17 Aug
Starting an online business can be tricky and daunting, but maintaining it can be a lot more harder if you didn’t followed the rules from the start. Online businesses are great at the same time it can cause great lose if not managed properly.
Today we are going to focus on few, but pin points to save you from great lose and running a successful online business.
1. Do your research
Doing your research is the most crucial part of starting an online business. We really get excited at ideas and without doing full research, we often assume that our idea is brilliant and we will make tons of money. But before you even start, be sure to do full research about your business niche, your competitors, your product, profit margins, and basic things like that.
Don’t start any business right away after you get a “brilliant idea”, give it some time and think over it with your research. Most of the times by giving it some time, we got to know that this idea is actually not going to work and will save you your money and time. If even after doing your full research and giving it some time, you still find your idea great, go with it.
2. Set Goals
One of the most important things to do before you start your online business is setting your goals. Setting your business goals include, estimated monthly sales, number of products to sell monthly, how much time you will be investing on social media promotion/advertisement, deciding on how much time your are willing to spend on overall marketing and product enhancement, setting your budget, setting up your daily and weekly goals.
- Set small tasks for each day and bigger tasks on weekly basis.
- Allocate number of hours you will spend on each task.
- Use Tasks and Time management tools like: Trello.
- Focus on ONE task at a time and put every distraction aside (even your mobile), until you complete it. Over time, you will notice how much this little trick saved you tons of time, whilst doing everything properly.
Pro Tip: Be sure to set your daily budgets, whether it be an over all budget or simply marketing budget, and focus on increasing ROI (return on investment), by doing minor changes and testing.
3. Making right decisions from the start
Decisions like online store designing, choosing between free or paid eCommerce solutions, your brand identity, etc.
- Online Store Designing: Often times, when starting out a new business people don’t pay too much attention on their eCommerce website design, and instead put an ugly page with few un-organized products. Customers will “buy what they see”. And its very important to make your great first impression. Unless you have a great website design in place, you will be wasting all your time and money. It is always advisable to start with a good first look, rather losing money and time, and then going for re-design. But, its also advisable to not spend too much on design and leaving nothing for marketing, etc. Be sure to keep both side moderate and work with a plan that you developed on Step 1.
- Choosing Between Free or Paid eCommerce Solution: Now, we would say, this is one of the most important step you take when you first start your online business. For beginners, we recommend paid eCommerce solutions (such as Shopify – Xperteria offers Shopify website design), that are hosted for you and pre-loaded with all what you need to process orders. But if you have some understanding and knowledge on how payment processors work, and how to get credit cards processed online, you can choose to go with free eCommerce solution like If you have right knowledge and still unsure on which eCommerce solution to choose, feel free to Email Us for free advice.
- Brand Identity: Your unique brand identity if done properly, puts your brand in a few successful brands. Make sure to keep it simple, yet unique and special, and carry that though throughout your products, website and all other marketing stuff.
Building a unique brand identity will make you and your product stand out from the crowd. There is too much competition in almost every niche, but if your brand identity if unique, you have highest chances of beating your competition even if you are new. Brand identity won’t cost you much, but once done correctly, it can drastically improve your sales and customer love. Brand identity is the best way to stand out from the crowd, whilst giving your customers personal feel and love.
4. Keep it simple
Don’t complicate thing right from the start, it is the best known policy for successful online businesses. Keep your time schedule, your budgets, your daily and weekly tasks very simple and clear. Make sure to follow your daily goals and avoid distractions at all cost. It can’t be emphasized much, how thankful you will be if you focus on one task at a time and avoid all distractions. It’s always good to spend some time for entertainment, but to run a successful online business, you would have to allocate calculated time for your entertainment (Tip: be sure to keep it lower than your average time, since you have to focus more on your online business. )
Keep it simple, so you never have to worry to much about too many integration and tools, just choose the best and least tools when you first start out and test things. Don’t get amazed by advertisements, and end up spending too much cash for things that have nothing to do with your business.
5. Invest On Marketing
Whether you are starting a t shirt business or a big furniture business, you need to market your product and brand effectively to gain more traction. As startup business, you need to put high focus on your marketing budget. There are currently two best ways to advertise your product to potential customers:
- Facebook Ads
- Google Adword
Use these, you only need to setup your ads and start displaying it to your customers. But If you try out doing it yourself, you will end up losing too much money with little results. Try hiring a Marketing Agency or Facebook Marketing Agency to run your marketing campaigns with results that you need. As a startup you have limited budget and ultimately can’t afford to waste it, so it’s better to hire someone who know what they are doing.
(Pro Tip: Use Facebook ads to start your marketing campaign and see how it goes. Be sure to optimize Facebook ads, set daily budgets and try creating multiple ads to see which one works best.)