Things to Consider Before Starting an eCommerce Business

Launching an eCommerce businesses can be great way to get your start in business, due in large part, to the low overhead costs. Of course, costs can vary depending on your industry but you will find that an online business is often much easier to manage and will require less startup cash, compared with brick and mortar ventures. If you are currently thinking about starting your an eCommerce business, whether that’s to sell physical or digital goods, subscriptions or anything else, have a look at some of the points below to determine if it’s something you can manage.

Start Up and Running Costs

Even though the start up costs of an eCommerce business can be small, you’ll still want to make a business plan and list everything you’ll need. One of the biggest advantages of eCommerce businesses is that they can be started from the comfort of your own home, and as the business grows you can then think about office and warehouse premises depending on your requirements. Some start up costs involved when starting a new business online are outlined below.

• Business registration (you will need to choose one of the different types of business entities)
• Website design and development
• Web hosting and maintenance
• Marketing and advertising
• Inventory and storage
• Business phone & utilities
• Office supplies

Of course, there will be more to consider and your level of seriousness will determine how much you choose to invest initially. You may even want to hire a small unit that is close to a post office so you can easily pack and post goods with ease.

Finding Suppliers

One of the hardest things to do when starting a business in the world of eCommerce is finding a reliable supplier that can provide you with the products you want to sell. The supplier needs to be reliable for a start, but they will also need to be cheap enough for you to be able to make a profit. This is when a big investment is handy because you will be able to buy products in bulk which will give you much bigger discounts, thus making you more profit.

Customer Support Methods

You will need to be able to provide the best support to your customers to make sure your business is a success. You will need to think about this step carefully, because you’ll want to be able to provide support via a variety of methods. Phone support is a good start, but you will also want to consider email support, and a support ticketing system for customers to take advantage of. Providing a variety of support methods will do you many favors, but it will also take a lot of time out of your day responding to requests, so you may eventually have to hire someone to help out.

The above points are just some of the many points to consider before diving in and starting your eCommerce business. It will be a lot of hard work, but if you start with a good business plan and set yourself monthly targets, there is no reason why you can’t profit from a successful eCommerce store.

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Things to Consider Before Starting an eCommerce Business

Facebook Advertising Tips for the ECommerce Entrepreneur

According to a study conducted by MarketingSherpa a couple of years back, the average gross margin for eCommerce stores was found to be somewhere between 30% and 40%.

Gross margin, by definition, is the difference between revenue and cost of goods sold. If you take into account the operating expenses, salaries, taxes and other expenses, the net margin for eCommerce stores can be quite minimal.

It does not actually make sense to advertise your eCommerce store in this scenario. Pay per click advertising has become quite expensive over the years. The conventional logic of identifying niche targeted keywords to advertise might not be profitable any more.

This is also the case with Facebook advertising. The average CPC can be around $ 0.35, and this number is likely to be much higher for newsfeed ads that are known to offer the highest conversion rate. In this article, we will take a look at a few tips that can help eCommerce advertisers sell their products on Facebook.

Use Retargeting Ads

Two million blog posts are written every single day. At the same time, the consumption of internet-based media content has dramatically risen. One study showed that the average user consumes nearly eight hours of media content each day.

And media consumption on the Internet itself has risen 105% between 2010 and 2015. This is a fantastic opportunity for eCommerce advertisers to make use of non-sales targeted content to draw in their niche audience and then retarget these readers with product ads.

Take the example of an eCommerce store selling spare auto parts. The store owner in this case could publish content that covers topics in which a car owner would be highly interested. Once the audience has been drawn in through organic means, these readers can then be retargeted with product ads on Facebook. The CPC in this case is likely to be way lower than that of regular Facebook ads.

Sponsored Message Ads

Facebook has recently been experimenting with ads delivered over Facebook Messenger. In essence, the user would receive from the sponsor a new message notification with which they might engage.

To eCommerce business owners, Facebook Messenger is a lucrative channel. The reason why is they can set up personalized conversations with each of their prospective buyers.

For best results though, you should let the user initiate the conversation with you. You can achieve this by using conventional advertising techniques and using the “Send Message” call to action.

Clicking this CTA will take users to the Messenger window where they can have a conversation about the product with the eCommerce store. You can check out this guide on Facebook advertising from Shopify for a more detailed tutorial.

Use Facebook Offers

The Facebook advertising platform has a number of elements that makes it attractive to eCommerce advertisers. One popular feature is “Offers,” which allows advertisers to promote an offer exclusively to Facebook users. An offer in this instance can be a discount of a certain dollar amount or percentage value. Offers can also be free giveaways or even BOGO (Buy One, Get One) deals.

