Picking the Platform that is right for your business.

When you’re starting out in E-commerce picking the right home for your business can be crucial to your business thriving straight out of the gate. There are so many solutions available that it can be overwhelming to a new brand owner trying to figure out which one will work for you.

There are 5 main questions that you can ask to help determine the best solution for your e-commerce store.

 

1. Where does your customer live online?

   This is part of the avatar building process, but you need to know where they are shopping on the internet, do they use Amazon? Or Ebay?  Are they using this platform to make purchases or are they using it to make purchasing decisions (eg looking online to buy offline?) Do they use mobile or desktop to make purchases? How familiar with online shopping are they?   

    

2. Do you have your merchant accounts set up and ready?

   Before you can start taking payments you have to know HOW you’re going to do that. How will you go about securely taking payment? What kind of fees will be taken from each payment? How will you account for those fees and any maintenance costs of your accounts? Will you need your e-commerce solution to integrate with multiple payment gateways? Do you have accounting software like Quickbooks or Xero? Does your payment platform integrate with your accounting software?

    

3. How will you calculate shipping?

   Posting your product is quite often part of the hindrance to having an e-commerce business. What will be part of your process and procedures when it comes to shipping? Will you have certain days that you know you ship on? Be Bangles is a great example of knowing when they ship orders, they clearly state the days they ship products when you go to the cart and they deliver on their promise. Do you know how much each of your products weighs? Will you have a free shipping cap? How will you deal with returns? What about customer service? What is your policy if products go missing when they are out of your hands being shipped to your customer?
        

4. How many products will you stock initially?
   

   
   Having a well-organised shop is paramount to your customers being able to buy from you. Make a chart of all your products, visually using something like post-it notes then start moving all the products into categories. Depending on the complexity or variety of your products your organisational chart can be simple or complex. The e-commerce platform that you choose will likely assist you in building your storefront so that it can be easily searchable.

    

5.  What is your initial budget to spend on setting up your online store?
   

   Do you (or some who owes you a favor 😉 have the skills to DIY? Do you have an existing website that your store needs to integrate with? What is your current skill set? How confident do you feel about setting up your own online store? Who do you have to ask for help?  

 

There are a vast amount of platforms out in the internet wilderness. Read more about comparing the two of the biggest HERE. When Starting out with creating and ecommerce store these are the questions that you need to be asking that will practically inform your choice of e-commerce platform. This will likely lead to MORE questions, and booking in a one one one call with Sarah can be just the thing to help you gain the clarity on the right platform for you.