You gave birth to the entrepreneur inside you who had been whispering “Start your own business” for some time. In the sea of ​​ideas that has sprung up in front of you, you have chosen to open an online store. And now? What to do?
Opening an online store is easy, especially thanks to platforms like Shopify that make the process easier, but there are several steps to follow if you want to start a successful business.
This article will guide you step by step in creating your business, will provide you with tips and strategies on how to open an online store, which products to sell, how to choose the right products and much more.
How much does it cost to open an online store?
It is possible to open an online store with a minimal initial investment. Shopify, for example, offers subscription plans starting at $ 29 per month.
As for the management costs of the store, if you decide to open a traditional online store will depend on the cost of the products you will have to buy, and on how much you decide to invest in marketing strategies.
If you want to start a dropshipping business with minimal initial investment and zero risk, you can try dropshipping.
Open an online store: what to sell
Choose products for your online store
If it is your first experience in the field of ecommerce, the question that may arise spontaneously is: what to sell online to make money? Choosing what to sell online is one of the main reasons that pushes people to abandon the idea of ​​opening an ecommerce. To find the best products to sell online, you need to be strategic: you need to identify a niche, a series of trendy or hard-to-find products in stores and ecommerce like Amazon.
What you need to aim for are specific products that interest a particular audience, or market. Our advice is to make a list of all the potential products that you could sell in your store. Think about things that might interest you, your friends, your colleagues or your family. Also check out social shopping sites like Pinterest, Etsy, or Instagram for ideas on what to sell online.
You can find the right inspiration everywhere, just look for it! And remember that you can always check if the idea you had can be successful by searching for that product on Google.
How to find products to sell online?
You can rely on apps like DSers that will give you access to a large catalog of products. Alternatively, you can search on Google or marketplaces.
Dropshipping is a business model that is gaining more and more popularity among modern entrepreneurs, because it can make you money online without investing, and it is a low-risk alternative to the traditional model of ecommerce, which requires the entrepreneur to take care firsthand to find suppliers and manage inventory.
Here’s how it works: you use a program like DSers to find the suppliers of the products you want to sell online, and import the products directly into your store. Whenever a customer purchases one of your products, they order it from one of our foolproof suppliers, who will ship the product directly to your customer. In this way you will never have to worry about the management of the goods and you can easily modify and update your inventory to always be in line with the trends of the moment!
Choose the perfect name, create your own brand identity, design the logo, analyze the competition, do research to find the right platform for you.
Choose the perfect name for your store
While it may seem like a trivial step, choosing the perfect name for your online store can be more complicated than it sounds. Unlike the design and other features, once you introduce yourself to customers with a name you won’t be able to change it whenever you want! It is therefore infinitely important to think about the right name right away!
When you begin to understand how to open a shop, try to think of a name that somehow reflects the philosophy of your brand or the products you sell, and that is both short and easy to read … but above all easy to remember. It has to be a punchy, catchy name. Furthermore, it must obviously be a unique name, which has not already been used (or worse registered), otherwise your brand would lose its identity.
If you can’t find the right name, don’t settle for a trivial name: try to rely on a Name Generator, like the one offered for free by Shopify. It is an intuitive and easy to use tool, just choose a keyword that reflects your brand and let the generator do the rest. Discover the alternatives generated by the tool, choose the one that suits you best or use the proposed names to find inspiration for the perfect name!
Design a logo that reflects your brand
The second step in understanding how to open a shop is the design of the logo. Once you’ve chosen the perfect name, it’s time to think about a logo that reflects your brand. Logo design may seem less important than other aspects of your online shop but, while a photo is worth a thousand words, it is also true that your online shop logo will be your trademark, the way to make yourself. recognize on all communication channels.
How to design the perfect logo? If you are an artist, or if your favorite pastime is playing with Photoshop and other design programs, you certainly don’t need anything else! Design your logo, don’t stop at the first version and keep trying until you feel you have the perfect one for your online shop. If design isn’t your forte, and the idea of ​​investing in a professional graphic designer doesn’t appeal to you particularly, don’t despair! Fortunately, you can find tons of tools online for creating your logo, and many are even free, like Shopify’s.
