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THE COMPLETE QUICKSTART GUIDE TO BUILDING AN ONLINE STORE
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START & SCALE YOUR ONLINE STORE COURSE
table of contents
So you want to build an online store? Finding & Validating Your Idea • Start brainstorming • What do your friends and peers complain about? • What are the hardest products for you to order and why? • Is there something a current provider of an online product is not offering you/your friends? • Browse social media • Check out the top-selling items on Amazon and eBay • dea Validation • Browse Amazon Top Sellers • Get people to pay for your item • Online research
Branding
• Nailing down WHO your online store is • Unique selling proposition • Be edgy
Mind-blowing customer service Product Planning Building an Audience Launch Scaling Your Online Store Go Out and Conquer E-Commerce
THE COMPLETE QUICKSTART GUIDE TO BUILDING AN ONLINE STORE
SO YOU WANT TO BUILD AN ONLINE STORE?
The fact that you’re reading this means you’re probably the entrepreneurial type, which also means you’re probably trying to think of your next big business idea while you read this. Whatever that idea may be, if it’s ultimately worth pursuing and sticking with, it will need to meet a few criteria:
1 You want something that can bring in good income within a reasonable amount of time.
2 You want something that doesn’t require you to grind away 12 hours a day forever—something that can scale.
3
You want something that doesn’t take an eternity to set up, so you can quit your job ASAP and work on your passion full time!
The business model that fulfills all three of these criteria is closer than you think. It’s something you’ve been avoiding because it seems so complicated and tough. But you can’t ignore it any longer. It’s something that is experiencing double-digit growth, which will continue through 2020, when sales are expected to top $4 trillion. That model, my friend, is e-commerce. I know what you’re thinking.
“But I have no idea how to open a store! What about the inventory? What about the shipping? I’m going to lose a ton of money on all of that.”
It’s time to stop worrying, and start being awesome. And that begins by reading this guide, brought to you by Foundr. Our latest epic entrepreneurship guide, made completely free to our friends and followers, takes you deep into the heart of e-commerce, telling you everything you need to know about starting an online store, at warp speed. Buckle up, here we go!
FINDING & VALIDATING YOUR IDEA
So the guns, glory, and riches of building an e-commerce empire has enticed you. The first stumbling block is landing a good idea. Finding a good idea is one of the hardest parts of starting any business, and that certainly includes starting an online store. While challenging, it is one of the most important parts of the process, and can’t be rushed.
Starting any business can be risky, and if you want to mitigate that risk, there are two important things you should do before you launch:
Make sure there are enough people who are willing to buy what you’re going to sell
Make sure they know about you (more on that later!)
Starting an online store means picking a product to sell that has a market and good potential. You can’t just create a brand, spanking new product and throw it into the market. For your online store, you want to start with a savvy bet. How do you do it? Finding an idea isn’t as hard as you might think. Here are a few ways you can think of some good online store ideas to investigate.
START BRAINSTORMING Looking around your house and at your credit card statement is a great way to understand what is in demand—after all, you’ve bought it! You can also brainstorm a list of things to sell by browsing places like Amazon and eBay, seeing what’s popular and jotting down the ideas that come to you. Don’t overthink it. Brainstorming is the fun and easy part. Just write down a list of things that appeal to you. The hard work of validating comes later.
When you are creating your brainstorming list, you’ll want to narrow it down using a few criteria:
• Small enough to ship relatively inexpensively. This is usually a better bet if you are a one-person operation, working from a home office. • Doesn’t have many (preferably any) legal restrictions applied to it, such as medications, supplements, etc. • Something that you’d feel OK with selling in person, in public. That one should be obvious, but it’s worth restating. Of course, you can always sell a completely new product that you’ve invented (although chances are somebody has thought of it already), so if you’re the Edison type, write your invention down too.
IF THIS ISN’T GETTING YOUR BRAIN JUICES GOING, HERE ARE SOME OTHER WAYS TO REV UP YOUR IDEA MACHINE:
What do your friends and peers complain about? Could that complaint be solved with a product?
Browse social media You can also check out the social media feeds to see what people are chatting about. Look up category keywords to check out the buzz on a topic, and get some great ideas.
What are the hardest products for you to order and why? Is there something that you WISH you could buy online, but can’t? Is there a way of making a product that makes this process easier, or tinkering with the product so that’s it’s suitable for an online store? Or maybe you can find a better manufacturer or wholesaler.
