With a booming economy, this is one of the best times in recent memory to become an entrepreneur since it's never been easier to start an online business.
However, despite the slew of services that claim to be able to get your venture up and running in minutes, you need to sit down and do some careful planning.
After all, there's still a lot to consider, whether you're starting a side hustle or making a full-time commitment to a new enterprise.
The upside is that e-commerce levels the playing field and allows smaller startups to spin up quickly and start turning a profit.
While e-commerce solution companies, web-hosting providers, and retail giants seeking smaller partners will claim that online selling can be a turnkey process, which is true to the extent it has never been easier, there's still a lot to consider.
Starting an online business has become a complex challenge mostly because consumers are more sophisticated.
E-commerce opens up e-e-tailers to a world of customers, which means growing and scaling the business is something to consider.
Tools and online retail platforms like Shopify Plus are designed with their global success in mind.
While giant e-tailers thrive by selling thousands of products through their web portals, there are thousands of incumbent direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands dominating social media and gaining popularity and prominence on apps and services their target customers already use.
For entrepreneurs launching new businesses, they have the option of aligning with larger sellers and providing their products on an established platform.
Conversely, they can build their own buzz, employ solutions like Shopify to build their e-commerce business, and run ads on Facebook and Instagram to generate sales leads.
There's no one solution for all businesses, so finding the right mix of software and services remains a challenge for entrepreneurs.
Check out five recent trends that can help small to midsize businesses (SMBs) succeed in e-commerce.
To help, check out the simplified e-commerce planning checklist below.
We've added insights on a broad swath of potential e-commerce business decisions so you can sit down and build yourself an actionable e-commerce business plan.
As you go through this list, however, keep in mind that no one article about e-commerce can possibly contain all of the information you'll need to build a working business; so start here and then examine other options to turn your plan into reality.
A great resource for this that's often under-utilized by even seasoned entrepreneurs is the US Small Business Administration (SBA), the agency that drives National Small Business Week (NSBW) every year.
Most people overlook the SBA because they believe it exists solely to provide small loans to people looking to start local storefront-style businesses.
In actuality, the SBA is a highly mature, well-funded organization that offers a myriad of resources to all kinds of business, including several funding paths, mentorship, learning resources, and even talent acquisition.
And, yes, they understand e-commerce.
Start by visiting the agency's website to familiarize yourself with the its latest tools, like Lender Match, which will help match your venture to the right kind of access capital.
Then make an appoint with your local SBA office or resource center (the sight will have location and contact information for an office near you).
Once you've got a business plan down on paper, connect with your local SBA SCORE chapter and have an experienced mentor vet your work.
You'll be surprised how much value they can add.
Pick a Business
E-commerce has more options these days than simply starting your own storefront, so do you homework here to make sure you're starting the right kind of venture.
One increasingly popular example of an alternative e-commerce business is to build your own affiliate marketing network.
Basically, affiliate marketing is where a number of brands combine forces to join up with other third-party promotion and content channels to market their wares.
It's both popular and rapidly growing, with research firms like Statista predicting up to $8.2 billion in US affiliate marketing spend by 2020.
Getting into this game is relatively easy as most affiliates can be organized into three basic categories that include single-person marketing operations (an excellent place to start), brand influencers (similar to solo marketing except with a focus on thought leadership content), and larger publishers, which might still apply if you've been running a content-oriented site for some time, especially if you've developed friends who run similar sites with whom you can ally and form your own network.
Affiliate marketers from the brand side will look to spend money with third-party marketers who can attract the right kind of audience, one interested in whatever the brand is trying to sell.
So for example, if you've been uploading articles and Youtube videos teaching people how to paint fantasy wargaming miniatures for the last several years, you'd be an excellent solo marketing or influencer affiliate candidate for brands like the miniature makers, Hasbro (which publishes Dungeons and Dragons), as well as the companies that make hobby paints and tools.
The trick is establishing those affiliate relationships.
Affiliate marketing has its own set of software tools, including everything from mature leaders, like LinkTrust, to specialty services like Tipalti, which only manages your affiliate payments.
Pick your tools carefully and then focus on outreach to start your relationships.
"Develop a partnership target list," said Michelle Dwyer, Ziff Media Group's Director of Partner Management who handles many of the company's affiliate marketing activities.
"Find out who is covering the topic and from there, figure who would be a good fit for content covering your brand, product, or audience."
Choosing a Platform
If straight e-commerce is still your preferred route, remember that the best e-commerce software providers help you with more than simply setting up a website.
They can track and manage inventory, fulfill and ship orders, maintain a product database, track sales, market to customers, maintain a loyalty program, use offline channels to sell, and even run a marketing blog.
These tools essentially pull in the various elements that automate, digitize, and track how and when products are sold on your website.
Tools like Shopify and PinnacleCart provide comprehensive solutions that let you edit your site.
They can also facilitate connections with third-party software solutions like email marketing and customer relationship management (CRM) tools, all from within one dashboard.
In order to choose the right partner, focus on ease-of-use, scalability, cost, and especially third-party extensions.
That last one will become important as your business grows because while your e-commerce platform will continue to be an important tool no matter how large your company gets, its data will need to be shared with other tools as your company expands.
That could include not only the customer and marketing tools mentioned above, but also accounting systems, inventory management systems, and even different payment processors should you outgrow the one that came with your original platform.
Those factors will be among the most important aspects of your day-to-day e-commerce website management.
Once you've chosen a software partner, they'll help guide you along the rest of the processes mentioned in this piece.
