I have been in e-commerce for almost six years, and I have met a lot of e-merchants.

I have seen that today, with the arrival of online e-commerce training sellers, several people are going into online selling.

A way to make money fast

But what they forget is that e-commerce is a profession in its own right and can be learned.

Creating a store requires mastering several skills: logistics, web marketing, customer/supplier relationship, social media management, web design, natural referencing, etc. You may get the services of a Web Design Company to develop your professional eCommerce store.

Managing a merchant site is one of the complete jobs on the internet.

I know many e-merchants who work on their site for months and months, even years, without paying. It’s hard work, but so interesting when you know how to do it.

Invest time and money in your e-commerce

Invest financially

I still see too many e-merchants who want to save money on everything and therefore do not want to invest, not even $ 30 to create a professional logo or $ 70 to have a more ergonomic theme.

But you can’t master all the skills necessary for e-commerce alone.

You must delegate!

I can already hear you say: “I have no money? How can I delegate ?!”

I am not talking about investing thousands of dollars but at least a few hundred dollars for the launch.

Subsequently, once the site is launched, do not hesitate to do the same to develop site traffic (without traffic, there is no sale – as beautiful as your site maybe). Invest a small budget in Facebook advertising, launch contests, have your products tested with bloggers who, in return, will write you articles that will turn into a turnover.

If you don’t invest a minimum of money on your site, nothing will happen!

  • No sales.
  • No one knows your site.
  • Google doesn’t know you. He didn’t reference you.
  • You are, therefore, invisible!

I’m not saying that without money you can’t succeed, but it will be much more complicated!

E-commerce is hard! When a physical store opens, if it is well placed, it will have natural traffic (passers-by in the street) from the 1st day. In contrast, your e-commerce site will have very few visitors on the first day (s).

When 40-50% of visitors to a physical store buy, the ecommercant only sells it to 1 or 2% of its visitors; this is called the conversion rate or e-commerce conversion rate.

You understand that investing at the site’s launch and even more after, daily, to have traffic must be a priority for you.

Time investment

When you start, I advise you to start next to your salaried job, because you can wait for months and months or even years before having a suitable turnover which will allow you to pay.

But you have to make sure you work a certain number of hours every day. Let’s say 2 hours per day during the week and 4 hours per day on weekends, for a total of 18 hours per week. I think it’s a minimum to develop an e-commerce site is a part-time job.

If you think that you will launch an e-commerce site without money and especially without elbow grease, go your way, you will have to “fight” to get each order.

Make your site professional

Your site should inspire confidence. He must reassure the customer. E-commerce has been professionalized for a long time. The customer is mature, and we can no longer sell online lightly.

Get inspiration from big sites to create your e-commerce site. You must put down on paper the features you want to find on your site, the host you want, the design …

This is called the specifications.

Here are some essential elements to make your site professional:

  • Display your phone number prominently at the top
  • Display credit card logos at the bottom of the page
  • Have a contact page, legal notices, CGV
  • Create a page, “Who are we?”
  • Create FAQs
  • Avoid spelling mistakes
  • Create a size guide
  • Use an internal search engine more advanced than the basic one of your site
  • Use quality visuals showing the product from all angles
  • Use video to showcase your products
  • Display that the product is in stock on the product sheet as well as the estimated delivery date
  • Make descriptions that explain the benefits of the product and not its characteristics
  • Simplify account creation or authorize guest orders

In addition to reassuring the visitor, you must make their life easier; the visitor is volatile. If he has to look for the information, he will eventually leave, and if he is not reassured enough, he will not buy from you.

Do not store or store little product

One of the biggest mistakes of e-merchants is wanting to stock their products from the start.

I advise you to start with dropshipping suppliers because you will have little investment, and you will be able to integrate many products.

Why dropshipping? When you start your business, you don’t know what products will work or not work, so stocking up at this point can be fatal to your small business’s life.

When I launched my 1st subscription diaper site, I built up more than $ 5,000 in stock, and you know what I did to sell? I bought the same quantities for each diaper size, while the best selling sizes are 3, 4, and 5. When I made my first sales, I almost exclusively sold these sizes mentioned, so I quickly found myself out of stock. If I had been able to operate with dropshipping, I would have had a vision of what works, which sizes are selling the most, and I would have been able to shop for merchandise accordingly. I would have made more sales, and I would have less stocked the products that worked less.

Tell yourself that a product that does not sell is money that goes out and does not go in your pocket, not to mention the storage costs if there is any.

On the other hand, an essential thing, you must be able to update your stock with that of the supplier to not sell an unavailable product. At first, sales are scarce, so don’t cancel sales and lose a customer because of it. Nowadays, many modules allow inventory synchronization.

4. Stand out from your competition

If you sell a product that everyone else is selling, you will have very little chance of someone coming to buy from you. Please select a product that is not already selling or in the physical store established on the street because they will inevitably have better prices than you. You have to get the customer to buy from you. For this, I advise you to do a market study before creating a site.

How do you get the customer to buy from you?

Create your brand

To develop their turnover, many e-commerce sites create their brand. This makes it possible to have a unique product and, therefore, a better impact on buyers. And above all, to have greater margins than on other products.

In my work, I see the strength of this strategy. We achieve 30% of our turnover on our brands, which is not negligible with comfortable margins.

On the other hand, you must have a strategy of developing notoriety for your brand; otherwise, as for your site, no one will buy it because no one will know it.

Offer a personalization service

By adding personalization to a product, you make it unique in the buyer’s eyes, and you can also sell it for more.

Offer Superior Business Service to Your Competitors

Let’s be honest. If you had the choice between 2 sites: one offers free shipping and offers free shipping and returns. Which would you buy from? I think I already know the answer …

Also, be available by email or phone. I see it at work. Suppose you knew the number of people calling each day either for reassurance or because the product is technical and needs advice. Like physical stores, e-commerce is not exempt from the advice part; you must reassure your future customer by phone or email about your site’s reliability and products.

Have a real long-term strategy

With the rise of dropshipping + Facebook traffic fashion, new e-merchants starting have no long-term strategy.

The only strategy is to build up Facebook traffic, find a winning product and “scale” (increase advertising) to make more revenue, and resell the store a few months later.

The real problem with this strategy, which I call the “coup strategy”, is that at the slightest problem on Facebook ads, overnight, the turnover can drop or even end up at 0.

I’m not saying this strategy is bad, but you shouldn’t do it all. You have many marketing tools available, so you might as well use them!

If you are serious about launching a site, it will take time and money, as we saw above, and you must have a strategy. Know where you are going, what means do you need to get there.

Don’t depend on a single source of traffic

It goes back to point 5. With just one source of traffic, you won’t get very far if it suddenly cuts out.

In SEO, for example, I have seen friends see their traffic cut by 3 in a few days.

It was a malicious competitor, and everything was back to normal, but only after 1 or 2 months. Result: a sudden drop in turnover

Your sources of traffic should be diverse and varied; that’s ideal. For example, 20% referrer site (other sites that talk about your site), 20% AdWords, 30% SEO, 20% Facebook Ads, 10% marketplace. This is only an example, but you have understood the principle.