Introduction
Paul Graham from the YCombinator gives a meaningful message:
“You can’t wait for customers to come to you. You have to figure out where they are, go there and drag them back to your store.”
The entire essence of eCommerce rests in the concept of going to the consumer, reaching out to them with what they need, wherever they are. The arrival of the World Wide Web in the early 90’s paved a new path for the eCommerce industry. Amazon further strengthened the concept, laying the groundwork for the eCommerce stats and trends today.
So strong has the revolution been, that even the pandemic and global lockdowns seemed to have pumped oxygen into the entire ecosystem. Taking the situation in their stride, retailers improvised and delivered to the consumer at all times despite all odds.
In 2020, e-retail sales surpassed a massive 4.2 trillion US dollars worldwide, with over 2 billion people choosing to buy online. The current numbers are reason and motivation enough for aspiring entrepreneurs as well as the offline retailers to begin their online sales channels. This is probably the best time to invest in the online retail domain.
It is only through an online channel that a business can expect to be running 24-7. eCommerce as a whole presents a whole lot of advantages for both the business owner as well as the consumer, like, offering a faster buying process, creating a store simply with a product listing, affordable operations, flexibility to customer beyond boundaries, easy product as well as price comparison, quicker response time to buyers, plenty of payment options to choose from, and an overall efficient channel.
This blog will share significant information on the prerequisites needed for an eCommerce store launch using popular store-builder software available.
Tribe – The Free eCommerce Store Platform
Yo!Kart has already set the stage as a powerful marketplace solution, now expanding the opportunities for single-store owners to build their own brand with Tribe. Launched with the intent of addressing the economic challenges as well as an entrepreneur’s struggle for significant platform features within a decent budget, Tribe promises to offer a distinguished online presence.
Despite competitive attributes of the SaaS options available, the economic efficiency weighs Tribe over these. The trust, experience, and quality of platforms built are reason enough to pick Tribe from among the available solutions.
Some unique selling features of Tribe that endorse its value proposition are:
- A Zero Cost eCommerce Solution
Developed to realize dreams to reality, Tribe has been developed as a free eCommerce store software. There are zero charges to launch an online store where you can sell unlimited products without worrying about paying monthly or yearly recurring fees. The installation as well as 3 months of tech support provide leverage to any new business wanting to establish an online place.
- Laravel’s Security And Scalability
With Tribe, the opportunity to build an eCommerce store with robust performance, high security settings, and comfortable business scalability becomes manifold. Developed on the open-source PHP framework, Laravel, the possibilities to grow as a brand, maintaining all levels of security, from the application to the server, impart reliability to the customer activities.
- Resonate Your Brand Values
Allowing easy customizations with CMS drag and drop functionality, and designing as per owner HTML expertise. Build a UI-UX as per the store or brand vision in mind. Make changes in the CMS pages on-the-go to experience freedom in storefront management.
- Easy Store Management
Tribe offers efficient admin features to manage the online store operations with ease. From guiding the admin towards setting up the store, to managing inventory, sales, language control, secure payments, and taxes, Tribe assists the business owner at every step.
- Advantage of Agile
Yo!Kart has put it’s best intent and experience while creating Tribe for the eCommerce community. The agile development process and experts render significant scope for including all requests, aligning the final product with the business vision. The approach makes Tribe bridge gaps and realize dreams.
With an insight into what sort of features and perks an eCommerce store software provides, the direction to create an online store somewhat becomes clearer. Business aspirants can now easily decide which software would help bring them closer to their goals.
Moving ahead with the decision to open an online channel for the sales of different products, awareness on this segment of the market is a must. Some light on eCommerce stores and how to get started with them ahead will surely add weight to making an informed decision.
Ecommerce Basics To Get Started With Tribe
Advent of the internet and the digital into our lives has driven businesses globally. Reaching customers in their comfort zones has helped brands become household names. For a business owner, the decision to build its own online store using the available tools is a convincing direction with all the benefits of a ready-made solution.
The question yet remains, even with so many online store solutions available, on different engagement models, new businesses fail to sustain. Available technical support and unique features are still not enough to help the business thrive through rough times. Entrepreneurs and eCommerce enthusiasts lack niche-level awareness, in-depth understanding of the ecosystem, planning, and strategy towards a long-term vision.
Sometimes, the lack of experience creates gaps that are felt throughout and in every decision taken. It is thus always beneficial to be aware of the domain in which business is being launched.
Here are a few take-aways as to empower the owner with expert advice as they explore a future in eCommerce:
Identifying The Right Business Niche
Before finalizing on the decision to be an eCommerce business owner, a major factor that will play a role in the success of it all is the niche or area in which online sale will be done. Understanding the market needs, what will invite customers to the online store, and which category within eCommerce can the business owner fulfill best, should influence the niche of the new business.
Whatever niche is targeted must be an area where competition is manageable. Entering a highly competitive area can end up burning the energies as well as the entrepreneurs pockets without much returns. Staying comfortable in the first few weeks is important to gain control of the business market.
