1. Ecommerce Planning & Preparation

Whether or not you create a formal business plan is up to you, but remember that an ecommerce store is no different than launching any other kind of business. Online retailing can be extremely competitive, so be prepared with a well thought out plan.

(a) Choose a tightly focused niche. Don’t try to boil the ocean and be all things to all people. People like to buy from a specialist with more range and greater knowledge, giving you a potential advantage over larger online retailers.

(b) Follow your passions. You’ll enjoy it more, plus you’ll have a greater knowledge base and be more driven to offer something unique to your customers.

(c) Understand your customer’s buying motives. Find an unfulfilled need within your target market and develop your unique value proposition.

(d) Competitive analysis. Understand who your competitors are and what they’re doing well and poorly. What are their strengths and weaknesses? What about their design, navigation or website features?

2. Digital Marketing Ecommerce Strategy

Many new online retailers focus on building their new ecommerce website, with little or no thought about how they’ll attract and retain customers. In fact, many new online retailers don’t even have a realistic budget for marketing, making it incredibly difficult for them to survive. It’s important to plan your digital marketing strategy from the beginning, as this often impacts the necessary functional specifications and it’s critical to plan how you’re going to make money. You need to consider the full suite of options including search engine optimisation, Adwords, Google Shopping, Facebook Advertising, content marketing, email marketing, remarketing and social media marketing. As a new online business, the challenge is to know where to focus your investment for the greatest returns. During the initial planning phases with Media Heroes, we’ll explore all these options together and identify the most suitable plan for your launch and how to build momentum over time.

3. Ecommerce Functional Specifications

Your ecommerce functional specification document is the first step to agreeing the scope of work for the project and it’s really a ‘wish list’ of how you want your ecommerce store to operate. If you’re building a relatively simple ecommerce store, then this can be as basic as a few bullet points, perhaps including what merchant facility you wish to use and if you’re going to be using email marketing. For more advanced ecommerce web development projects the functional spec document needs to detail any functionality requiring advanced configuration, external plugins/extensions or custom development. It’s generally much better to keep things simple and start gaining some sales before investing too heavily in custom functionality, so don’t try and replicate Ebay or Amazon, especially if this is your first ecommerce business. If often helps to think about why you want to include certain functionality and whether this is going to be to critical at the start or whether you could add it later.

4. Ecommerce Platform

Your ecommerce platform powers the functionality of your online store and choosing the right platform from the beginning is extremely important. While the basic features between ecommerce platforms often seem very similar, they vary substantially in areas such as; ease of use, scalability, ability to integrate, complexity of product set ups, shipping options, payment options, SEO suitability and much more. Start by developing your digital marketing strategy and then identify the essential functional specifications, before choosing your ecommerce platform. At Media Heroes, we favour WooCommerce or Magento, as these are the two top ecommerce platforms available and they give us the greatest flexibility to build integrated digital marketing campaigns.

5. Ecommerce Design & Conversions

The branding and design of your ecommerce website needs to start by understanding who your customers are and what’s important to them. A well-designed ecommerce store should be visually appealing to your target audience and should include a well-planned user experience, so the design is more than skin deep. Using a cookie-cutter template or adding poorly designed graphics will hurt your sales, so invest in a professional design from the start. Conversion rate optimisation (CRO) is incredibly important for ecommerce stores, as the whole sales process is completed online. Although CRO is an ongoing process, the initial design can have a big impact on your conversion rates and includes details such as colours and fonts, product image quality, calls to action, shopping cart design and much more.

6. Ecommerce Build & Set Up

The ecommerce build phase commences once the functional specifications and the basic design concepts are confirmed. Most of the build specifics will be covered in the scope of work, but there are a few extra details to consider:

(a) Hosting. You’ll need fast and secure hosting for usability and SEO performance. For larger ecommerce websites consider a VPS and for Magento builds, you’ll need specialised Magento hosting.

(b) Online payments. You can use payment gateways or merchant accounts, but make sure your check which ones are supported by your chosen ecommerce platform, then compare fees to make your choice.

(c) Shipping. Both Magento and WooCommerce support Australia Post integrations or you can you can use simple flat rate shipping. Using multiple couriers adds complexity, so be sure to discuss this with us first!

(d) SSL certificates. If you collect credit card details, you’ll need to purchase an SSL certificate and you’ll need to make sure you keep it current or your shopping cart will stop working.

(e) Products. Uploading products is generally excluded from scope, so consider how many products you have, how you plan to upload and manage your stock.

7. Ecommerce Website Launch & Digital Marketing Campaign

Go live! Always a big day for a new ecommerce websites and well worth celebrating. Just don’t celebrate for too long, as this is just the beginning! Roll out your digital marketing campaign straight away and work hard to attract new customers and enrol them to spread the word about your amazing new store. Focus on attracting quality traffic and converting sales, then make sure you’re actively engaging with your new customers to build your customer base. Many ecommerce websites are launched with little or no digital marketing support and their owner’s wonder why they aren’t generating sales! Inbound visitors are just like foot traffic for traditional retailers, so think of your digital marketing campaign investment like the rent you’d pay to be in a major shopping centre.

Plan your investment from the beginning and go for it from day one!

8. Ecommerce Performance Analysis & Refinement

Media Heroes assists you to set up the correct measures during the website development phase, so we gain a wealth of information to continually improve your online sales performance. You’ll gain data on how customers find and interact with your store, what products are the most popular what does and doesn’t work. Your Brisbane Ecommerce Consultant will work with you to understand and interpret the data, identify priorities and suggest continual changes and improvements. Ecommerce marketing relies on a strong relationship with your digital marketing company, as new stores will often need to go through several tests and refinements to find which digital marketing methods are the most effective.