If you own a business or a regular store that operates offline, bring it online, and transform it entirely. That will launch you into a huge space of possibilities and opportunities. Bringing your business will change the fundamentals of the way you conduct your business. Mostly all the aspects of running a business are adapted accordingly in order to work on an online platform. From establishing your presence on the internet, via marketing, to the selling of products and services. Everything gets an upgrade. The benefits of digitizing your business are infinite, given that the execution is smart and effective. With a substantially major portion of the population sitting on the internet, your target audience increases significantly in size. Your reach widens. People from far away can easily find you and reach you. All this and several other factors result in an impressive increase in sales numbers. Thus, making your company grow to great heights.
Read and find out below how you can bring your business or regular store online in 15 steps!
- First of all, analyze your business – whether you want to set up your own website or sell in existing marketplaces like Flipkart or Amazon
If you are bringing your business online, there are basically two ways to go about it — One, you create your own website and sell through that. This will give you more freedom of operating as per your choices. Through your own website, you can deliver to your customers a more customized interface that suits your business style and represents the nature of your company. And two, selling through pre-established e-commerce websites like Flipkart and Amazon and saving yourself the trouble of creating your own website and building your business in the online sphere from scratch.
For business owners looking for entering the online marketplace with ease and convenience and not having to put in much effort, the existing marketplaces are a great option since they have a ready customer base, wide reach, no extra marketing is required, specialized focused marketing, and most importantly, a hugely reliable, already existing large network of delivery and logistics.
- Define your target customer _
Define the customer that your products or services cater to. What kind of people will be interested in your product and what kind of people will be buying it? Having a clear picture in your mind of who you want to sell to will make the process efficient. Since there are all kinds of people on the internet, you can orient your content and marketing strategies to focus on the needs of the target customer.
- Do you want to sell out of your city or area?
Decide if you want to sell to just local customers or customers from other cities or other outside areas. If you decide to do so, you will have to prepare for it beforehand. Set up or hire a delivery & logistics team that will provide you wider coverage. You will also have to design your website accordingly. So that it addresses those far away customers properly by informing them about your services that are extended towards them.
- Do you want to sell all products online or just some of them?
Deciding whether you want to sell all your products online or just some of them will determine your marketing strategies, target customers, creative content, etc. At the initial stage of conducting your business online, you would want to start off by advertising and selling only your top of the line products, so you can maintain a reasonable gap between your profits and your expenses.
- Consult an agency who can bring your shop online _
The competition in the online business space is rising at a pace faster than ever. Although it’s never too late to enter the race, you need a professional agency to launch you in this strata and equip you with the means necessary to compete with other online shops and businesses. There are numerous steps that are needed to build your business online, apart from just creating a website. Techomining specializes in all the services that you require to bring your business or regular store online. Techomining can bring value to your business through these services. They include –
- Website development – Techomining builds visually stunning websites that excel in terms of functionality and user experience. Techomining creates websites that attract customers and captivate them with the aim of turning visitors into customers.
- Online presence – Online presence means how your business appears online; How easily can someone on the internet reach you. It is essential to your growth on the internet. Techomining offers to manage and improve your online presence at low costs.
- Business management software – Techomining provides software to manage and administrate your business efficiently and conveniently. This software makes the processing and running of your business relatively simpler.
- Take a quotation from them and check the total cost of bringing your business online _
Financial planning is obviously a part that you cannot skimp on. Discuss with the agency, the cost of bringing your business online. Communicate regarding the extent of services you would require to meet your requirements regarding the desired stature of your online business. And get a final quotation from the agency to check the total expenses of bringing your business online.
- Make a list of the products you will be selling online _
Form a list of products you will be selling online. Then you can accordingly create product catalogs, and content based on the products. You will need to prepare product descriptions and make them available on your platform. When your list of products is ready, you can align your marketing campaigns accordingly too.
- Get a courier partner or see how you will take care of the logistics _
Once you’re done with setting up the website and your product list, you need to decide how you will be shipping your products to the customers. Initially, you can look to work with a big and established logistics service like FedEx. FedEx has programs to help small businesses in India to reach markets across the country using their huge network. Similarly, there are other big logistics services in India. However, there are smaller companies too that provide logistics services to small businesses. They are either startups or localized shipping services.
- Include Integrate payment gateway in your website _
Integrated payment gateways serve as moderators for conducting a transaction between a seller, a buyer, the issuing bank, and the acquiring bank. These are intermediaries used by online businesses to collect money from their customers through internet banking. Integrated payment gateways unify different types of payment methods – e-wallets, net banking, UPI, credit/debit cards, etc. Integrated payment gateways make the transaction process extremely simple, efficient, and easy to use. Along with providing multiple payment options to suit all.
Payment gateways are the modern-day payment systems. Their efficiency and convenience make them customers’ favorite. They provide complete data encryption. Thus, Including an integrated payment gateway on your website will simplify payments on your website and will keep your customers happy.
- Check security of your website _
Every website needs web security. Irrespective of the size of your business OR your website, website security is a necessity. You need website security for the following reasons:
- To protect your information or information about your business.
- To protect your customers’ and clients’ information.
- To maintain and protect your Google rankings.
And there are several other benefits of web security too.
At your level, what you can do is take care of the basics of web security, such as keep your software up to date, use a secure host, use strong passwords, backup your data on a regular basis. To employ better and stronger security for your website, you need to hire a security expert.
- Add offers and promotions to attract new customers
Just like the offline market, you need to implement promotional schemes and offers even in your online business. By offering schemes such as discounts, you get the opportunity to publish online ads, which will coherently bring more traffic to your website.
- Consider your online marketing channels where you will promote your business
To effectively increase your target audience and to gain online popularity in your field of business, you need to carefully select online marketing channels where you can market your business and expect a good return of investment. Marketing channels comprise email marketing, video marketing, content marketing, social media marketing, SEO & PPC. Based on where your target customers may be relatively more active, you can select the appropriate online marketing channels for promoting your business.
- Consider implementing digital marketing for your online store
Digital marketing is a way of reaching people — mostly consumers or prospective customers — through means of online platforms such as search engines, social media, emails, messages, etc. As the name suggests, it is a form of marketing but only more efficient than the traditional form of marketing. Digital Marketing performs the same job for all sizes and levels of businesses. Just because big corporations have big budgets and can spend more on paid ads, does not simply put them at a contrasting advantage over the other smaller businesses.
Techomining does that for your business. We provide the best in class digital marketing services. Through digital marketing, Techomining gives smaller businesses the means to compete, improve brand value & online presence, and build an audience along with support for acquiring new leads and customers.
- Check your ROI and profit margin
It goes without saying that you need to ensure that your venture remains financially sound. You will need to keep a regular check on the return of investment that you’re getting and your profit margin in order to smartly regulate your incurring expenses. Most of your investments and expenses will comprise the costs of website development (including setting up web security & payment gateway), digital marketing, and logistics services. Logistics services will incur the highest expenses of these. You will have to regulate your prices accordingly.
- Interact with your customers and take regular feedback about your products and services
Provide your customers with a platform to interact with you. Two-way communication is the key to any successful business. This can be done by placing a feedback portal on your website or providing your email or contact number on your website so as to entertain people’s complaints, queries, or even a word of appreciation. Constructive criticism is indispensable for business in making.
By learning about the requirements of your customers and what people think about you from the customers themselves can be very enriching to your business.