Starting your own business on the Web is a fairly simple way to organize your business and sales are at the forefront here. To figure out how to start an ecommerce business with due success, you need to decide on a niche that you would like to occupy. Almost everything is sold through online stores. Therefore, the competition is high here. Depending on the chosen niche, seasonality, your own skills in building and promoting sites, your starting budget depends.
What to sell?
The first logical question arising from future businessmen is what to sell and is it profitable to deal with a certain type of goods? Here you need to think big and do some preliminary analysis. Through online shopping, you can buy anything from baby toys, women’s clothing, cosmetics, books, bedding, and strollers to auto parts, tires, and fishing items. For each of these points, you can find several already successful projects.
Therefore, it is almost impossible to pick up some kind of genuine original industry if you are not going to sell products of your own production.
Another issue is the sales region. Simple math works: if you want to sell your products throughout the CIS, then you find yourself in difficult conditions and your chances are reduced, without proper investment.
Where to begin?
It is worth starting by studying the segment in which you plan to accommodate. Suppose that you have decided to start selling phones in the Republic of Belarus. First, you need to evaluate what is offered in this market. You just google by looking at seller sites. In parallel, ask yourself questions:
- What products are they selling?
- What do they not have in their assortment?
- Are their prices higher or lower than market prices?
- How could you reduce prices?
- Their terms of payment and delivery. Are there many options offered, how fast is the delivery, what is its coverage?
- What kind of feedback does the seller get? What do customers mark as a plus and what do they mark as a negative?
- Could you correct the mistakes made by the seller?
By answering these questions, you will receive a rough outline of your future store and its functionality. Concentrate on your competitive edge and turn to ecommerce developers at Elogic. If you think over and implement them in advance, you will not only get clients, but also save on the budget of your project.
We make a site
Naturally, online sales are impossible without a website. Yes, today there are VKontakte groups, which are trading platforms, but your own website will help you improve usability, SEO, and it looks more presentable and convenient. There are two ways to create a website: by ordering a full-fledged new website from the developers, or by trying to make it yourself. If you have no coding experience, then constructors can help, but they also have drawbacks. First, the narrow functionality and design. You will not be able to create a truly original project. Secondly, there may be problems with SEO resource optimization and window dressing.
What’s with registration?
In parallel with the development of the site, go to the tax office and open an individual entrepreneur. This status will give you the opportunity to accept payment by bank cards, “attach” the official acquiring from the bank to the site, so that users are not afraid to pay with your details. The documents you receive make you pay tax. And rightly so, working in 2018 and not paying taxes is very risky, given that all your cash flow will go through bank servers. In addition, registration will give you the opportunity to subsequently receive bank loans for small business for its development, if, of course, you have such a need.”Most of the new businesses nowadays tend to select a limited liability company as their business entity, says Ian from LLCGuys.com.So if you’re still wondering what to choose – you can’t go wrong with LLC.
Supplier search
After you have registered, built your own Internet resource and are ready to place goods on it, you need to take care of their delivery. Suppliers of goods will be happy to work with you if you are officially registered and are ready to buy products from them in bulk. Finding your first suppliers is not that difficult. Many companies themselves are ready to look for partners in order to increase product sales. Searching the Internet is for the query “buy in bulk” and “wholesales”. Also on the Web there are special aggregator services that collect a supply database, for example, OptList.