Top 10 Steps to Take Before Launching Your Ecommerce Business

Everything is getting so exciting. You have carefully assessed your product idea and after a long search found an item to sell on the web. After searching and analyzing you’ve found your supplier, ordered samples and found that they’re superior to anything you could have expected. At last, you’ve submitted an order for your inventory and are simply waiting for it to come. What now?

Well, you still have a lot of work to do before launching your website. You are in the pre-launch phase, which will decide the success or failure of your idea.

Launching your e-Commerce website without being prepared can be a formula for disaster, this is the reason we’ve collected these ten steps to take before launching your eCommerce business.

1. Set up Your Social Networks

For some organizations, social media is the soul that brings a reliable flow of traffic and clients. It’s a group of individuals interested in your products and your business or brand. There are a couple of essential things each online business should do to set up their social channels for the launch.

Claim Your Name

As a common rule of thumb, you’ll likely need to get into the two biggest social networks, Facebook and Twitter. Even in case you don’t plan to utilize these platforms vigorously, you should claim your username on both to manage the reputation of your brand and to keep others from taking them. In social networking, there’s nothing worse than having different usernames on each network.

Pick Your Social Networks Wisely

After using Facebook and Twitter, you’ll likely need to join other key social platforms. Some social platforms will work, preferably for your business over others. So you will need to choose wisely.

Set Up Your Profile and Cover Photos

Next, you’ll need to set your profile and cover photographs, and in addition seed the social profiles with a few posts so new fans and followers will have something to look at and won’t feel like they are the first to the party.

Build a Following and Start Connecting

Here comes the most troublesome and time consuming part of setting up your social profiles for launch; building a following. Frankly, your initial number of fans or followers will be hard to get, so you’ll need to dedicate some time each day to build your following and connecting with your fans.

2. Prepare Your Email Marketing

Because now you have your social profiles arranged, you have to get your most crucial communication channel prepared. Email advertising has been proven again and again to be one of the most effective marketing channels, giving a consistently higher ROI. To get on the line, you will need to:

Select Your Email Provider

There are numerous alternatives available for managing your email marketing, but, you’ll need to pick the best one for your business that will be based on which e-commerce platform you will be using. Some email marketing options include MailChimp, Constant Contact, Aweber and Emma.

Setting Up Your Templates and Launch Campaign

Email advertising can be the best type of promotion, you should ensure you prepare things by setting up your templates, creating a welcome email and setting up your email marketing campaigns.

3. Launch Your Landing Page

Your next step should be constructing a landing page. A landing page is needed for a couple of reasons. It will be the temporary home for your business until you launch your full website. Your landing page will begin to exhibit your brand and attract your pre-launch target audience as to what is to come.

4. Install Google Analytics

Analytics is imperative to set up from the very beginning. Analytics will give you profitable insights of your visitors and clients. In a physical store, you see your client and you can without much of a stretch communicate with them. However, on the web, you’re basically blind without analytics.

There are four steps to completely set up Google Analytics for your online store:

• Create Your Google Analytics Account
• Connect Google Analytics To the Online Store
• Activate E-commerce Tracking
• Set Up Your Goals

5. Do the Keyword Research

Before you start setting up your new online store, it’s imperative to do your keyword research. It is a crucial part of search engine optimization (SEO). The fundamental benefit of picking the correct keyword is to enable Google and other search engines to comprehend what your e-commerce site is about and what items you offer.

6. Build Your Online Store

Since you’ve now set up much of the essentials, you’re prepared to start working on your store. The development and designing of your online store is the major task, so ensure you give yourself enough time.

Some of the things you’ll have to consider are:

• Selecting the Right Store Theme
• Overall Store Design
• Product Photography
• Product Descriptions
• Adding Apps

7. Decide on Your KPI’s

Before you launch, you’ll need to characterize a couple of key performance indicators (KPI’s) to monitor going ahead. Characterizing the measurements that are essential to you and your business early will enable you to keep on track and focused.

8. Know Your Shipping Strategy

Shipping is an essential part of your web-based business. It can be troublesome and there is a lot to learn, so you’ll need to plan precisely for it.

There are a few essential components to consider including:

• Packaging Options
• Shipping Carriers
• Shipping Costs and Time

9. Decide Your Launch Promotion and Strategy

At long last, as you are planning to launch, you’ll need to think about the launch itself. How would you plan to launch your new business? Will you launch with an offer like 20% off on everything, free of cost shipping, or a sweepstakes?

Which channels will you use to reveal to your audience about your launch? The great news is that since you’ve been building an email list and a group of audience via social networking sites, you already have an excited audience to share your news with. You may likewise need to consider connecting with relevant publications to have your new store featured for the launch.

10. Launch

Since you have completed this ten step launch plan, it’s now time to launch your online store to an energized and expecting audience. In case you have done everything on this list, you should have a solid following via social networking sites and an email list of individuals prepared to line-up and buy from your new store.

Keep in mind, setting up an online business is not as easy as a walk in the park. It is a difficult experience, but ideally, with this guide, you’ll have the capacity to set the correct tone for your business from the start.