Is there something a current provider of an online product is not offering you/your friends? What is lacking in their service?
Check out the top-selling items on Amazon and eBay One of the best ways to further investigate your niche is to simply review the top-selling lists on Amazon or eBay. By doing so, you will learn exactly what people are already buying so you don’t need to guess if there is a demand for your product.
Just go to Amazon Best Sellers and select your category of desired products from the bar on the left.
One important note: You may want to consider sticking to selling a product that you know about and are at least interested in. We don’t think you need to be “passionate” about the product, necessarily, although that helps immensely. But entrepreneurship has a steep learning curve, and you don’t want to make things even harder by trying to sell something you have absolutely no interest in. After that, you should take your list of brainstormed products, and get cracking on the validation side of things.
IDEA VALIDATION
You don’t want to go ordering a pallet of stuff right off the bat. You want to research and test as much as possible. Going through the process of validation will reduce the risk associated with the product, and help you reach an objective assessment of whether your product is in demand online. There are 1,001 ways to validate a business idea. We are going to go through some of our favorites here:
BROWSE AMAZON TOP SELLERS
Amazon is the king of e-commerce. If you aren’t using Amazon to validate your e-commerce idea, than you are making a huge mistake. Amazon shows you exactly who is selling what and how popular these things are. Head back over to the Amazon Best Sellers list and check out the categories for the product idea you’ve got in mind for your online store. Answer the following questions about each of your products: Are there plenty of competitors looking to sell your product? That’s a good thing, because it shows there is a substantial market. How do the ratings look? If they are bad, that could indicate an opportunity to better market or physically improve a product.
GET PEOPLE TO PAY FOR YOUR ITEM The number one best way to validate a product is by getting people to pay for the thing you want to sell online. Yes, that means getting people to dish up cold, hard cash. Who do you reach out to in order to test your theory? Start with people you know! That’s right, reach out to friends and family who might have an interest in what you are selling and pitch them your prospective product. If they’re really interested, they should be willing to
Keep in mind that you’ll need to follow up with those who have commented and ask them if they’d be interested in purchasing your product, and be sure to offer them a great discount. One way to meet potential customers is to join a Meetup group. There are many different hobbyists with different interests who meet regularly via Meetup, which would present a perfect opportunity to do some product validation.
put in a pre-order, either in person or over PayPal. This is way more reliable than asking people if they would hypothetically be interested in a product. Guarantee a refund to help people get over the fear of losing their money. If you don’t know anyone who wants a product you’ve got in mind, it’s possible to try to pre-sell your item in an online community. Careful, this requires a lot of tact and you need to be sure the product is actually relevant to the group of people you are looking at. A great place to start is on online forums like Reddit. You can see an example of someone who has done so here:
You can also ascertain audience size by setting up (but not running) a Facebook Ads campaign. You’ll need to create a new ad, catering the “Audience” option to your desired sales location. You can then list your products based on the specific niche. Then Facebook will automatically display your potential reach, or market size.
ONLINE RESEARCH
To top that off, take time to do more online research. This could include: Checking Google Keyword finder for search volumes. It’s a good indication that people are looking to buy if you’ve got more than 1,000 searches a month. You can also use free online tools like SimilarWeb and SEMrush to uncover search terms and see how many people are looking at your competition. Looking at your competition. Are there many stores selling your product? How healthy are they? Look for things like website age, an active blog and a healthy social following to understand how long your competitor has been running. If you are seeing a lot of failing online stores selling the product you had in mind, you might need to rethink it. With this information in hand, you should have a fairly good idea of whether your product has sufficient demand to allow you to jump into creating an online store.
Branding
Quick, think of your favorite chocolate bar! Does it have a nice logo, a great slogan, and perfect wrapping by any chance? That is the power of branding.
Good sales start with good branding. When it comes to online stores, branding is a hugely important aspect of success. You need to create a brand that appeals to your target market, and is trustworthy enough for someone to hand their money to your small online store that they have not heard of before. You need to remember that you are likely going to be competing with many more established players selling the same product. Your main opportunity to stand out is through great branding. But beyond standing out, it inspires trust and signals legitimacy. In this chapter, I’ll be taking you through everything you need to know about building a great online store brand.
