Don’t be that person who gets tunnel-visioned on the promises of ecommerce entrepreneurship — from making thousands in your sleep to taking ice baths in sparkling water for your “morning routine.”
The truth is, running an ecommerce startup can be a brutal grind. But as long as you adjust your expectations and stick to a strategic, step-by-step approach, it just might be your most rewarding undertaking yet.
In this post, we’ll go over some of the top ecommerce startup tips that every beginner should know.
Let’s get started.
1. Prioritize Product Ideas You’ll Buy Yourself
There’s a good reason why practically every ecommerce guide on the internet talks about product research.
While you can argue that any product can sell if you find the right customers, it’s never wise to pin your hopes and dreams on gimmicks.
What you need is to focus on products that deliver real value — something you’re willing to buy for yourself.
Consider the following checklist when choosing a good product:
- Make sure it solves a real-world problem. With the right tactics, a product that addresses a crucial pain point and does it well can practically sell itself.
- Try to look for products that align with your passions, expertise, or daily frustrations. The more you’re personally and emotionally invested in your idea, the more you’re qualified to sell it genuinely and persuasively.
- Avoid saturated niches with big-name players. As an ecommerce startup, you have every opportunity to set up shop in an unsaturated niche — far from well-established brands with deep pockets that can swallow startups whole.
Of course, you should also look for products that can give you good margins.
Want to provide products that can lead to positive change? Make sure you start with your wallet.
You can gain a head start by looking into niches that are proven to have healthy margins.
This brings us to the next tip…
2. Validate Your Niche
Before you spend a single cent on a brand-new ecommerce store, you need to validate your niche first.
Multiple studies suggest that choosing the wrong product or niche is among the top reasons why ecommerce businesses flop before they can even stand. To ensure you don’t add to the statistics, make niche validation a top priority.
The first thing you need to ask yourself is, does your niche cater to impulse buyers?
While impulse-driven customers convert fast, making top-level ecommerce decisions around them may leave you contending with high refund/return rates and negative profitability.
What you need is a niche tied to a long-standing or growing culture. You’ll need this community aspect to generate repeat purchases and build customer loyalty — both of which are pillars to long-term ecommerce success.
Here’s another tip: Use Google Trends to measure demand and seasonality. Just enter your desired niche or product and click ‘Explore’ to begin the analysis.
The Google Trends report will help you evaluate the demand in your product or niche over time — making sure you’re not betting on a fad that will sizzle away in time. In addition, it will unveil the regions where your niche currently has the most relevance, which can guide your marketing and advertising efforts later.
As for the community aspect, you can try searching online for communities or social media groups. An easy way to do this is to use Google with your keyword and the “inurl” operator, like “inurl:forum” or “inurl:community.”
While this doesn’t dictate the future of ecommerce businesses, being in a niche with a thriving community is a great sign, to say the least.
3. Choose Scalable Platforms You’re Comfortable With
Once you’re absolutely, positively sure about your niche, it’s time to roll up your sleeves and build your ecommerce website.
The first step is to pick an ecommerce platform that’s not only scalable, but also comes in an intuitive, usable package you’re comfortable with.
Fortunately, most of the top ecommerce platforms offer free trials. Use them to get a firsthand experience of the interface and features before you make your decision.
Some of the best ecommerce platforms you should look at are:
- Shopify
- BigCommerce
- Webflow
- WooCommerce
- PrestaShop
4. Look for Products that are Popping Off on Social Media (for Dropshipping)
For dropshippers, product research means everything.
One of the main things the top dropshippers recommend is to use social media to find products with explosive potential.
The feeds of short-form, content-focused platforms like TikTok have virtually become catalogs of profitable product ideas that can sell.
Here’s a pro tip: Consider creating a fresh account for the sole purpose of product research. Keep on engaging branded and sponsored posts to “train” your algorithm to show you commercial content.
Check out this example from TikTok user @Ulianka.
Pretty soon, your feed will be crammed with posts that promote profitable product ideas.
Just be careful and realize that some of the popular products on social media are built on hype. While dropshippers can take advantage of these trends to turn a quick profit, their sustainability as money-makers in the future isn’t guaranteed.
5. Broaden Your Branding
After deciding your niche, you probably already have a lineup of potential store names, logos, color schemes, and other branding elements.
It may sound counterintuitive at first, but broadening your branding could position your ecommerce business for better market resilience and growth opportunities down the line.
Sure, “niching down” and targeting a narrower market are effective if you want to stand out as a newcomer. But that doesn’t mean your whole brand identity should revolve around a singular product.
