8 steps to a successful online store

So you’re ready to start selling your products online? We are so excited for you and so happy you’re here. We have helped hundreds of eCommerce Entrepreneurs set up their online store and here are the essentials to getting started:    

1. Validate your product and your pricing

You need to have a good product that people are willing to part with their money for. That’s just a non-negotiable. If you’re confident you have this then you need to validate your pricing before you do anything.

I often see people posting in groups and asking “how much would you pay for this”. This is the wrong question, to the wrong people.

If you feel like you must ask this question, and someone gives you a figure, ask them for some money. Because until they give you cold hard cash, their opinion is not something you can build your business on.

Get super clear on your gross profit margin and make sure you price your products that allows you to reinvest back into the business is an absolute non-negotiable when setting up an online store. Remember, it’s not about being the cheapest; it’s a very fast race to the bottom if you do this.

2. Develop your brand essentials

Your brand essentials include your business name, brand colours, logo, fonts and brand voice. Your brand is so much more than your logo, it’s how people feel.

Your brand is not what you say it is, it’s what your customers say it is.

By establishing clear brand essentials you have a true north to follow when setting up your site, developing your marketing and growing your business.

3. Secure the tech essentials

Make sure you own and control your domain name. Use a trusted provider and make sure you lock your domain.

Set up a professional email address for your store, something like hello@storename.com instead of storename@gmail.com is a lot more legitimate and has higher trust.

Secure all of the social handles (even the ones you aren’t using right now).

4. Setup your website  

We use and recommend Shopify for our own stores and clients. Shopify is a self-hosted platform that allows full transparency and control of your site. Click here to read more about which platform to use.

Setup your basic SEO and make sure you have installed the Facebook pixel, google tracking pixels and google analytics.

Once you’ve launched your site, you can request a free mini website audit from us. Click here to request your free mini website audit.

5. Make sure you comply

You need to have a clear and easy to find returns policy, privacy policy and shipping policy.

Make sure you comply with the new GDPR (The General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679) regulation if you sell to citizens of the European Union and the European Economic Area.

And of course, ensuring you comply with any legal bodies relevant to your industry is essential.

6. Showcase your product in the best light

When you live and breathe your product it’s easy to forget that not everyone knows as much about it as you do. You need to use great images, and clear and compelling copy (wording). Your site needs to be laid out it a way that makes it easy for people to buy from you. Confusion is the enemy.

7. Get setup for email marketing

Email marketing works and when done well drives a high return on investment. Even if you aren’t employing an email strategy yet, make sure you are collecting emails of your potential customers as well as those who abandon cart and purchase from you.

Remember you own your email list. If something were to happen to Facebook or Instagram tomorrow, or whatever social platform you are using, what would happen to your business?

8. Slay your social media

When you publish engaging, magnetic and compelling content on social media you can drive organic traffic and sales to your site. We do recommend a paid advertising strategy, but when you’re just starting out, organic social media great place to start. Share a great mix of product, lifestyle and behind the scenes content via your social media. We recommend you start with one or two platforms, and nail those first, rather than spreading yourself too thin. We usually suggest Facebook and Instagram, but if your customers don’t play on these platforms then don’t waste your time there. Fish where the fish are.

Follow these steps to make sure you set up your online store the right way, the first time. Reach out if you have any questions… we’re here for you.

Amazon, Etsy, Ebay or Shopify? How to decide which platform to use

Are you building your house on borrowed land? If you sell on Amazon, Etsy, Ebay or other third-party marketplaces, you could be.

There are certainly pros to selling on these sites. And I actually like to move old stock and one-off pieces on these third-party marketplaces.

But, before you put all your eggs in that basket, there are a few elements to consider.

Do you want to build a brand, or just sell products?

Do you want to be customer centric and build a loyal following, or are you happy to be a commodity?

I love what Paul Munford — CEO of Lean Luxe — has to say:

“If you give up control of customer experience and that direct relationship with the customer, then what do you really have?

Frankly, if I’m a brand on this path, I’m not even remotely worried about being on Amazon. It commodifies the brand. Nor am I really even looking to stock my stuff in non-Amazon third-party marketplaces either, because again that creates just another barrier between me and my customer.”

Paul Munford

If you want to build a brand which has loyalty and longevity we recommend a self-hosted platform like Shopify.

How important is customer retention?

We know that getting an existing customer to repeat purchase is easier and cheaper than finding a new customer. Did you know that it can cost 5x more to acquire new customers than to keep current ones?

On average, loyal customers are worth up to 10x as much as their first purchase. That’s why I like to aim for a minimum of 20-30% repeat purchase rate.

When we sell on our own website we have the ability to track and measure the entire purchase journey. We own the customer info, the pixel, the data. We can have an elegant communication strategy to encourage repeat purchase which includes retargeting and segmented automated communication sequences.

You don’t get this opportunity on many third-party platforms, however you do with a self-hosted platform such as Shopify.

How important is data to you?

Data shows us the truth. It shows us the true state of our online store, without any emotion, reasoning or bias.

Everything in eCommerce and digital marketing is literally just numbers. You can track and measure everything. There has never been a better time to have an online store. We have complete transparency over the customer experience, what’s working and what’s not working – and we have the agility to change it, literally overnight.

However, so much data is lost to you when you play on a third-party selling platform. I say the data is lost to you, because they still have the data. And they use this data cleverly too. Self-hosted platforms such as WordPress and Shopify allow full transparency of data.

Their platform, their control

Third-party marketplaces control the content on the site and they have every right to place whatever advertising they want on their platform. Including their own private label brands which are cheaper than your brand, underneath your brand! Thanks to John Max for sharing this:

If a shopper is on Amazon and a cheaper brand is featured directly underneath yours, is your brand strong enough to compete with that?

Another thing third-party marketplaces have control over is which shops they allow to operate.

I have a friend who had built a store on eBay turning over 6 figures a month. eBay shut them down overnight with little explanation and wasn’t interested in discussing the matter further. Their business was taken away from them literally overnight and there was nothing they could do about it.

So, before going all in with Amazon, eBay, Etsy or any other platform, look at your long term goals as a business.

If you want to create a brand and business asset you control, we recommend going with a self-hosted eCommerce website platform. Shopify is the platform that we use and recommend.

We recently did a live training on this is our free group Unstoppable eCommerce Entrepreneurs. We invite you to join the group and watch the training now. See you on the inside!Â