Small Business Blog

I was browsing the small business questions on Yahoo! Answers recently and came across a question about starting an online store. The individual asked what steps were necessary for starting an e-commerce business. Here’s my answer:

Assuming you are starting completely from scratch:

1. Decide what product you want to sell and to whom
2. Learn as much as you can about your target customer: what motivates him/her to buy, where he/she likes to hang out, etc.
3. Find a source for your product
4. Estimate your costs to buy the product
5. Start researching marketing/promotional efforts that would allow you to reach your target customer and tell them about your products
6. Estimate the costs to run your business and allocate a big chunk to marketing
7. Find a trusty web developer/designer and copywriter
8. Define your brand image and create an appropriate logo and tag line
9. Get your site up and start promoting it

What do you think — did I miss anything?

See the original conversation here.

According to a recent survey by Compete Online Shopper, free shipping offers can and do impact consumers’ decisions to purchase online. Further, free shipping also affects customer satisfaction. The presence of shipping costs, particularly on small purchases, creates bad feelings with consumers. But free shipping offers make your customers happy and encourage them to purchase more.

Key takeaways from the survey include these data points:

• 93% of respondents said that free shipping offers encourage them to buy more.
• 66.6% of respondents said they’d increase their online purchases if returns were free.
• 67% of respondents said they buy items in stores to avoid shipping costs.

Bottom line: absorbing the cost of shipping your customers’ orders can pay big dividends in the form of happier customers and bigger orders.

See the survey data here.