How to Start an Ecommerce Business with ExpandCart 2021
According to Statista, ➡️ the share of online traffic by mobile is 51% and the global digital purchases conducted on online stores is 47%; a clear statement that the eCommerce business is thriving!
You sure are saying how to start my own business too?
Anyone would want to take a bite from a thriving industry, indeed. But saying isn’t like doing. Starting an eCommerce business has always been hard work. The start is always the struggle.
To help, we’ve conducted a thorough guide on how to start an eCommerce business guide followed by how ExpandCart helps you with each step.
How to Start an Ecommerce Business?
The best thing about starting a business with ExpandCart is that you don’t need much to set up your store and start selling your products or services.
What are the obstacles that might be facing you?
You don’t have capital? Well, your online shopping store is free for life.
What else?
You don’t have products? We support dropshipping!
A dropshipping business model is the best solution for such cases. View the below image to learn how it works:
Especially with the recent improvements of our dropshipping partnerships. 📢
So no need to keep asking yourself how much does it cost to start an ecommerce business, because we got your back with our solid dropshipping solutions.
Dropshipping is an alternative to the known and traditional method of stocking items first and then selling them over time, by dealing with third parties to fulfill orders by customers as they’re made.
This has significantly reduced the resources and funds required to create and market your online store.
Wondering How to Start an eCommerce Store?
Get Into Dropshipping, Easy!
Create a free store on ExpandCart and let our dropshipping integrations get you started!Free for life, no credit card required
Starting an eCommerce Business Ideas
When you think about e-commerce business ideas to start your new successful business, take those ideas into consideration:
- Smart home products to cope with the new digital world!
- AR/VR hardware devices and apps that can be used both a homes or online and offline stores.
- Vaping: There’s a part of the world that’s now revolved around vaping devices, flavors, and liquids. Take the chance and start selling in that field!
- Good at something? Don’t do it for free, think of ecommerce websites where you publish courses to pass your expertise for money.
- The industry that witnessed the highest positive change in online traffic was the supermarket industry. Most people now get their groceries online. Be the one that provides their monthly grocery needs! (subscription business idea)
- Smartwatches or electronics or phone case business. Or simply all of them in one store!
Expert Advice 📌
According to Statista, the fastest growing eCommerce category in the US for the past two years is disposable gloves. Click To TweetIf you want to take a share of that market’s success, start a successful e-commerce business in hygiene and healthcare products or services that include a special section for COVID19 protection products such as disposable gloves and masks.
What is e-Commerce Business?
To put our hands on the exact meaning of eCommerce business, one must define eCommerce in the first place:
Ecommerce is commerce that’s done online using digital tools to buy and sell online, it refers to the process of buying and selling items or services online in exchange for money and data in order to get these transactions done.
Therefore, the eCommerce business definition is wider than just selling on the internet, it refers to the whole operation of getting a business up and running on the internet in the buying and selling spectrum.
How to Start A Small Online Business
Starting a successful business is a daunting task if you’re not using the right ecommerce platform; this is where ExpandCart will ease this burden.
You don’t need to worry about hosting technicalities because ExpandCart’s support team will make sure to secure a domain for your business to help initiate the backend setup of your store.
Heads up! You’ll need to decide the name and theme for your store before you get started.
There is absolutely no shortage of different themes and templates that you can use to customize your store as you see fit.
If you need further customization, you can contact them to custom design your version, whether it’s the website or even the logo.
The languages supported will be both English and Arabic to help you widen your target customers across more than one continent, the technicalities would be handled easily. But it’s you who will mainly decide on the integral parts of your business.
Service-Based vs Physical Products Business
While ExpandCart will help you support almost any business model you choose, you must research the direction that you’re willing to take.
From service-based to physical products, each one comes with its pros and cons. ✅❎
- ✅ Physical goods stores are the most popular due to the rather simple process and known supply and demand research.