Nailing down WHO your online store is That’s right— your online store has an identity, and you need to figure out what that identity is before you can brand properly. Although this may seem trivial, it is of utmost importance that you answer the following questions in order to establish your brand. The answers to these questions will be foundational and will guide your marketing going forward.
• What is your online store’s mission? • Which problem does your online store’s product solve/what pleasure does it provide? • What is the first thing you want customers to associate with your product? • What are the top three benefits of your product? • What are the top three feelings associated with your product? • What kind of person (age, gender, location, temperament, demographic) would need and like your product? Answer these carefully, but don’t let this exercise get in the way of your progress. You can always modify (rebrand) your product as necessary in the future. You may want to conduct some market research to answer these questions. For example, you could survey businesses offering up similar products. How are they branding their offering? Are they all using a minimalist web design? Is their logo young and fresh, catering to a teenager crowd? Remember, there is no right or wrong answer, but you do need to get something cohesive down.
Unique selling proposition
This step will help you figure out what will make you stand out in a crowd of hundreds of other online stores selling similar products. It is absolutely crucial you pin this down early and do a good job at it. Remember, your unique selling proposition doesn’t necessarily have to be about something the product “does” or “is.” It could be about your service. Or how it’s delivered. It could be all about the story behind the product. In fact you, as a unique entrepreneur, could be part of that story. In fact, a great way to come up with your USP is to write down the story of how you came to discover your product, or why you decided to start selling this product in an online store Let’s come up with a pretend example of an online store product. We’ll call it: Mime Luxury Jeggings. The story of Mime Luxury Jeggings goes like this: As a busy mother of two with a full-time job, the founder of Mime Luxury Jeggings, Mimi Carter, wasn’t left with much time to worry about fashion. But that didn’t mean Mimi sacrificed her desire to look good. Mimi loved the look and feel of jeggings for everyday wear. Both flexible and attractive, they made the perfect outfit for her, with a long tunic and ballet flats.
The problem is that she couldn’t find jeggings that were affordable, but not totally cheap and falling apart on day five. So she founded Mime Luxury Jeggings, to provide other women like her with high-quality jeggings at an affordable price. She scored manufacturers’ ordering samples until she was able to find the perfect jeggings that felt great, looked great, and didn’t hurt the wallet. Because she takes pride in her product, Mimi has her stylish logo hand sewn on each and every pair. In this mass-produced world of faceless clothing, Mime Luxury Jeggings gives back the personalized touch and care that used to go into a piece of clothing. From this story, you can see that several points stand out: • Jeggings have been expertly hand picked • Sold with love • From someone who understands the lives of the demographic she is selling to • Extremely high attention to quality. Underlining the quality of a product is something a lot of bigger online shops do not do, so can make yours really stand out and build your brand. Highlighting the high quality of your brand— whether that is through a money back guarantee, rave reviews, or beautiful photography—is a sure way to make your brand one that people grow to love and tell their friends about.
Be edgy Once you’ve got your USP down, you are now ready to get started on creating a logo, choosing a website design, and creating marketing content. This is all part of your online store’s branding strategy. One tip for creating an online story brand that stands out is to work at the edges of your market. That does NOT mean being mean, insulting, or discriminatory. It means having an opinion on a topic and not being afraid to voice it. So for our Mime Jeggings example, you might have a caption or around how most other jeggings are inferior. You might choose to use edgier language like “Finally, jeggings that actually rock as much as you do.”
This position is edgy because not only have you taken the stance that your jeggings are great, but you’ve denounced all other jeggings as low quality. Taking such a unique stance on your brand can be very helpful. Whether that is with quirky photography, or using comics to model your products, think about how you can approach your target market from a place that will surprise them and get their attention. A good example of a brand that takes an edgy position is the Cards Against Humanity game, with their slogan, “A party game for horrible people.” This immediately sets this brand apart from every other game on the market.
Mind-blowing customer service
The saying goes: Wow a customer and they’ll always return. Who says that? Foundr says that!
You want to be that brand that stands out in people’s minds by having mind-blowing customer service. This is an extremely effective way of building a quality brand that stands out. Great customer service could mean things like having a chat box available on the website, sending hand-written notes along with your product, or even sending along a small box of chocolates. What you do really depends on your target demographic. We cater to driven entrepreneurs like you. So that means that we do everything we can to save you time, things like writing this guide and getting back to your emails within a day.
