Launching an eCommerce website is easy. Find some stuff to sell, buy a website in a box (or just create an eBay account), upload your logo and you’re live. You have an eCommerce website. What you don’t have is an eCommerce Business. Whilst launching a successful eCommerce business includes all of that, it also requires much more.
Before you do anything more than putting pen to paper you need to decide on three things:
- What is your eCommerce Business Structure?
- What is your Product Range Scope?
- What is your USP (Unique Selling Proposition)?
Those three decisions form the basis of everything else for your business, and will help you avoid all the other common mistakes.
There are seven eCommerce Business Structures, defined by how customers can buy your products. For most start up businesses there are only three real options;
1) Online Only – you have your own website
2) Boutique Bricks and Clicks – you have one or two physical shops and a website
3) PiggyBacking, where instead of having a website you use eBay, Amazon, Etsy etc to host your online store. Understanding which you are enables you to focus on the right activities and avoid distractions.
Right now the most successful online businesses are those at either end of the Product Range Scope. The Product Range Scope is about how wide your product selection is. Successful businesses are either Department Stores (see Amazon) or very, very Niche (see theperfumeshop.com). Very few businesses can launch at the Department Store level – so it’s best to make sure you have a very niche and focused product range.
A niche product range gives you lots of benefits – your money won’t be spread across too much stock, you will do better in the search engines because your website will focused on certain keywords, your blog will be easier to write, and (most importantly) customers will “get” your business quicker.
The third thing you need to identify is your USP; what is it that makes you different? Customer Service? Product? Price? Branding? Whatever it is, you need to become the best at that in your marketplace – can you?
Once you understand those three, then it’s much easier to avoid the rest of these five common mistakes;
1) The wrong website
However big or established your business is, your website needs to be fit for purpose. Don’t buy a five-figure site if you’re only going to sell four-figures worth of products in year one.
If you’re a Boutique Bricks and Clicks business, then it would be really helpful if your website talked to your shop stock system. If you’re a PiggyBacker then you probably don’t need a website (or even a blog) of your own on day one. If your USP is your brand, then your website needs to represent that.
2) Cheap hosting
If your website doesn’t work or is too slow, your customers won’t buy – so don’t scrimp on your hosting fees.
3) I have built it – where are the visitors?
Putting a website live is not the same as opening a shop. When you open a shop you already have people walking by on the pavement. You don’t have that online (unless you’re a PiggyBacker, of course).
So you’ve got to spend some money on marketing. You have to get people to your website – no one else is going to do it for you. So from day one you need a marketing plan. Often that will be built around the strengths of the people in the team – so if you have a background in PR then it would be silly not to include that.
4) Relying too heavily on one marketing method – you have to have a mix to succeed
Playing to your marketing strengths is great, but very few eCommerce businesses have been built on one marketing tactic alone – so you need to use at least three, if not more. Tactics include email, PR, PayPerClick, blogging, video, direct mail and more.
5) Not capturing customer data
Please, please, please include an email sign up form on your website. AND opt your buyers into your email marketing and postal marketing.
You may not be emailing or direct mailing on day one, but you will probably do both, at some point – so make sure you’ve got the data ready when you go down that route.
This is just a handful of the common mistakes people make when launching an eCommerce business. These, and all the other mistakes, can be avoiding if you think and plan, before rushing into things. For more information see: www.eCommerceMasterPlan.com
