Introduction to Building eCommerce Brands
Getting Started – Building an eCommerce Brand
Building an eCommerce brand can be an extremely good way to make some good coin on the side. But before getting into it, it is important to know exactly what is required to be successful in the eCommerce market.
When it comes to building a brand, there are millions of ways you could do it, this is just one of many, but probably the simplest way top succeed initially. As time goes on, I will be actually creating this brand and you will be able to follow along and hopefully succeed in eCommerce yourself!
When it comes to building an eCommerce store there are 9 main steps to consider to really get things off the ground. Before we get into it, I want to clarify, that we are focusing on building a real brand and following, rather than just a mere online store.
Sure, we could get sales by just building an online eCommerce store, but we want to build something a little bigger than that!
Here are my 9 steps to Building an eCommerce brand:
1) Concept/Idea
What is going to solve a problem? Do you need a business plan? Who are you going to help?
2) Market Research
It is important to know who your competitors are and how you can beat them? What is your point of difference?
3) Brand/Identity
What is the brand story? What is the brand personality? What is the name of your brand? And are you building an eCommerce store or an eCommerce brand?
4) Brand Assets
What is the look and feel of your brand? How do you build a logo? What other assets do you need to get started with eCommerce?
5) Products
What are you going to sell? What does your product mean to people? Is your product remarkable?
6) Website Store
What platform are you going to build your eCommerce store on? What are the pros and cons of that platform? Is the user experience important?
7) eCommerce Logistics
What do you need to consider when starting a store? How do you setup shipping? How do you take payments? (Yes, these are important…)
8) Marketing Systems
What platforms are you going to use to market your new brand? What strategy or approach should you use?
9) Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
How are you going to improve your conversions on your eCommerce website? How do you make people buy more?
10) Content Strategy
Is it important to post and be present? Does this even help sales?
And that’s it! That’s exactly what we are going to do to ensure you can build a successful eCommerce business – and I will walk you through every step of the way to ensure you can succeed!
1) Crafting an eCommerce Business Concept
When first coming up with the eCommerce concept, you don’t just want to dive straight into what the product you will be selling on your eCommerce business, there are a few things to consider before talking about your product.
The first thing to understand is the difference between setting up an eCommerce brand vs an eCommerce store. Although they sound to be very similar, and in actually starting each one there are a lot of similarities, the end result is really quite different.
The main differences are that an eCommerce brand isn’t recognisable by just one product, it has more value than just what it sells, people want to identify with it and people want to buy more of it, no matter what they sell.
But how do we get there?
Well, we get there by selling products, however, as we sell products we communicate the issues that we are solving by selling them. Ecommerce brand also typically have particular values they follow, they have a personality, they communicate in a certain manner.
When starting up an eCommerce brand, this is important to keep in mind.
So step 1 is to put together the ideas! Come up with a few considerations as to what you could sell. Don’t make it a reality yet, just if you were to own an eCommerce brand what could you sell. Let’s keep this simple!
The next question to ask yourself is “Who am I trying to help?”.
The reason we ask this is to firstly, understand that your product needs to appeal to a specific audience (So many people do this wrong). But secondly, your product needs to solve a problem. It doesn’t have to be a life saving product, but it needs to have some sort of purpose so people are motivated to buy it, more specifically, your sub demographic that you’re defining.
You really need to deeply understand your audience, their motives, needs, hobbies, interests and pretty much everything about them!
And the last questions, how is your product going to help them?
For some examples watch the video below!
Now lastly, for this section, we need to understand product-market-fit.
This a simple term to understand, does your demographic NEED this product? And the answer is quite often no.
I am a big believer in analysing businesses who have tried before me and understanding where they may have gone wrong, and unfortunately this is a stage where many businesses tend to fail.
They build the best product in the world and believe that it is going to appeal to a specific demographic, then when it gets there, they try it and they are not really all that fussed by the new product and in their old ways they go ahead to use the old product they’ve used for years.
So what is the best way to go about this? Well before developing a product, it is essential to deeply understand the people you are trying to target.
How do you find out what they like? Ask them!
For the conclusive guide watch the video below!
More coming soon!
