By Michael Zhou
Entrepreneurs looking for huge financial opportunities need to look no further than creating a successful ecommerce business. The global nature of business in today’s ecommerce industry can allow a small ecommerce website to grow into an online store that is known across continents. The financial potential due to this vast potential customer base is incredibly large with more and more people shopping online instead of going to brick and mortar stores. There are opportunities with the growth of drop shipping to do this all from the comfort of your couch. The fact this can be done at home does not mean it will be easy as it can be difficult to sustain success in such a competitive niche. The following are tips to help make quite a bit of money with a home-based ecommerce business.
Keep Your Website Up At All Times
Keeping your website up at all times will help maximize profitability as people shop at all times across the world. An ecommerce site’s server going down for a few days can cripple a seasonal business. For example, an online costume shop going down before Halloween can cripple profits for the entire year. Rely only on experts like those at IP Geeks to keep the amount of time the server and the site are down to a minimum. The site being down consistently can lead to customers going elsewhere to an ecommerce site that they know will be up and running every single day.
Find Products With HUGE Margins!
Taking a look at products that have high profit margins can be done by contacting wholesalers of products you are interested in selling. The CBD market is a great example of a niche of products that has seen great success in ecommerce. The margins for these products are usually quite high so manufacturers are willing to give their drop shipping partners great wholesale deals as it reduces their need to drum up sales. Finding a few successful products can lead to thousands of sales per month with you profiting in a huge way!
Partner With The Right Manufacturers
The most important aspect of creating a successful ecommerce business is partnering with the right wholesale manufacturers of products. Running this business from home means that you cannot store the products at home thus you will participate in drop shipping. This also reduces the need to have to send out thousands of products a week so they can make it to the customer in a timely manner. In drop shipping the wholesaler handles the shipping so finding a partner that will ship on time and have inventory management programs in place are ideal.
Target the Right Keywords for Digital Marketing
The amount of digital marketing and link building that an ecommerce website has to participate in is immense. Having to compete with much larger companies can lead to an ecommerce site targeting less competitive keywords in order to rank at the top for these. Ranking ahead of an ecommerce site that has been around for a decade that has done the appropriate marketing over time can be tough to do in a timely manner. Products with less competitive keywords that have high profit margins are ideal but the competitive nature of the market will not leave these keywords noncompetitive for very long.
Manage Reviews and Respond to Unhappy Customers
Responding to customers that might have had a product show up damaged or incorrect is imperative. One bad experience can lead a customer to never shop on the ecommerce website again. Retaining as many customers as possible not only will keep sales consistent but also they can refer customers. Losing a customer can do the opposite as they will mention ecommerce sites that they will never buy from again. Responding to reviews whether they are on your site or on social media needs to be done as others will see the dedication to keeping the customer happy. Most people just want to be given something like a discount while others are happy to be heard by the company and receive an appropriate response.
Every detail matters when it comes to customer experience as the internet is a great place to publish personal gripes with a business. The consumer looks up reviews of businesses they have not used before especially in the ecommerce space. The legitimacy of some ecommerce sites can come into question if there are quite a few bad reviews. This can cause a potential customer to shop elsewhere as they are unsure their banking and personal information will be safe. Unfortunately there are a lot of fake ecommerce sites for consumers to sift through that are created just to steal information. Sustained success will take hard work but the financial rewards have the potential to be enormous.
Michael Zhou is a Senior VP of Business Intelligence Development and has assisted the Fortune 1000 company with expertise in the web as a whole, including ground-zero marketing efforts that benefit both consumer and vendor. He is also contributor on Esprittoday.
Home-based stock photo by ArtOfPhotos/Shutterstock
