When starting an e-commerce business and setting up your store, you need to have an understanding of how to approach your online marketing. By doing this research, you will not rely solely on Facebook. Your marketing and advertising should be done on multiple platforms, such as social media, Google, native, and display networks.
The reason behind this is it will broaden your reach and help you achieve your goal of getting the most sales at the cheapest cost per acquisition. There are plenty of online resources to help you get started, build your store, choose a catchy brand domain name, create your advertisement, and establish a quality customer care support system. For your e-commerce to succeed, there are six fundamental steps you need to be following. These steps will serve as a guide on what to do and what not to do when setting up your store.
Find a Trending Product
In order to begin your e-commerce journey and start with Shopify, you are going to want to choose a niche or product to sell. My suggestion is to choose something that is currently trending. This will attract more customers to your store and guarantee the product meets their current needs. If you can’t find a trending product that you want to sell, then choose a product that is going to fix or solve a consumer’s problem.
Set Up a Shopify Store
After you found your product, you will want to start working directly through Shopify’s main website to set up your own store. Shopify is an e-commerce software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that allows anyone to set up an online store and sell their products. This is the platform that I recommend because it is easy to use since it was created for average users. Besides being user-friendly, it has low startup costs, it offers to convert themes, has great dropshipping options — such as Oberlo and AliExpress — and their technical support system is available 24 hours a day.
Once you start working towards setting your store, it is important to select a name with something along the lines of the product you are trying to sell and market. Shopify has a trial you can use to begin and free themes that you can select from, which basically help with the design of your store. When the store is designed, you will need to create a logo to serve as the store’s branding and watermarks for advertising.
Set Up Apps for Your Store
When your store is set up, it is time to add apps that allow you to plug into your theme and dashboard to do the customization of your store. One of those essential apps is called Oberlo. This will allow you to find products, add them to your store, and customize the descriptions, so they match and relate to your store. I recommend utilizing Oberlo because it has the best in-depth statistics to make sure that the product that you are choosing is the best. Plus, it allows you to look at the potential product before you start selling it, and you can buy directly from the supplier to have shipped to your customer. They include an automated tool to change the price of your products so you can focus on getting the traffic you need. You can always keep track of where your order is at all times, and the settings will automatically add your profit.
AliExpress is another app that offers products. However, adding products traditionally from this app is a process that can’t be done in minutes, and keeping track of their prices and availability can be extremely challenging. Instead of having to solve those issues, Oberlo lets you import dropshipping products directly from Aliexpress into your store. You can then ship them directly to the customer. A great tip is to install their Google Chrome extension in order to select the products to import to Shopify.
Get Traffic and Sales
An especially important tool to start generating traffic is having a Facebook fan page. You need to create a new Facebook brand/product page and complete the process, always keeping in mind that it is necessary for people to recognize you to have a cover picture and Facebook profile picture. This fan page should be related to your product or store, allowing your customers to gather more information and be redirected to your website for purchases.
The next step, after creating your fan page, is to set up your Facebook Business Manager in order to launch your ads campaign. For the ads to attract new customers and be appealing to those who see them, you need to do your research and find the interested demographics related to the product you want to sell. These Facebook ads should have a link to the product or products you are selling, and which are available on your website.
In order to make the ads attractive, you need to create a highly clickable image or an interesting video related to the demographics that you are targeting. This will guarantee that the customer clicks and views your product in your store. Those Facebook ads will become your first advertisement, so you need to make sure that they represent your brand and your logo. The key is to drive traffic directly to your product with engaging content in your ads and headlines. This will help you begin to get sales, as long as everything is in line and has the proper set up with engaging advertisements.
Provide Solid Customer Service
Before you start getting sales, you want to make sure that you have the correct customer support set up. You want to have a support system that is answering all questions pertaining to the product and the store. It is particularly important to make sure that your support team is responding to Facebook messages, has a special live chat system, and is on top of every e-mail that they are receiving. Having quality customer service will help you have a good rapport with your customers.
Remember, your customers will want updates on the product that they have purchased. You need to have a good tracking system in place for them to keep an eye on, as well as an informed technical support system that will be able to answer any questions they may have regarding the shipping and delivery of their product.
Rinse, Repeat, and Scale
For your store to succeed, you need to understand your basic metrics, such as advertising spend, revenue, and cost of goods. Once you do, you can then work on scaling your store, understanding the other metrics, and dialing in your audience more with lookalike audiences. As you start to progress and gain more purchases, you can begin to advertise other products related to the niche you have been working with. This is another way to help expand your business.
These steps I have described are the ones you should be following in order to launch a successful e-commerce business. It is necessary to do your product and demographic research before you start selling. By knowing what to sell and who to sell it to, you will be prepared to set up an appealing store and create attractive ads that will redirect customers to your website.
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