From the ease of entry to the army of tools and resources that are available to ensure you put your best foot forward, ecommerce remains a viable model for budding entrepreneurs. And if your business is in Honk Kong, traveller fears and safety issues make it all the more alluring to consider moving your business the online direction. Here’s a how to get started and the tripwires to look out for when starting an ecommerce business.
1. Decide on Your Choice of Business
Watching your business grow from the ground up to a profitable venture is something delightful. But before you hit this sweet spot, you need to take the right steps, the first of which is deciding what your business will offer. Are you in for a product or service business? Each has its pros and cons, your skill set, investment and risk limits provide some pointers as to which path you should take. Still, your ideal business should sell what potential customers want to buy, not what you think they want. Here’s where research comes in. If you’re looking the tourism direction, then starting an agency may work. How about souvenirs and crafts? The choice is all yours. A crystal clear picture of who makes your target market and what they are willing to splash their funds on will help you identify the best idea for your e-commerce business.
2. Be Niche Focused
It’s no rocket science, really. You can’t dominate where you don’t own. The rule is no different in the ecommerce space. Whatever you decide to offer, there are likely bigger, more established brands offering the same product or service. Without the financial clout and experience, you really don’t expect to drive proceedings if you spread too thin. Starting out, it’s easy to cast a wide net and feel the need to occupy every space there is in your industry, but this ensures you have no point of focus and can make it difficult for potential buyers to connect with your brand. What you want instead is starting lean, zeroing in on a specific niche and diversifying your offering as your brand grows. This is more likely to help build credibility and ensure your business remains viable in the long term.
3. Match Your Personas with Your Product
You’ve decided on a product or service based business model and have your eyes fixed on a specific niche. Awesome! The next thing you want to do then is ensure your buyer personas match your product or service offering. At its core, your store should have a specific identity, one that presents itself in a professional way and resonates with the need of your target buyers. But if you don’t have your buyer personas well fleshed out, the likelihood of having your ecommerce business succeed will be left to chance. What makes your brand stand out from the crowd? What‘s your unique selling point? What commonalities do your ideal customers share? Are all these reflected in your brand name? Figuring out this checklist is vitally important. And if you’re unsure of what will work, a good, cost-effective way to test the waters is to try affiliate marketing. Whatever potential tourists are looking to buy in Honk Kong, chances are there are marketplaces with affiliate programs you can join to see how things pan out. Affiliate programs save you the hassle of inventory. And by further bringing your customer preferences to close view, they allow you to know what works when you eventually take the plunge selling your own products.
4. Set Up Your Store
With legal procedures and product selection out of the way, setting up your store is next. You’ll also want to be clear on your design and integrate any plug-ins you may need. Thankfully, with a long list of options, the choice of ecommerce shopping cart platforms to consider is all yours. You also need to watch out for key metrics than can affect your site’s performance. Your ideal platform should have a near-perfect load speed, provide compatibility with your choice payment platforms and have all features that integrate with your business structure. And of course, you want to be visible on search, so SEO features cannot be ignored.
5. Build Engagement and Traffic
If you’ve followed the previous steps the right way, building engagement and website traffic shouldn’t be all too difficult. Content creation is at the heart of traffic generation, and SEO is still important. However, you also want to look into video content to enhance traffic and reduce bounce rate. This could mean a review of your product or any piece of information that will come in handy for your visitors. Another incredible way to increase customer base is to set up email marketing right out the gate. You want to build a base of loyal customers, not just send traffic to your website, and email marketing is a time-proven method to get started. An opt-in freebie is what you need to have visitors give you their email in return. Thus, having a valuable eBook offer works just fine for this purpose. With this checklist ticked, we hope you have a flying start to your ecommerce journey.
