E-Commerce for All

It simply never fails to amaze me the number of shop owners who really lose site of what’s in their store. Your store is a tool.. A sales tool, and in order to be effective you must have a clear direction and sales plan. So in the wee hours of this Tuesday morning, we will cover some very important planning functions and some even more serious pitfalls related to operating your e-commerce shop.

As I try to be a positive person with an outgoing influence, we will start our journey with the positive things you can do to develop a great sales minded business plan for your store.

Many of you will have surpassed this step already, but it defiantly bares investigation. The most important thing you can do for your business is be very intimate with your product(s), passionate even. When you are beginning your “dreaming” stages of your own online business if you consider nothing else, then consider choosing a product related to something you enjoy and great deal… And hopefully are skilled and informed about. This decision can absolutely make or break your business and is additionally a cornerstone for success.

The second thing you will need to consider is a great business plan. Certainly if you have the operating budget then I would highly suggest you retain a professional to help you with a proper business plan. In lieu of such a generous operating budget then get some help from business owners, teacher, or other professionals you know… Draw on the resources in your network to gain some insight in to the cost, surprises and operational pitfalls of owning your own business. You will need a financial plan and budget for at least the first year and the planned budget to support it.

Make certain you have read all of the fine print and have spoken directly to a qualified sales rep for the product line you intend to sell. Ask a million questions regarding the fees, shipping costs and rules, product warranties, return policies, and anything else you can think of. Its not a very joyous thing to receive your very first order in you brand new store and be unable to ship the product or worse lose money on the deal as you have mis-planned the margin and markup.

As the development time approaches you are faced with a whole new set of decisions and costs. Ideally, unless you are very competent in the shopping cart software you are going to be using get someone to develop your online store. This is a very important step and equally able to sink your ship if you make a wrong or misinformed decision. There are admittedly more costs involved in a self-hosted shopping cart solution, but these costs are upfront and far outweigh the pitfalls of hosted shopping carts. Remember, if it way that easy everyone would have a store and be #1.

Hosted shopping carts are as a rule unable to deliver the marketing and organic ranking ability of a self-hosted cart. This is true for many reasons, not withstanding the more than obvious lack of control over most necessary optimization protocols.