Customer service doesn’t have to be complicated. It just takes that extra little effort to really “wow” your customer. And nowadays, there are a bunch of services that can automate the personalization of customer service. Services like Thankster, for example, send handwritten notes to customers. BoxGeek can get some custom boxes made for your customers. The key thing to remember about branding is that it’s a continuous process, one of trial and error. It’s not something you set and forget. You should always be seeking to improve and build your brand.
Product Planning
Product planning seems like a very technical and boring step, and in some respects it is. But we are confident with our easy-to-follow chapter, you may even find it fun in the end!
The first and most difficult parts of product planning are:
1
Finding a good product provider (the manufacturer or wholesaler that will supply you with your product)
2
Figuring out how to deliver the product to your buyers
Finding a good provider for your product can be one of the most frustrating and time-consuming aspects of building an online store. But if you find a good one, a major source of frustration will disappear from the process. It may be that you are selling a product that you are making on your own, but even if that’s the case, you’ll likely be needing to purchase some raw materials from a third-party provider. Regardless, the best way to find a good domestic wholesaler or manufacturer is via word of mouth and referrals. Ask around with people who have jumped into the online store space for recommendations. If you’re looking to source a manufacturer from overseas, you’ll likely end up at some point on Alibaba. Alibaba is one of the largest business-tobusiness marketplaces that connects (mostly) Asian manufacturers to North American buyers. There are several other similar companies that operate in this space that are smaller and cater to different markets for manufacturers, like IndiaMART.
What about dropshipping - that is, hiring a wholesaler to handle the whole storage and shipping process? Yes, I know you thought of it and started getting excited. Many people fall into the trap of getting excited about dropshipping. It’s an alluring concept. With dropshipping you don’t have to stock any items. Just send your orders to your dropshipper and voila! Dream come true? Hold up! The one thing most people don’t consider is how tight profit margins for dropshipping often are (between 10-25%), and the fact that you will still need to provide customer service. The customer service part of this is especially frustrating, since the issues they are bringing up will be out of your hands (in the dropshipper’s hands instead). If the dropshipper messes up, that mess up is your problem. And for profit margins as low as 10% (or lower!) it can often not be worth it. However, if you manage to find a reputable dropshipper—say through a personal contact—it may turn out to be very much worth your while. But you’ll likely want to at least start out by shipping yourself, so that means you’ll need to find a wholesaler or a manufacturer. If you are living in a Western country, most manufacturing has left for areas overseas, so you’ll be looking at a wholesaler (i.e. a company that buys product from overseas manufacturer at a lower price to resell it locally).
The simplest way to find wholesale vendors in your country is by Googling for a company offering the product you want to sell, going on their website, and finding out who their wholesale distributors are. This is a great option that, although it may be a bit more expensive, offers some advantages. Namely: • Higher product quality • Much better customer service • No need to deal with customs, shipping overseas, and sketchy international sellers Another great way to find wholesale vendors is by attending local trade shows. For example, a site called WholesaleCentral.com lists all of the trade shows in the US based on product category. If you are ready for the upfront time commitment, however, buying directly from overseas manufacturers is the way to go. Although it is a pain, and a risk, finding a dependable manufacturer overseas could be very much worth it in the long run: • The prices are unbeatable. You will be able to competitively price your products. • You’ll be able to increase your margins. • You’ll be able to make modifications and specific requests. This part of the process will involve a lot of sample requesting, trial and error, emails, phone calls and waiting. But you can’t do without it.
When you are first starting out, you may be tempted to try to fill your online store with many items. This is a mistake. Initially, your store will not be getting tons of attention. Those who visit will likely be unusually interested in you and your brand for some reason (e.g. they are your friends). You’ll need to develop a constant stream of visitors before you know exactly which items they enjoy (which colors and designs, etc.). If applicable, set up a method for customers to put in special orders. This way, you can collect information about what kinds of things people visiting your store are interested in, and expand your offerings based on actual data. But while you are getting everything in place in terms of your product, you can start on getting other things hashed out: • Figuring out how you are going to send the product to your customer: find your nearest mailing company, call for prices, try to get a deal for small businesses • Getting your packaging in place • Building your online store website • Creating a logo • Writing product descriptions • Audience building (a chapter on that below) Complete this list, and once you’ve received your inventory you’ll be in a good place to start making money.