Remember that the logo of your site should not be too complicated, indeed very often the simplicity of the logo plays to the advantage of the brand! The important thing is that it’s something memorable, that people can easily connect to your brand. You could choose something simple but extremely effective, like the Amazon logo: it’s simply the name of the brand, with an arrow that goes from A to Z. Or you can choose an icon that characterizes your brand, like the Lacoste logo, worldwide associated with a small green crocodile.
Experiment with different colors and fonts, be inspired by the most eye-catching logos on the market, but always remember to be original!
Think about the slogan to introduce yourself with
How to create a memorable online sales site? Every big business has a slogan to represent it, and you can’t open a shop without having the perfect slogan.
The perfect slogan conveys the company philosophy, and has a catchy, catchy sound that makes anyone who hears or reads it remember it for a very long time, if not forever.
Just think of the slogans of the most famous brands – such as “Where is Barilla, is there a home” or “What world would it be without Nutella?” – to understand that the slogan does not have to be complicated, otherwise it would be too difficult to remember. Obviously, the message you choose strongly depends on the type of online store you are opening.
Think about the feeling you want to arouse in your customers. Slogans like that of Barilla instill a sense of home, hospitality and reliability. The slogan “Make love with the flavor” of Muller yogurt is unforgettable, and plays on the creaminess and sweetness of its yogurt. Or you might want to try a play on words, like “Who breaks, Attak”, or rhymes like “Crodino, the non-alcoholic blonde drives the world crazy”.
Whatever slogan you choose, make sure it is original and memorable, reflects your brand and arouses interest in your online store. If you can’t think of anything, try to rely on an online slogan generator, to find the perfect pay off for your online shop or just to find inspiration!
They are very simple tools to use, just enter the name of your online store or a word you want to include in your slogan and let the generator do the rest. Then you just have to browse the alternatives and choose the one that convinces you the most.
Design your online store design
How to make a web page for sale? Once you have chosen the perfect name, logo and slogan to represent your brand, the next step in opening an online store is the creation of the website.
Before starting to design your site, plan and think about all the factors you need to take into consideration, starting from the graphic impact you want your online shop to have. All the information, content and products that you make available to your customers must be conveyed in the best way, and it is not just words. Your online store needs to be easy to navigate, and customers need to be able to find everything they need in a simple and intuitive way. You must therefore build intuitive paths and never stop improving your site.
You will always be able to adapt and change the appearance of your pages according to your needs and what works best for your customers. To design the design of your online store, you can contact a team of professionals (you will need a programmer and a web designer) or choose a faster and cheaper solution, and rely on a special platform for creating sites web like Shopify – you don’t need any design experience, and you’ll have full control over every aspect of your online store.
Opening an online store: the strategy
Observe your competitors
Research is integral to the success of your ecommerce. When you understand how to open an online store and have chosen the products to sell online, you need to research your competitors and observe what they are doing.
- How many products do they offer to their customers? How much do their products sell for?
- Are they investing in advertising or are they not fully part of the digital market yet?
- What is their business model?
- What social channels do they use?
- What is their target audience?
- How do they increase sales (e.g. sponsored posts, SEO, emails, etc.)
- How much they interact and how loyal their customers are
Knowing how much work and how much money you need to invest in a new project can change your motivation to sell a certain type of product. This type of research can help you identify new business opportunities in your target niche and keep up with the market offer.
Adopt marketing strategies for your online store
Understanding how to open an online store and find products to sell in your online store is not enough. To open a successful online store, you also need to have effective marketing strategies that convert visitors into customers.
The right marketing strategies will therefore allow you to increase the sales of your store and stand out from your competitors. Analyze and study all the marketing channels available before opening a store, to understand which ones may be the most suitable for your audience and your brand. For example, if you sell particularly expensive products, you may want to advertise your online store with Google Ads, instead of using Facebook ads.