Web Hosting
Web hosting services store your website's files on its servers and deliver them to your customers' browsers. The best-in-class tools will help your website load quickly, stay secure, and seldom if ever go offline.
Tools like GoDaddy Web Hosting ($5.99/Month at GoDaddy) are synonymous with solid uptime, reasonable rates, and excellent client support.
When choosing a web hosting provider, it's important to research potential partners on websites like Cloud Spectator and Review Signal, where you can do things like compare uptime and reliability metrics.
You'll want to query their client services team to see how quickly and often they'll respond to you, and you'll want to ask about the company's security policies in order to ensure that your data is protected. Your e-commerce software can also serve as a web hosting service, so be sure to ask each vendor if this is possible when selecting an e-commerce tool.
Website Design
How your website looks and feels will impact whether or not customers decide to stay on your website or shop on a competitor website.
Design elements like sticky header navigation, hamburger menus, and parallax scrolling are just a few of the e-commerce design elements you'll need to know to design a fantastic shopping experience.
In our article covering how to design a great web storefront, we list the most important features designed for desktop and mobile e-commerce.
We provide examples of best-in-class websites and how they use each design element to enhance the shopping experience.
The most successful businesses know that having a website or a Facebook page is just the starting point to building an online presence.
More people access the web and services from mobile devices now, so having a website that caters to a responsive design, which can shift seamlessly from small screen to big screen will give your business a huge advantage.
If, after reading the article, you're still confused about it all works, talk to your e-commerce software vendor.
They'll be able to explain what is possible, whether or not you should implement it on your website, and how it will impact sales.
Technological Know-How
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to build an e-commerce website.
That's because most of the brainpower is provided by your e-commerce platform provider before you even start designing your website.
However, it's still important for you to understand the technological elements that should be monitored and tweaked in order to keep your website running optimally.
Does your website offer 256-bit Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption? If not, you need to look into purchasing an SSL certificate immediately to avoid being flagged as potentially dangerous by Google.
Does your webpage load in less than 100 milliseconds (ms)? If not, you need to go back to your web design tool and start tweaking settings.
Does your vendor consistently deliver new code to your website for performance improvements or new features? Those need to be tested under a variety of conditions if you don't want a 911 alert from your website monitoring tool when the site crashes.
These are just a few of the technical aspects you'll need to consider as you choose a vendor, and as your website grows.
Building an Audience
Content marketing,email marketing , and affiliate partnerships with other websites are excellent ways not only to make money in the short-term, but to gradually build momentum for your e-storefront, too. Unfortunately, not everyone has resources they can dedicate to these tasks.
Most will be solo operations where a single person is trying to get by wearing many hats, and, unfortunately, marketing often gets short shrift, especially in e-commerce businesses.
That's a problem because customers can't come to your store if they don't know about it.
But lack of marketing continues to be a problem among new e-commerce businesses, because newcomers often want to believe that e-commerce marketing will take care of itself in the background.
As the affiliate marketing business (above) amply demonstrates, however, that's not the case.
Sure you can setup an Amazon or Ebay storefront and hope the larger sites and their search engines will bring customers to your page organically, but you'll have much better results if you put in some actual effort.
Fortunately, there are several surefire ways to market your new e-commerce website without having to spend a ton of time or money.
These tactics are focused on quick wins that drive traffic to your website within the website's first few weeks. Options like Facebook and Google ads, earned media, influencer endorsements, and even good old fashioned in-person hustling at events will help you to generate proverbial foot traffic even as you're still building out your inventory.
Good first steps include pricing out an email marketing list for your target customers.
If you're able to afford one, you can easily begin marketing to that audience using tools like Mailchimp, which have a low cost to entry and let you slice, dice, and monitor your customers and their reactions from multiple angles.
After that, look into marketing automation tools, which let you generate one set of marketing collateral and then deliver it through multiple channels automatically.
Payment Processing
Just because a consumer has gone through the browsing and selecting process on your website, it doesn't mean he or she will actually make a purchase.
In fact, up to 74.5 percent of shoppers abandon cart, according to SalesCycle data.
Additionally, there are many new payment options popping up on consumers' radar, so you should stay informed on what kind of payment methods your customers most want to use.
In order to guide users through the payment process, you'll want to choose a vendor that can deliver seamless, secure, and intuitive checkout.
What kinds of payments will you accept? How simple can you make your payments form? Is your website PCI Compliant? You'll need to consider these factors and more when choosing a payment processing partner.
Several strategies exist to make this process easier.
For one, consider a merchant services provider as your payment processor rather than a regular bank.
These operations are laser-focused on just payment processing and so can help not only on a per-transaction price, but also on accepting the latest forms of mobile payments, keeping your payment process secure, and also remaining in compliance with the latest payment regulations.
E-Fulfillment
What good is luring customers to your website if the products they purchase are never delivered? E-Fulfillment companies help manage inventory availability, packing, shipping, and handling returns, among many other things. In order to choose the right fulfillment partner, you should consider aspects like flexibility and pricing, storage capacity and fees, scalability, and process automation.
Companies like eFulfillment Service (EFS) integrates with online shopping cart platforms to help communicate data from the website to the warehouse to the customer and back to you.
Choosing an e-fulfillment partner can be quite daunting, especially if you've never gone through the process.
Speak with your intended e-commerce software company about the companies with which they partner and which they think will provide the most seamless integration.
Website Performance
Once you're up and running, take some time...