Advertisers can choose to host the offer campaign within Facebook or redirect it to their own websites. They could also choose to restrict the campaign to their own Facebook groups or make it available to the larger audience across Facebook. The Facebook Offers feature works really well if you sell impulse goods that customers are ready to buy without any significant forethought.

Tie in Facebook Advertising with Other Marketing Channels

As an eCommerce business owner, you are likely to make use of a bunch of marketing channels. These might include advertising, email marketing, content marketing and even offline advertising.

Quite often, marketers make the mistake of assuming that these channels are independent of each other. Because of this misunderstanding, they carry out their campaigns in silos. But doing so is sub-optimal. It not only leads to an inefficient campaign but also could be expensive since you might be spending money acquiring the same customer twice over these different campaigns.

It is important to bring together these different channels in order to have a single view of your customers. You could do so by integrating your audience from your email marketing list with the one from your Facebook channel.

Or you could bring together your retargeting campaigns from both Facebook and Google. Streamlining your campaigns ensures continuity and also brings down the cost of acquiring one unique customer.

The post Facebook Advertising Tips for the ECommerce Entrepreneur appeared first on Growmap.

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Facebook Advertising Tips for the ECommerce Entrepreneur

How To Evaluate Your B2B E-Commerce Platform

Are you one of those organizations that believe that investing in a B2B e-commerce platform is all that is needed to get your business going? Have you felt a nagging sense that somehow the platform isn’t the magic pill you hoped it would be?

Investing in such platforms is only the first step. Successful organizations conduct regular evaluations of how the platform is performing to ensure that it is an optimal fit.

There are multiple ways to evaluate the B2B e-commerce platform you use. No matter how you do it, the platform must prove more than satisfactory in the following areas.

Business objectives

One of the first things you need to determine is if the platform is meeting your company’s business objectives. Having a best-in-class platform means very little if it doesn’t help you meet your objectives.

Designed for B2B

The platform you use must necessarily be able to cater to the needs of your niche, i.e., B2B. A generic platform is not created with the nuances of B2B e-commerce in mind, so you may find yourself missing out on a lot of opportunities to maximize sales.

Many businesses struggle to choose between vendors. The video below talks about how using a traditional purchasing process designed for B2C  won’t work well for B2B. It takes too long to go through an RFI (request for information), then RFP (request for proposal) to finally arrive at the POC (proof of concept).

If you don’t ask the right questions in the RFI, you will end up with the wrong platform or a design that doesn’t meet your needs. In this video, the consultant explains his agile process for selecting software for B2Bs. We include it here to give businesses a better idea of how to go about deciding which B2B ecommerce platform to use.

Customizable

Your customers’ needs are unique and so are those of your business. In order to be the right fit, your B2B e-commerce platform must feature functionality that can be customized to your requirements. This will give you leverage in terms of efficiency, customer experience and overall performance.

Resources

What kind of resources does the platform require to be operational? Is the organization able to engage adequate number of dedicated team members to make the most of the platform?

Third-party integration

With complexity in business increasing by the day, it is necessary to tack on additional functions when required. When the e-commerce platforms don’t provide the particular functionality you’re looking for, the ideal solution is to use third-party applications and integrating the same with the platform. However, if your platform doesn’t allow third-party integrations, you could find yourself stuck in a rut in more ways than one.

Financial viability

Another aspect to examine is how the financial aspects related to the platform are working for you. Is the pricing model comfortable enough as per budgetary considerations? Does the vendor allow easy migration from one pricing plan to another? How is the total cost of ownership impacting your organization? If you believe that your purse strings need to be tightened, you may have to consider changing your platform.

Hosting

Plenty of B2B e-commerce players are still using on-premise systems. It is, however, becoming imperative to move to cloud-delivered platforms. According to Gartner, in 2015, worldwide spending on digital commerce software had attained a 15% year-over-year increase. What’s more, Forrester predicts that the B2B e-commerce market alone will be worth $ 1.1T compared to the B2C market at $ 480B.

Successful B2B e-commerce players are moving to cloud-delivered platforms to combat outdated processes, limited sales channels, and poor customer experience. Cloud-delivered platforms not only provide insight to customer experience, they also help you personalize the experience and minimize friction.

All these factors aside, it is, admittedly, not an easy process to transition from one platform to another. However, restrictive or under-performing e-commerce platforms are toxic to your organization’s push for success. In comparison, a meticulously planned transition to an ideally suited e-commerce platform can facilitate a significant boost in sales and revenue. The choice is pretty clear.

The post How To Evaluate Your B2B E-Commerce Platform appeared first on Growmap.

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How To Evaluate Your B2B E-Commerce Platform