Starter Kit for eCommerce Business.

With Safety and Social Distancing being of highest importance there’ll be huge shifts in customer buying behavior. People would want to shop as much as possible from the safety of their homes. They might directly buy from the manufacturers to avoid unnecessary exposure to the product. Given the layoffs and pay cuts end consumers are cutting down on indulgence but not on quality*. The behavior is becoming more and more price elastic. Starting your brand’s eCommerce Business is not an option but a NEED of the hour !!!

Hence, starting an eCommerce business is a logical choice for any business owner big or small. It also has the added benefit of cutting down on any intermediaries and earning to the maximum potential without any trade cuts. Sharing simple 3 step guide below to start an eCommerce Business post-COVID-19:

SELECT THE RIGHT PARTNERS

To kickstart your eCommerce business, you need to identify the right partner. I say the right partner and not the right service provider as there’s a fine line of difference. A partner is always looking out for business growth and they become part of your business however a service provider may prioritize his own goals and which may restrict your business growth. Right Partners become your asset even before the website starts clocking orders.

Please find an easy checklist that can help make this decision:

1. Does the Partner understand and align with your Goals & Objectives?

2. Do they have proven experience & results in the given vertical?

3. Do they have the tools and features available to drive a high-performance e-Commerce store? (Features like personalization, dynamic content rendering, recommendations, automated shopping feed, analytics engine, deep data analysis, etc. that will be required to scale business)

OPT FOR A COMPLETE END-TO-END WEBSITE SOLUTION

Next step, post selecting the partner is setting up a scalable eCommerce enabled website. While plug and play might seem interesting and easy to manage, it can quickly become a lot of hassle to keep adding various plugins & filters then integrating them, ensuring correct parameters are passed, and hope that it keeps working to avoid any shipping or payment issues. A lot of other platforms may charge you additionally for such filters and plugins. In contrast a pre-integrated end-to-end brand eCommerce solution (like Shoptimize) can come in handy to ensure peace of mind with proven integrations across 100s of clients over the years.

DRIVE TRAFFIC & CONVERSIONS ON THE WEBSITE

Once the eCommerce store is set up the next vital step is to drive more and more users and conversions (Generating Leads, Add to carts, Purchases, etc.) on the website. Selecting a partner who has proven experience with Digital Marketing (SEO, SEM, Facebook, Instagram, email, SMS, etc.) helps manifold here as they already have experience of driving goals for multiple clients. If you find a great partner who can do both (create a website and grow business on the website) believe me you have struck gold as nothing performs better than a 360 degree digital marketing campaign with consistent messaging across Ads and website. It also provides the best customer.