a project with us or more feel free to contact Max Vision Solutions.