Pandemic has made many brick-and-mortar platforms shift to online retailing. According to the Shopify Future of Commerce 2021, 85% of younger consumers (18-34) & 90% of middle-aged consumers (35-54) shifted more of their spending to online shopping.
Many of us are familiar with online shopping platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, Swiggy, etc. But have we ever thought about how businesses work online and how it is created?
The online business process is simple and easy to handle. Let us see the 10 simple steps to get you onto the e-commerce platform without any investment.
Be Ready With A Strong Business Plan
Anyone can do a business, but only a few can make it a successful one. Before starting a business, you need to answer basic questions like what your business is going to be like, how it should get executed, what are the challenges and opportunities it is going to face from the market, analysis of core competitors, etc.
A well laid out business plan acts as a base to face the challenges and failures in today’s competitive digitized world.
Choose Your Product To Sell
The product that you sell plays a substantial part in the whole process. It determines your online business’s success rate. Your product can be a single product or multiple lines that can range across different categories depending on the budget and available resources.
Choose The Platform To Create Your Store
Once you have planned and decided on the type of products you want to sell, choose an appropriate platform that is best for your product and company. With zero investment, Daily Store helps you to create your e-store in simple and easy steps.
Choose A Domain Name And Site Location
This is the technical part where many business owners are unfamiliar with. You can choose a hosting provider or set up a site for yourself by purchasing a domain name. Daily store allows you to purchase your domain name and provide technical assistance to create your online store.
Build Your Site
You are going to sell your product. And you have all the freedom to choose what your website and pages should look like. All you need to care about is whatever theme, categories, or sections you add up should attract the customers, and drive them to your site. Daily store app is a 100% customized app with free lifetime service and maintenance, where you can add your features with the help of experts if needed.
Add Your Products And Get A Barcode
To sell products online, you need a UPC barcode. There is a need for a separate bar code for each product, and you can purchase them easily online at huge discounts.
Create A Shopping Cart
An online store with no shopping cart serves no purpose. Most platforms have built-in shopping cart solutions, but some opt for third-party shopping cart plugins for more customization. All you need to ensure is that your site should serve your customers a hassle-free shopping experience.
Building Inventory
Whether you have a brick-and-mortar store or e-commerce store, a sizable inventory is needed to establish yourself online. Backed-up orders lead to huge losses and your brand value.Daily store has an inventory management software module where you can update your inventory with products and quantities available and get notified when products are out of stock or near expiry.
Marketing
Competition is getting tougher on eCommerce platforms and customers are socially interconnected in this digital economy. Effectively engaging them is a tedious task. Marketing strategies like content marketing, permission marketing, email marketing, etc are needed for your brand positioning, winning customers’ minds and hearts.
Maintaining The Business
One of the most crucial steps in online business is to maintain it. Managing company inventory, making decisions on products based on demand, planning for the future based on changing market trends, working on technical aspects like tackling bugs on-site, etc needs to be taken care of consistently to retain customers and to grow business.