BUILDING AN AUDIENCE
By now, you’ve built a strong foundation for your online store. You’ve got a great product and some great branding ideas lined up. Now it’s time to start selling, and you can’t sell into the void.
We are going to go through some of our favorite options here:
1
You need to start building up your online store’s audience, which means you need to start doing some digital marketing. There are endless ways you can drive traffic to your online store and build an audience. Indeed, a whole book could be written on the topic.
2
3
Instagram: It’s how we built Foundr, and we highly recommend it for nearly any online product. The tough part is having enough pictures to fill your feed, but you can buffer it with quotes or resharing other people’s content. Eventually, you may be able to share content created by your customers! A blog for SEO: Ranking high in Google can be a powerful way to get attention to your site. To rank in Google, you’ll need a blog with awesome content. It’s a lot of work with little return initially, but keep at it and you’ll be seeing exponential dividends over time. A Kickstarter campaign: A great way to get some initial attention to your store, build an email list and raise some capital.
Email marketing is often the most profitable marketing channel, and you want to start building your list as soon as possible. Much of your other marketing work, in fact, will in large part be designed to feed into your email list. That means that you’ll have to choose an email service provider early in the game, and get an autoresponder set up. You might want to set up a way to capture emails on your website.
No matter what strategy you pursue, the key is to make sure you are collecting emails from the start. In fact, you should be collecting emails well before you launch.
One good way to build your audience before you even launch your store is to have a landing page in place. A landing page is simply a web page you set up prior to launch in order to explain to the world what your store is going to be about, and preferably, has a spot to sign up for the launch announcement. A landing page, also called a launch page in this context, is essential for a few reasons. It will be your brand’s temporary home until you launch with your full website. Your landing page will begin to showcase your brand and tease your prelaunch audience with what’s to come. It’s a place to start building an email list of people who are interested in you.
Here are a few tools you can use to build a landing page that are really quick and inexpensive:
• Spaces
• Striking.ly
• LaunchRock
• Unbounce
You can get your launch page in front of eyes by using the three marketing channels mentioned above. You should also spend some time doing media outreach, that is, contacting relevant magazines and online product sites that feature pre-launched items, such as TechCrunch. Building an audience seems like a daunting task at first, but it’s really just a set of repeatable actions that, slowly, over time, create measurable results.
Launch Gearing up to launch time is an exciting and sometimes overwhelming task. Now that you’ve got all of your ducks in a row, you are probably itching to go live with your store and start selling. Before you do, you need to get a few things in place:
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Choosing your brand name and acquiring social media channels. If possible, you want to pick an online store name that is the same across all social media platforms. Programs like Namechk and KnowEm let you search for consistent name availability across hundreds of social networks before choosing the name you want to go with. Get Google Analytics in place so you have as much usable data as possible.
3 4 5
Have a good launch promotion or strategy to get things started on a high note. This could mean a promotion with 20% off everything, or buy one, get one free. Launch your store to the email list you’ve been growing through the audience-building phase. Launch can be a stressful day. You’ll likely want to book the whole day to monitor your online store for any crashes brought on by the heightened traffic.
ScalingYour Online Store After your launch, you’ll want to monitor a few key performance indicators (KPIs). Defining the metrics of success early will help keep you on track and focused. After all, what you can’t measure, you can’t manage.
And some key marketing performance indicators:
Here are some key sales performance indicators:
• Social Media Followers or Fans
In the early days, you need to be hyper-focused on continuing to build your marketing channels, offering really great customer service to your first few customers, and connecting with media and PR to try to get attention for your brand.
• Monthly Sales • Average Order Size • Average Margin • Conversion Rate • Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate
As you go along in your journey of running your online business, you’ll want to start getting several pieces in place as you gain profitability and scale.
As you move along, your focus may shift to streamlining processes and automating aspects of the store you were getting done manually.
• Site Traffic • Unique Visitors vs. Returning Visitors • Time On Site • Page Views Per Visit • Traffic Source and Referrals • Newsletter Subscribers
This can include hiring contractors and a virtual assistant to help you as you start to focus less on the day-to-day operations of fulfilling orders and doing daily marketing requirements.
Conquer Go Out and
E-Commerce
E-commerce can be intimidating, but this isn’t rocket science. You can definitely create a successful online store, no matter what stage of entrepreneurship you’re at. E-commerce offers an amazing opportunity to work at your own pace and become your own boss.
Now stop procrastinating and
go launch that dream store!
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