March 29, 2024

Online store- Blueprint

Enrol For Bigcommerce Training and Complete Store Set Up

Work on product idea/Niche- What do you want to sell ?

The first thing you should decide what you want sell on your online store. Always sell the items that you know a lot about. There are tools like watchcount.com, Google trends and Google keyword planner to know about the popularity of any product or niche.

Choose a business structure

If you are starting alone, sole trader would be the simplest and the perfect business structure

If you are starting your business alone, you can register your business as a sole trader and if you are starting up with a team, you can register as a company. Starting with the simplest business structure saves your time and money because there are not many legal documents to prepare for a sole trader.

Register a business name and a matching website/domain name

It's good if you have same business and domain name

Register a business name and make sure that the domain name for that business name is also available. You can visit namevine.com for checking the availability of your domain name and page names on social media.

Visit your country’s official business registration website to find out if the business name your are looking for is available.

Choose the right online store platform

There are hundreds of online store platforms available. Select the one that suits you the best.

There are hundreds of platforms for setting up your online store. For example, the most popular platforms are Bigcommerce and Shopify. The platform should be chosen on the basis of your budget, team, products, business structure, etc.

Set up your online store

Setting up an online store means activating and setting all the features of the online store

Set up your online store on the chosen platform. The support teams of Bigcommerce and Shopify will help you set up the website. Setting up your website means setting up payment methods, shipping methods, about page, contact page, marketing features, etc.

Set up marketing features of store platform

Setting up marketing features can help increase you store sale and bring you customer repetitively. It is about email marketing, customer relationship management(CRM), automatic feedback request notification, live chat, social media marketing, etc.

Purchase and manage your inventory

Buying or managing inventory takes a lot time and effort. In the initial phase of your business, you have to divide your budget for different products so that you can test which products perform well and which don’t.

Set up a small photography studio

You will need to take pictures of the products you are going to sell. It’s better to have a definite spot where you can take pictures with ease. Set up lighting and keep your camera in standby to take pictures whenever you want.

Shopify is the leading E-commerce platform for setting up an online store

List out all the products

Listing out products is a big job. You have to take photos, write description, weigh the products, write ‘how to use’ tutorials, etc. This can take from 1 week to several months depending upon your team, budget and the number of items you have in stock.

Set up accounting and invoicing

Keeping records of your sales and purchases is very important. There are several popular online accounting applications you can use for your business. We recommend Waveapps and Zervant.

List of subscribers and marketing

You can use Smore, Mailchimp and Google contact to keep a list of subscribers to send them coupon codes and deals related to your products. The right tool will help you categorise the customers into different groups.

Create Email templates

There are few emails that you will have to write to your customers most of the time

You need to send emails to your customers regularly. Most of the emails are related to delayed shipping, product features, item stock, product tutorials, etc.

Track your online store performance

Most of the online store platforms have inbuilt tools for checking the performance of the store. The tools tell you the best selling products, best categories, etc. Google analytics helps you track number of visitors, page views, top landing pages, etc.

Organise your store for quick packing and shipping

Organising your store helps your process orders quickly and operate other tasks effectively. You have to keep computer, printer, label printer, packing bag and other stationery items in proper place to operate the store effectively.

Track your shipments

Most postal offices and shipping companies all around the world provide tracking codes for shipments. You need online tools to track your packages. 17Track.net is one the popular websites for tracking shipments.

Work on Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Customer Relationship Management application gives a platform to focus on your relationships with individual people – whether those are customers, blog readers, service users, colleagues, manufacturers or suppliers.

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