The marketing strategies at your disposal are different, from ads to SEO optimization, from banner ads to email marketing. Remember to never make rash decisions and manage your funds well, so that you always have a satisfying return on your investment. You certainly don’t want to find yourself spending hundreds of euros on inefficient strategies and then earning a few dozen!
Keep fashions and trends under control
An emerging fashion can be a great way to choose what to sell online, get your store noticed and gain credibility and loyal customers: with new fashions you will obviously have less competition.
To be able to achieve this, however, you have to be extremely fast. The digital world is fast-paced, and a single week of delay can make all the difference.
A great way to discover emerging products and trends is to follow social shopping platforms where users share their various shopping experiences with each other. Or you could follow the communities and groups, which can always offer valid ideas to find interesting products for your online shop. Keep up to date on the latest news, follow the most important blogs and influencers for your market and don’t miss any opportunity!
Customer Support / Frequently Asked Questions
If customers don’t get quick answers to their questions or concerns during an online transaction, they will most likely choose to leave the store and not complete the purchase.
That’s why high-quality customer support is critical to the long-term success of your business. Think of live chat customer support, try to incentivize customers to leave product reviews, and build trust in your customers. A good way to help customers quickly is also by creating informative content and a FAQ page so they can find answers to their questions for themselves.
Quite often, a well detailed FAQ page reduces chat support contact rates. All of this will bring loyal customers to your online store, and remember that retaining repeat customers is five times cheaper than acquiring new ones!
Optimize your conversion rate
On average, 69% of your site visitors will not make a purchase. When would your earnings increase if those visitors turned into real customers? Optimize your customers’ browsing experience. Create limited-time offers. Launch an abandoned cart email campaign. You can even set up a retargeting campaign. Try different tactics, and figure out which ones are most effective for your ecommerce.
Optimize your store
Keep in mind that 44% of people who shop online will tell their friends about a bad shopping experience they’ve had. Once you’ve set up your ecommerce and business plan, focus on optimizing the site.
Increase the speed, create an intuitive navigation bar, improve product pages, show related products, optimize the search within your online store. Finally, check the appearance of your smartphone store and verify that it is also optimized for mobile devices.
How to open a free online store
A simple Google search is enough to find different platforms that offer the possibility of opening an online store for free. But let’s start by saying that it is impossible to open an online store entirely for free, or rather: it is possible, with many limitations. Any successful business requires an initial investment, albeit a minimal one.
Opening an online shop in the traditional way involves costs. You need to manage an inventory, a warehouse, and incur the normal expenses of running a website. But remember that you are not opening a hobby shop, but to start making serious money online. And a successful online store can repay your investment with interest!
FAQ: Open a shop
How much does it cost to open an online store?
It is possible to open an online store with a minimal initial investment. Shopify, for example, offers subscription plans starting at $ 29 per month. As for the management costs of the store, if you decide to open a traditional online store will depend on the cost of the products you will have to buy, and on how much you decide to invest in marketing strategies.
How to find products to sell online?
You can rely on apps like DSers that will give you access to a large catalog of products. Alternatively, you can search on Google or marketplaces.
How to open an online shop?
Choose the perfect name, create your own brand identity, design the logo, analyze the competition, do research to find the right platform for you.
Opening an online store in 2022: conclusion
What are the best tips for those who want to understand how to open an online store in 2022?
- Find and choose products for your store
- Choose the perfect name for your online store
- Design a logo that reflects your brand
- Think about the slogan to introduce yourself with
- Design your online store design
- Adopt marketing strategies for your online store
- Identify a market niche
- Think about how to solve your customers’ problems
- Keep fashions and trends under control
There are so many ways to open an online store. Always remember to be original, to find a niche that allows you the highest possible return on investment and to study your audience well.
Never underestimate the tastes of your customers, always keep an eye on their behavior and their trends, and never stop optimizing your site. Use analytics tools to understand the behavior of visitors to your online shop, try to understand what works and what doesn’t, and always improve the browsing experience.