If you are looking for a challenge in your life that involves setting up your own business, e-commerce has the potential to bring you a secure income. Many Australians enjoy a great lifestyle thanks to e-commerce and in this article, we offer valuable information to help you set up and manage a shopping cart website.
Choosing products
Your choice of products could be the difference between success and failure; carry out some serious market research and look for products that are a) in demand, b) top quality and c) good value. Many entrepreneurs stick to what they know and let’s face it, having a lot of knowledge about an industry definitely gives you an advantage.
Building your website
Your e-commerce site is your store window and it should be slick and professional-looking; you can find all of your web needs from a single company, they can design, build, host and manage your digital e-commerce platform. Most e-commerce business owners outsource all of their web needs to a 3rd party provider, which does make total sense.
Secure digital payment gateways
Your website needs several secure payment gateways, which would include:
- Major credit cards
- Bank transfer
- PayPal
- Bitcoin
Make sure that you have a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate on your website, which is denoted by the ‘s’ in ‘https’. If your site is not secure, people will not give their financial details and your business will suffer as a result.
Digital marketing
Without digital marketing, your e-store is going nowhere; search online for a leading Australian digital marketing agency, one with extensive e-commerce experience. Their team of professional marketers can put together a dynamic digital marketing plan, one that will deliver the right results. Digital marketing is a performance-based industry; an agency is only as good as the results they achieve, look at the agency’s client list to get a good idea of their abilities. Once you find an award-winning ecommerce agency in Sydney, you can rest assured that your online profile will grow.
Logistics
Every e-commerce business has to have a good logistics partner; third-party logistics is a huge industry that manages every aspect of picking, packing and delivery. If you deliver your products and packaging to the logistics warehouse, all you need to do is forward orders to the operator and they manage everything. From the moment a customer clicks on ‘Buy Now’, the clock is ticking and people expect fast delivery. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you can handle the picking, packing and delivery, as this will take up all your time, better to forge a working alliance with a 3PL provider. Here is an informative article on e-commerce landing pages.
Your website is your shop window to the world and it should never be thought of as finished, rather with constant development, it is always a work in progress. The product images and description should be professionally created and the store should be very easy to navigate, otherwise, shoppers will not return.
Lastly, don’t forget to register your business with the Australian government, then you are legal and that adds credibility to your organisation.