Unless you’re fine with being booted back to square one should your product fail, give yourself some legroom to expand or pivot. For example, rather than naming your company “Smart Bottles HQ,” broaden it to something like “HydraVibe Fitness” to be adaptable to related products like fitness journals, eco-friendly yoga mats, or meditation guides.
6. Create Killer Landing Pages
Landing pages are a must-have component for all ecommerce websites.
TL;DR, a landing page is where customers arrive, learn everything they need to know about your product, and make a purchase decision — all in one place.
With such an important function, it only makes sense to make landing pages the focal point of your optimization efforts.
Here’s a quick checklist to get you started:
- Address your customer’s pain points. Make sure your main talking points revolve around the real-world problems that customers are trying to solve. You don’t have to be clever about it, just be clear and position your product as the perfect solution.
- Show (don’t just tell). Don’t just rely on a thick wall of text to describe your product. Instead, use high-quality product images and — if possible — informative videos that showcase how the product works.
- Optimize your website’s performance. A study published by Deloitte revealed that a 0.1-second improvement in loading time could raise conversions by up to 8.4%. To address existing performance issues on your storefront, from bloated code to unoptimized images, use PageSpeed Insights to pinpoint the problems and discover actionable recommendations.
- Use a strong Call-To-Action (CTA). On a landing page, the CTA gives customers that one last nudge into actually completing a transaction. Keep it short, but attention-grabbing, urgent, impactful, and value-focused, like “Get 75% Off Now” or “Start Your Free Trial Today.”
- Add “before and after” images. One of the most powerful ways to maximize conversions on a landing page is to show real-world results. “Before and after” images do that exceedingly well by visually showcasing results, which you can create yourself (testing the product) or source from social media (with their permission).
Speaking of showcasing results, consider spicing up your landing page with social proof, including real customer reviews and User-Generated Content (UGC).
Tons of modern ecommerce brands feature UGC, like unboxing videos, tutorials, and customer photos, to improve their landing pages. For example, check out Drunk Elephant’s landing page for their hair treatment products.
7. Cut the Friction Out of the User Experience
Another crucial component of landing page optimization is the user experience.
It’s not just about quicker loading speeds or stable responsiveness. To ensure the best experience possible, you need to keep the experience as simple and frictionless as possible.
One thing you could do right now is to simplify the checkout process. Consider enabling Single Sign-On (SSO), which allows customers to easily check out using their social media credentials.
At the very least, enable express checkout options with payment processors like Google Pay or PayPal.
8. Don’t Ignore the Shipping and Fulfillment Processes
Keep in mind that the customer experience doesn’t stop at the sale.
Everything in the post-sales process is also pivotal to your ecommerce business — not just in terms of customer experience, but also profitability.
For one, make sure you choose a logistics partner that perfectly aligns with your needs and budget. Plenty of small ecommerce businesses, in particular, rely on third-party logistics (3PL) provider that can handle inventory management, shipping, and even returns processing.
Start by looking into 3PL solutions that offer flexible pricing without compromising on features and service quality. As a bonus tip, feel free to ask about the 3PL logistics software they use to ensure they match your service and scalability requirements.
Just be sure to do your part and provide clear and transparent shipping rates, options, and return policies. All this information should be present during checkout.
Other than the reliability of your logistics, paying attention to strategies that build customer loyalty is a must.
9. Customer Loyalty Means Everything
Customer loyalty is something you should think about as early as the product validation stage.
Remember, acquiring new customers is substantialyl more expensive than serving loyal customers.
Below are X quick tips you should remember:
- Implement personalized post-purchase experiences. Use automated platforms to send follow-up content (i.e., “Thank You” emails) to new customers. Offer free learning resources as well as other perks, like discount vouchers or referral programs, to encourage repeat engagement.
- Automate replenishment alerts. For consumables or fast-moving goods, automate replenishment alerts as means of making it more convenient for customers to restock. Some of the best email marketing platforms for this would be Mailchimp, Constant Contact, Brevo, Omnisend, and Klaviyo.
- Get their feedback. Not only will requesting their feedback help you generate valuable social proof for your landing pages, it’s also a great way to make customers feel heard. Of course, this also provides you with useful insights that can help improve your product and service.
- Foster your community. Invite your customers to join your brand’s official social media group or instant messaging server. Use this channel to promote new products, spread updates, and share tips that will help customers make the most out of their purchase.
What’s Next?
Running an ecommerce business is equal parts challenging and rewarding.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all blueprint for success, observing proven strategies will give you the best chances of achieving your business objectives.
The next step is to get the digital marketing flywheel turning, which starts by learning the different channels for promoting your ecommerce brand. This includes social media marketing, email marketing, blogging, SEO, and digital advertising.
Good luck!