Lessons Learned From Launching an eCommerce Platform During COVID-19 Pandemic

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Creating a brand and promoting it on the digital landscape can be a tough job. The Covid-19 pandemic has shown us that launching an eCommerce site can get very difficult. Here are some of the critical aspects that one should keep in mind while establishing and promoting an eCommerce platform. 

Choosing a Product With an Adequate Margin

If you do not have a product that you can manufacture and sell while making a profit, you should never jump at selling products without knowing their approximate cost just because they are good-looking or fashionable.

When choosing a product to sell on your eCommerce platform, you need to consider certain aspects like consistent retail pricing. This consistency will ensure that the customers will find fairly regular selling prices on all eCommerce platforms, including yours until an online store provides any festive discounts. Additionally, you have to consider the production cost and sales expenses, including associate marketing, operations, and logistic expenses. Logistics can be tricky, and you have to think about the type of packaging and also your charges for shipment unless you decide to ship them for free.

Customer experience is a vital part of generating online sales, and you have to take care of all the details that include product packaging, warranty, shipments, delivery time, payment format, and many more. If a product can offer extensive experience at competitive prices, it will undoubtedly attract more customers to your online store. For all these reasons, it is essential for you to analyze all the economic margins of the product with approximate costs before selecting your selling product. Although working with artisans at a distance by mail on product development can take more time, it does produce excellent results.

Researching The Market

The usual way to approach any business strategy is to identify the potential customers to target and deliver your business proposition. After that, you have to have a complete understanding of their buying pattern for your product types. It is essential to know their knowledge about the variety of brands, how they purchase items, how they handle promotions and advertisements. Many online surveys have shown that there are several unknown brands in the market, and every customer perceives brands differently.

The market research will provide you with a set of guidelines to fix the characteristics of your products, prices, promotions, and your approach to your digital campaigns. It is crucial to generate traffic to your product pages and make conversions to keep your eCommerce business store running successfully. When looking for options to manage your digital marketing campaigns, you will find hundreds of options. Choose carefully and never go for the cheapest option but with someone who knows what they are doing. The most effective digital marketing agencies charge you for results like sales conversions and not for publications.

Investing in Community Building

Ideally, in the case of an eCommerce platform, you would be marketing one brand or be a multi-brand store that markets several brands. In both cases, you will need to have a name and a proper graphic identity. When talking about a graphic identity, it not only means a good logo but also requires understanding the several design elements used to effectively convey your business goals and objectives.  In many online stores, graphic elements are all over the store in the form of product packaging designs, labels, social network presence, photographs, etc., so when you are looking to develop your graphic identity, ask for a brand design and not just the logo.

Most eCommerce stores investing in graphic identity or brand building have achieved and set themselves as benchmarks in their market. These achievements will help you create a community of people interested in following your business updates and motivate you to create digital content. Not all digital content is meant for advertising; sometimes, digital content is intended for communication and customer loyalty. You could also choose to invest in social media marketing to create relevant and personalized content for your followers to increase customer engagement.

Platform Development

One of the most challenging tasks of developing an eCommerce store is the website development process. The entire process includes developing a website from scratch, uploading the products to the marketplace, and optimizing the website to sell the products. An alternative to growing websites is platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, Magento, etc. Various companies provide eCommerce Development Services for extensive eCommerce website development. These platforms offer the framework to set up an online store without having to program for an essential monthly cost.

The investment between developing your own website and using a subscription platform is a simple choice and can save you a lot of money and time. Additionally, Magento Development Company offers several maintenances and support services that can come in handy when running an eCommerce store with less investment.

An online customer does not care if you used a third-party service to develop your website or if you did it yourself as long the user experience is satisfying. You have to understand that a page capable of accepting payments and generating shipments is your first priority when developing an eCommerce platform. The subscription platforms provide various alternatives for payment methods and parcel logistics services, so it is more important for a business to generate traffic and product development.

Patience

After extensive market research and product development, which takes about a month, the most crucial part of an eCommerce store is developing products with suppliers. Due to the pandemic, it takes more time than usual, so patience is your best virtue. If you can get your hands into manufacturing or making the products your way, you need to ensure the quality and the prices of the products with suppliers. During this process, you will have to experience a lot of uncertain situations and prolonged waiting times.

Generating sales on a website takes time and is never immediate. Initially, you will have to invest in developing traffic to your website and wait for the algorithm to optimize your strategies and take effect. Usually, the first sales results begin after weeks and sometimes months after launching a campaign.