What you should ask yourself before you set up an ecommerce website

Ecommerce is an area where everyone wants to enter. And each one has a plan for himself. But what should you know before you make the big jump? What are the prerequisites to success here? These are some of the questions that we hope will be answered by the end of this article.

1. What is the advantage you’re starting with?

In other words, what is your USP? Every start up needs to have one, because otherwise how do you hope to distinguish yourself from the rest? You need to have some really good reason to convince people as to why they should consider buying from your store instead of trying someone else. It could be that your site is quicker or that it has better offers etc, but it needs to differentiate your site from the rest.

2. What are the products that you’re going to offer?

Choose the product category that you are going to offer carefully. Do your products have sufficient demand? This is important as it is through the sale of these products that you are going to break even. Products that are new to the market or products that belong to the ‘niche’ category can be risky as you may not see a sufficient return on investment.

3. How do you plan to promote yourself?

For a start up, promotion is crucial to increasing traffic. Get people to talk about it. Internet, TV, print, FM, use all media to popularize your site. Firstly, your site’s name needs to become commonly mentioned. For this, you need to generate a buzz about your site and it needs to be pushed from behind by a strong sales team that can convert those visitors into customers.

4. Are you going to hold stock or depend on Suppliers?

Most suppliers charge a hefty fee for a direct despatch to customers. And being a start up, you can’t afford to spend too much on suppliers who discontinue the product once they find the stock is low. In such a scenario, it is best to do the despatch yourself and thereby build a rapport with the customer.

5. Payment gateways

This is the final gap to be plugged but in many ways the most important one. The merchant that you choose will determine to what extent your customer trusts you. Never compromise here as customers are extremely wary of security lapses in payment softwares. Don't settle for anything other than the best when it comes to payment gateway solutions.

These are just some of the questions that we thought were pertinent to a budding online store. There are more, but these are the fundamental ones.

Brick and Mortar VS Online Stores

Everyone wants to know more about eCommerce. And this article too is about the same: Ecommerce. But we’re going to go still more deeper into it and analyse the differences between online stores and brick and mortar business.

If we divided business today into two broad categories, they would be:

1. Brick and Mortar Businesses, and

2. Online Businesses

Brick and Mortar :

This is the traditional way of doing business that requires the three factors of production namely, land, labour and entrepreneurship. Well, that obviously means that it is shorn of the usage of technology and the advantages that it provides making it a good game for the big money players and an expensive one for the new guys. But there are certain advantages to Brick and mortar stores. What are they?

The Pros:

- It allows the customer to touch and feel the product they’re out to buy. They can inspect the product physically, look for defects if any, and be sure of the product they’re buying.

-The internet is rife with defective products, scamsters and fake brands that dupe the gullible customer. In contrast to this, brick and mortar stores offer you a sense of trust and comfort.

- Location is crucial in a brick and mortar store. Find a location where people congregate, and you get the eyeballs. 1 in 10 eyeballs will definitely fall for your store.

The Cons:

- As we already saw, land, labour and entrepreneurship. Among the three, land is probably most difficult to obtain and is therefore a huge cost to the average businessman.

- You are constantly engaged in a lopsided battle with the established players and it takes a lot of time to get even.

Online Businesses :

Firstly, an online stores is way easier to setup. It requires some research and marketing but overall, the costs involved are much lesser when compared to a brick and mortar business.

The Pros:

- Your ecommerce will be available 24 * 7, 365 days a year for customers to access.

- If you've generated good reviews and built a good reputation among your clientele you can be sure you’re site will be talked about and searched. All you need is some hardselling.

- Yes you do have some limitations but they are not one of space and sales reps. An online store lets you serve thousands of customers simultaneously.

The Cons:

- Limited interaction with clientele.

- Easy for the customer to get distracted as you’re constrained by space.

Finally, each of them have their own advantages. But, if you want to get a positive business graph even in next decade, its better to go with online stores.