- ✅ While some may opt to use their warehouses to stock their supplies, a lot with less initial budget choose to go with dropshipping.
- ❎ The investment needed upfront to support wholesaling isn’t always available with new emerging eCommerce businesses.
- ❎ If you’re interested in having your own branded goods, a big chunk of your investment would go towards the labeling and manufacturing processes.
Think of Subscription Business Models 💡
For the flexibility of starting an ecommerce business, ExpandCart supports subscription-based store models, where products or services can be delivered at a specific or constant time throughout the month.
Since the software and online side would be handled by ExpandCart, you’ll want to focus on finding the right product to sell.
eCommerce websites filled with too many different categories and irrelevant items can do more harm than good in many cases.
While this model has proved its worth with giants like Amazon, it requires a huge budget and experience that may take a long time to establish.
Choose Your Niche 🍋
Choosing your niche is the best way to make sure you’re both reducing the number of your competitors but also managing to capture and market to big target customers.
Just make sure that the niche you choose also has competitors because the complete lack of competitors most of the time means that the market isn’t fertile ground.
A market crowded with competition isn’t good either as major brands will be dominating the field; the more you make your market more specific, the better.
This gives you the chance with other business owners, cross-promote, and be affiliates.
🔆 ExpandCart can provide you with research-guided consultation to help you choose what’s best for you before hosting the store.
Define Your Brand Persona
Brand persona definition: It’s the way you want people to perceive you when they look at your store and brand.
This is a very important part of any eCommerce store whether it’s a multi-billion one or a new startup.
You’ll sometimes notice different vibes while browsing other stores; this vibe is defined by what they want others to feel.
Health supplements would try to go for an energetic theme while one with baby products would go for warmth.
Whatever the brand persona is, it has to remain constant for the best effect.
Expert Tip 💡
You can think of yourself as a customer buying your product; what kind of store or brand would you prefer to deal with and what would make you comfortable buying their products? Click To Tweet
Ecommerce Business Plan
Once you decide on a brand persona and set up your shop accordingly, you should focus on instilling marketing in your e-commerce business plan to build a customer base.
ExpandCart offers various ways to promote your products in your store; from discounts to special promotions, you’ll find ways to make them stand out and gain traction with special promotion tools.
SEO
SEO is sometimes considered a time-consuming element of marketing for those who want to focus mainly on their products.
ExpandCart already made it easier by helping you take care of the most advanced SEO tools, tactics, and strategies like auto sitemap creation, meta tags, and descriptions for products, blog posts, and other features.
Your store will be made ready and available to launch and promote on social media without any hassle. 🚀
Affiliate
Designed affiliate systems will make it easy for you to use your customers as part of your marketing strategy by incentivizing them with promotions and discounts.
ExpandCart will help you integrate a feedback system that will keep you up-to-date with your customer’s feedback, comments, and suggestions easily, not to mention reviewing your products.
Click here to read the Complete Guide for Affiliate Marketing with ExpandCart
Payment Methods
The most commonly used payment method is a credit card and the share growth of worldwide eCommerce transactions reached almost half of all worldwide eCommerce transactions. That being mentioned, an online store that accepts all kinds of payment methods is essential.
A collection of over 20 different payment and shipping methods that could be made available to your customers once you signup and create your free online eCommerce store on ExpandCart.
Click here for more information about the Top 10 Payment Gateways for Small Businesses in the Middle East 2021
Final Thoughts
The experience of creating an eCommerce business has never been easier or cheaper. An eCommerce business depends highly on having a fully functional online store.
Otherwise, where is that eCommerce business you’re talking about? Social media alone? Not enough to call it an eCommerce business if you don’t have a store.
You’ll get plenty of time to come up with new product ideas and partnerships as ExpandCart takes care of the technical and marketing side of the equation. ⏬
Stop Asking How to Start an Online eCommerce Business.
Do it Now!
Create a free store on ExpandCart and utilize all the assets to have your own free business
Free for life, no credit card rquired
