Online shopping in India is growing rapidly. At the current rate of growth, the e-commerce market in India is expected to reach ₹ 5,121,481 by 2025. One of the reasons for this explosive growth is the increase in income and the increase in the number of Internet users. In 2020, there were 448.2 million mobile internet users in India. This number is expected to increase to 500.9 million by 2023.
These facts make it clear that starting an online business is a smart move. However, if you’re not sure how to sell online on any e-commerce site, here’s a step-by-step guide to starting your own e-commerce business.
1. Get the basics right
As is the case with any business, the key to starting a successful e-commerce venture is getting the basics right. As an aspiring e-commerce entrepreneur, you must conduct thorough research on the current market and ensure that your offerings stand out. Choosing the right products to sell is of paramount importance, and ideally, you improve your chances of getting off the ground by offering to sell products that will attract customers in a highly competitive market. Once you have studied market trends, competition, and consumer buying patterns, you will be ready to sell to your target group. The idea should be to outperform others by understanding customer needs and meeting their expectations with personalized offerings. Effective marketing campaigns will further enhance your chances.
Developing a strong business plan and obtaining all the necessary permits, licenses, and certification identification documents is the next step. For instance, you must choose a business structure that ensures the right balance of legal protection and benefits. This will determine your taxes, your ability to raise funds, legal paperwork, and your personal liability. Since e-commerce businesses are mostly home-based, you don’t need too many business licenses and permits to start an e-commerce business. However, you should find out the necessary requirements in your area and comply with the terms of the Shops and Establishments Act.
2. Choose an e-commerce marketplace
Once you have taken care of the requirements to start an e-commerce business and decided on an operating model, the next step is to get sales channels to start taking orders. You have to ensure that you sell the products you want to sell, and in this endeavor, you must choose an existing e-commerce marketplace where you can gain an immediate customer base.
However, e-commerce marketplaces offer much more than just marketplaces. These marketplaces already have millions of users who are looking for good products, and as a result, the need for immediate capital investment in marketing and sales initiatives is reduced. This is crucial for new businesses that often face a shortage of funds. Since e-commerce marketplaces are purposefully geared towards small and medium-sized businesses that are not limited to factories and workshops but also entrepreneurs working from smaller units such as their homes or community centers, there is a considerable saving in initial costs. There is no need for salespeople, no advertising costs involved, and there is also no need for warehouses to store products as production can begin when orders are received. As the business grows, the entrepreneur will need to develop an online store in the form of dedicated websites and social media pages and groups. But, it is essential to note that e-commerce marketplaces lay the foundation for such comprehensive initiatives.
Since e-commerce is the foundation you use to build and grow your online store, it is important to choose a marketplace that meets your needs. Apart from helping you launch your online store, an e-commerce marketplace also determines the extent to which you can customize your design, add your domain, manage inventory, take and ship orders, and receive payments. If you have made up your mind to become an online seller, you must register on any e-commerce marketplace after carefully considering important aspects such as accessibility, services offered, popularity, and subscription costs. To sell products online through an e-commerce marketplace, you must register yourself as an online seller on that marketplace.
Marketing your e-commerce business is also important. To stand out in a highly competitive market, you can use various marketing strategies such as social media advertising and word-of-mouth for effective marketing. Also, while using these marketing strategies, you must ensure that your business website is search engine optimized. You can also take help from other online marketing tools included in your e-commerce marketplace such as email marketing, social media marketing, conversion optimization, exclusive giveaways, referral incentives, and influencer marketing. Once you have launched your business, you can keep an eye on marketing strategies to determine what works best for your e-commerce business.
3. Create your online store Once you have chosen an e-commerce marketplace and signed up as an online seller, the next step is to create your online store. Most easy-to-handle e-commerce marketplaces simply require you to upload your listings, choose a shipping method, and link your bank account for payments. However, if you decide to sell from your own website instead of joining an e-commerce marketplace, the process can be quite complicated. You need to hire professionals to create and design all the elements of your online store from scratch.
As the e-commerce industry grows, more and more websites are coming up with purpose-oriented templates to save time and costs. Similarly, e-commerce marketplaces like Amazon are also offering dedicated services to ease the burden on new businesses to develop their online stores on their own. Amazon’s service provider network offers expertise for everything you need to develop a cutting-edge, easy-to-use and customer-friendly online store that can be customized to your needs.
– To attract more customers to your online store, you can: Make sure the website design is attractive. Customers will visit many stores and they will prefer a store with a modern and beautiful user interface.
– Include high-quality product images as well as creative but simple videos and tutorials. Your product images should be paired with well-defined accurate product descriptions to effectively communicate what you are offering them.
– Apart from being attractive, your website design should be user-friendly and search engine optimized. Customers should be able to find the product they want to buy in as few clicks as possible. A good website is one that has minimal clutter, proper listing of products in shopping categories, effective filters and the ability to compare. Your website design should be responsive and provide seamless viewing services on different devices.
– Provide secure and flexible payment gateways that do not store and misuse any important customer data. You can attract more customers if you can solve their payment security problems.
– You can also take the help of sales features like free delivery, personalized discounts, free gifts, coupons, and various marketing tools to attract more and more customers to your store.
– If you convince the customers about your reliability then you win half of the game. Make sure you maintain a transparent feedback mechanism. Pay attention to product reviews and give your customer all the help and support they need.
4. Increase your social media footprint In conjunction with your seller pages on e-commerce marketplaces and your online store, social media plays a vital role in growing your e-commerce business. In today’s digital age, more and more customers are changing their tastes and preferences according to trends that are being widely shaped by social media interactions and exchanges. Social media communications often collectively influence buyer choices, and therefore it is important to optimize social media to increase the sales of your products.
There are two advantages of using social media to expand your business: First, social media communications provide valuable information about the preferences and shopping habits of potential customers. With the help of new-age technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), products can be further promoted for sale. Second, social media provides a great opportunity to promote your products – by advertising them directly or by redirecting potential buyers from your social media pages to your online store and e-commerce seller pages. Your social media page acts as a ready-made catalog that customers can choose from and make an instant purchase on your website or e-commerce page.
5. Store and manage your inventory smartly
Storage and inventory management is another crucial aspect of an e-commerce business. You need to create a steady pipeline of your products for seamless delivery without the risk of production delays or storing too much stock. Storage can be made easy by intelligently estimating order volumes and preventing both overstocking and understocking. Faulty inventory management can lead to stock loss and damage, reputation loss, and high inventory costs.Software-based processes are emerging as key tools to seamlessly manage supply chain and inventory.
6. Identify the packaging and delivery model for your business
Every seller can either hand over their products to an e-commerce marketplace to manage the end-to-end process from storage to packaging and shipping while selling their product online. This will relieve the seller of the hassle of storing, packaging, and delivering the product. Another option would be to package the product upon receiving an order and the e-commerce marketplace will collect it from your registered address and then deliver it to the customer. Another way could be to manage the entire packaging and delivery process yourself. These methods have their own advantages and disadvantages. You have to choose the option that suits your business needs. Either you or the e-commerce marketplace can control the shipping rates depending on the shipment method chosen. If you decide to deliver your products yourself, you can set the areas/regions from where you want to receive orders; where you prefer orders to be delivered the same day, the next day or within a week.
Conclusion
Now that you know everything, you can successfully create your unique e-store. If you want to get started with more ease and constant support, start your seller journey with Amazon – India’s most visited shopping destination with 5 lakh sellers. So what are you waiting for? Register on Amazon now.