E-commerce has become a booming sector and more and more business owners are turning to E-commerce to harness its huge potential and cater to a wider audience. If you are a business owner looking to venture into E-commerce, there are dos and don’ts that you must be acquainted with so as to be successful.
Dos of E-commerce
Here are a couple of thing to do if you want to succeed with your ecommerce business:
Harness the Internet for Marketing
Planning for an e-commerce website is just as extensive as planning for a business. You must learn to organize and manage your budget properly, and put some aside for your marketing needs.
Just launching a ecommerce website and sitting back, waiting for customers to arrive is not an option. The web is a HUGE place, so you must always be looking for ways to grow and expand your business online, so keep looking for new marketing strategies and ways to do that.
And for that, you require money. So keep some budget aside for marketing. Marketing can be done on search engines and social media sites. You can also market offline informing potential and existing customers that they can now conveniently shop online on your website.
Make Sure Your Product or Service is Good
Business owners are attached to their products, so it is hard for them to identify any flaws if they exist. Test your product out. Show it to your friends, their friends and your family and their contacts as well.
Test it out, gather feedback, refine your product to near perfection. Word get around very fast online, so starting an e-commerce business with low quality products or service is bound to fail very quickly.
Listen to What Your Customers Say
Your customers are your lifeline. They are what keep you afloat on the internet, so catering to them is your number one goal. Catering for them will increase the chance that they will return.
Listen to all feedback, try to address their problems and work to solve them. Doing so will let your customers know that you care and will make them come back again and again.
Embrace Technology
There are several ecommerce platforms for building an e-commerce website. These tools will handle most of the technical issues, leaving with just the basic tasks. Don’t design a site just for the computer. Make sure your site can be accessed on smartphones and tablets and other devices as well.
In addition, take advantage of social networking to promote your products and store.
Don’ts of E-commerce
Here are thing you must not do:
Start with a Narrow Niche
If you have a product or a niche that you are specifically catering towards, stick to it and expand inside it. Once you are big and successful with it, then go towards newer products and niches.
The Nigeria e-commerce scene is currently dominated by Jumia and Konga, don’t try competing with these heavy weights. Don’t try to be like Amazon from the start, grow what you have and in time you will be big enough to vertically integrate your business.
Don’t Spam Your Customers
It is good to keep in touch with your customers, but don’t burden them with a lot of emails and promotions which will more likely turn them off from your business.
Don’t Do Everything by Yourself
Once your company is on the rise, there will be a lot of workload to keep your business working smoothly and efficiently. If you take it all upon yourself to take care of that, who is going to oversee the growth and scaling of your business? Get someone else to do that for you, while you focus on scalability.
Using services like BigCommerce can take a lot of the workload out. You may also need someone to upload products and handle fulfilment of orders.
Don’t Give Up
Rome wasn’t built in a day. The same goes for your business. The only way your e-commerce business will be successful is if you have the drive and passion to work hard and MAKE it successful.