Validate The Business Idea
To be sure of your instinct for the eCommerce business idea, it is always a good approach to validate the plan. Online businesses can be easily validated to see the response. The end goal is to ascertain traffic on the website, web presence, and consumer response to plan scaling the business. Setting up the online store with the ready-made store softwares in no time allows a quick validation of the business model.
Beginning small and growing big is the ultimate reason why these store software solutions have come into existence. Allowing a comfortable time for the new business to accommodate according to the market needs along with creating a presence of its own helps gain confidence within the business niche.
License – Legal And Business
Once all set with a definite business model and an online store, the next step would be to procure the necessary licenses, permissions, along with compliance documents. To begin with, a business name would set the ball rolling. Choose a name that is unique, highlights the business niche, as well as catches the attention of prospective customers.
On these lines, the intent should be to stay away from any legal nuances, and so select a name that does not infringe upon any other business name or idea. A wise move would be to apply for a trademark of the chosen name. Further on, pick a suitable business structure, a sole proprietorship, LLC, private limited, or general partnership. An attorney can guide through this process. Defining this would clarify what all compliances to follow ahead.
Along with a unique name, business structure come various fillings like an EIN (employee identification number) for business as well as personal finances. Apart from this, some sales tax permits, safety permits, professional, and trade licenses are needed to operate an online business in a legal streamlined manner. The permits will define where and how the business is operational and within which domain, helping the authorities place checks accordingly.
Product Images And Content
Gathering material for the website is probably the next significant step towards the process of setting up an online store for a new eCommerce business. The visitors on the website will be directed with their thoughts for decision making by whatever is visible to them.
The content as well as the images on the website must be engaging along with portraying the best version of the products. Expert software teams guide towards the best presentation possible of the product or item list. The catalogue if created thoughtfully with all the necessary information on the price, quantity, as well as some comparator information will render the consumer’s trust, and allow them to make instant decisions towards a purchase.
The whole process of online shopping is quite majorly dependent on the user journey generated by the online store creators, and a major portion of the user journey are the images and the website content. So, a good thought and some competitor store analysis will definitely help build a stronger UI and an engaging UX for any eCommerce store.
Website Management And Maintenance
One of the primary agendas that should occupy an eCommerce business owner is the management and maintenance of the website. The place where all consumers land to shop and make the business functional is the platform. Keeping it up to date with all desired integrations, engaging UI for a productive UX should ideally be the ultimate mission.
A clean catalogue invites more customer action, easy design allows a comfortable shopping experience, new deals and offers create better business opportunities through the platform. To retain traffic, all software must be updated automatically regularly for smooth flow through the website pages.
The admin or owner must be proactive in re-organizing content with changing times and trends so as to keep the consumer totally involved throughout their stay on the website. New formats and new products must be timely added to maintain excitement. Also, user favorites and trending items must be promptly presented to incite the shopper’s interests.
Marketing Pre And Post-launch
Finally when the online store is ready for the launch and operational from thereafter, efforts to market the business must begin and remain active consistently moving ahead. A sound marketing strategy before the store is announced open and as soon as it is open for shopping will
Reaching prospective buyers with introductory offers like early bird shopper’s prizes will definitely add to preparing for the launch-day excitement. Running pre and post-launch marketing campaigns will add to the traffic on the website, working in favor of building brand popularity, and driving better sales.
Some pre-launch marketing goals must be to share blogs/PRs with the audience that makes them aware of the upcoming business model and offers. Along with this, third-party marketing campaigns to generate the buzz amongst consumers about a new market player, along with introductory offers on launch day can influence interest towards the online store.
As soon as the store is launched marketing goals can shift to content that discusses items or products selling on the platform. Advantages of post launch marketing include making the audience feel up-to-date with the market trends as well as awareness in terms of options available. Good comparator content on web-pages with competitive profiling in blogs will help customers make informed decisions along with building trust in your brand for keeping them informed.
Working on creating content that scores on search engines, so as to make the business visible will have a positive impact. So, SEO (search engine optimization) should be the key behind moderating content. Also, the admin or business owner needs to wisely decide platforms for the content. Depending on the target audience, content must be rightly placed as Google Ads, shopping ads, on Facebook, Instagram, as Ads or short promotions.
These approaches will ultimately all contribute to improving the brand value as well as traffic and sales from the online platform.
Concluding remarks
eCommerce is foreseen to be the most influential of sectors, driving most business channels in times to come. Social media as well as most marketing activities will center the online shopper to drive better purchases over online stores. Remaining in-sync with times and improvising business plans towards eCommerce will ultimately be wise decisions from the business owner’s perspective.
Available software solutions provide confidence and support to enterprising ideas, for those looking to begin immediately with limited resources and grow as business matures. As the community strengthens, progressive eCommerce solutions like Tribe further offer opportunities with unlimited scope and a strong technical base.
Make your decision today to launch your online store, reach out to those waiting to shop. Be a part of the ‘Tribe’ and feel the difference.