Starting an online store can be an additional boost to your existing business or it can be an enterprise in itself. Many global marketplaces had no prior exposure in the retail industry and yet they have championed e-tail and are sitting pretty and rich at the top of the ecommerce industry. You don’t need to be a master retailer to launch a successful web-store. But considering the fact that you wouldn’t be among the first or one of the pioneers, you have to do several things perfectly to gain some traction.
Here are some of the many things you need to consider before opening your web-store.
The very first requisite is having the infrastructure in place. You need your backend to be sorted out before you can work on your frontend. A web-store or ecommerce site is the frontend. The backend would be your warehouse, order processing staff, dealer network or resellers, the delivery infrastructure and customer service department. You cannot even come up with the pricing of your products before you have worked out the math of your entire infrastructural setup. Many people feel that launching a web-store is all about the virtual store but that is not true. You need to consider courier companies like Courierpoint, work out the agreements and then factor in those costs in your overhead expenses.
Your web-store needs to stand out. It cannot be just another run off the mill ecommerce site. If you have one of the done and dusted designs, mundane features and products that hundreds of websites are already selling, then you are in for a disappointment. You need to do things differently and that takes some smart planning.
You have to work on the prices, the target market, the policies and the promotional strategies, even before you have launched the store. If you are selling to the Portuguese consumers, you cannot just convert the price from GBP to Euros or any local currency. You have to factor in what a reasonable price would be in a given country for the targeted consumers. Also, you need to send a parcel to Portugal whose costs must also be factored in. Even the presentation or how you would promote your site and the products will have to be influenced by local sensibilities and culture. You cannot have the same tone of marketing for every target market.
