Depending on your experience and personality, selling online can seem easy or difficult depending on how tech-savvy you are. Although it is not as easy as many bloggers make it out to be, we are here to tell that it is possible with a little guidance and the right tools to help you look professional online and build a solid business.
Follow these steps to get started:
- Identifying your niche.
- Deciding what products to sell online.
- Selecting the right platform to sell.
- Promotion of your online store
This is a simple four-step process that anyone can follow, especially when you consider how intuitive and easy ecommerce platforms in today’s market.
You can sell online. Join us for our guide to selling online.
Identifying your niche and deciding what products to sell
You must first identify a niche market that is profitable before you can build a store. The next step is to choose the products that will be used in your online store.
This guide will help you find your niche market. This guide is full of essential information and research strategies such as:
- Follow your passion.
- Formulating a list potential products.
- Trending products.
- Focusing on a niche that is real.
- Search keywords to establish demand.
After you have established a niche, it is time to start thinking about which products you want to sell. Learning how to sell online means that you have to realize that not all products in an industry perform well. Although you may believe that every product on the shelves is always available, that could be a gross misrepresentation about how they perform.
The goal is to use statistics and trends to find the best products and to make a profit.
This article on How to Choose the Best Products in Your Niche is recommended.
These are some tips that you can take from this article:
- Don’t think about your past experiences, instead look at the data.
- To find the top-selling products within a particular industry, you can use the Amazon sales data.
- To find the products that people are looking for, browse through Google products like Google Trends and Google Keyword Planner.
- To eliminate niche products that are not good, you need to follow a set of rules. The linked article contains more guidelines. Some of these include not selling products less than $15 and selling items that do not lose value while they are on the shelves.
Which platform should you use when selling online
Now you have identified your niche and chosen the products that you wish to sell. It’s now time to discover the vast world of ecommerce platforms. These platforms serve two primary functions: website construction and payment processing. These platforms include all the tools that you would expect to find in an ecommerce website builder, such as themes, visual designers and plugins, as well as a shopping cart and checkout system that will allow you to guide your customers through the buying process and collect payments.
You don’t need to be a programmer or a previous retailer in order to open an ecommerce shop. This is because the best e-commerce platforms make it simple for anyone to start a store.
There are thousands of ecommerce platforms on the market. We’ve narrowed it down to three top-rated options. Our favorite is at the top, while another one is easy to use and another for those with limited budgets. Continue reading to find out more about these platforms and how they can make selling online easier.
Ecwid is the easiest solution
If you’re looking for simplicity, Ecwid has you covered. Shopify makes selling online simple, but Ecwid is intuitive and easy to use, especially if you want to add a shopping cart on a website that has been built.
Shopify requires you to create a new website. Although you can transfer some of your data over, the design must be completely new. Ecwid is a plugin that can be integrated with your existing content management system. You may have a WordPress website that is already functional for your business. It can be tedious to convert this site into a Shopify shopfront if that is the case. Ecwid allows you to keep your existing website while adding the online shopping cart tools.
Start for free on the Ecwid website.
The Ecwid dashboard is a wealth of information that allows you to build your store, integrate it with your existing website, and sell through social media channels such as Facebook and your website.
The sidebar menu has tabs for marketing, reports, sales channels and design. The sidebar menu also contains a step-by-step guide to activating all of the necessary elements for your store.
Ecwid is an add-on for your existing blog or website. You can add products to the dashboard and modify your shopping cart design. Everything else on your main website remains the same, except that you wish to modify the design to make it more compatible with an online store.
The Ecwid Website Sales Channel section allows you to integrate your website with Ecwid and manage certain design elements. Technically, you must manage two dashboards: The Ecwid store manager and the website builder (like WordPress).
Ecwid makes it easy to add a product. Click on Catalog > Products to go directly into the catalog. To modify prices, images, and descriptions, click on Add New Product. All of these products will appear in the shop gallery once Ecwid has been connected to your site.
Ecwid makes it simple to sell online. You can also integrate your Ecwid shop and shopping cart with other sales channels. You might find that your customers are more active on Facebook and Instagram. Ecwid allows you to create an online shop on any social network. You can also manage the same product range you already have on your website.
You might also want to sell on Amazon, eBay, Etsy or Walmart. Ecwid manages all of the sales channels and ensures that your products are synchronized with them. This helps you make more money without worrying about inventory.
Wix is the cheapest solution
Wix is the best way to start selling online. Shopify offers cheaper options but an actual online store costs $29 per month. Ecwid offers a $35 per month plan. However, it does offer a free plan. You may also need to host a separate website.
Wix allows you to accept online payments for as low as $23 per month under the Business Basic plan. The Business Unlimited plan, which includes tools for dropshipping and subscriptions, is cheaper than Shopify at $27 per monthly.
It’s clear that Wix is the market leader in budget ecommerce platforms. But that doesn’t make it lacking in features. Many people believe that Wix offers the best design tools available. It has a drag-and-drop builder and amazing apps. There is also a simple payment processing setup that takes only a few steps.
Best overall solution: Shopify
Shopify not only is the best ecommerce platform but also one of the most loved. It offers a complete solution for building an online store, finding a domain, and processing payments. It is usually not necessary to search for third-party tools such as payment gateways and page builders. Shopify has an app store that allows you to integrate with pre-approved apps. This will help you make sure they are reliable when expanding your store.
Shopify offers affordable hosting plans that include all the web design and hosting services. It is also easy to launch a website with the design tools. Simply choose a theme and add products. Then, select a payment gateway to start selling.
How to launch your Shopify store
Go to Shopify and start by clicking on the Start Free Trial button. After entering your email address, click on the Start Free Trial button. Shopify offers a 14-day free trial. During this time, you can use all Shopify tools to configure your store and play with them before paying anything.
You can view orders, create your store and add your products to the dashboard.
Follow these steps to add a product or customize your theme. You can customize your payment settings, but this is the final step.
Go to the Add Product tab, and click the Add Product button. This will allow you to create a product and upload as many products to your online store as you wish.
A Shopify Product Page is a great way to personalize your product. You can customize everything from the design to the details such as title, description and images.
To give your customers as much information as possible and increase their knowledge about the product, fill in this form.
To save or publish the product, simply click on Save or Publish. If you wish to have the product appear on your homepage, make sure to change its status to Active. You can also add product categories.
All product pages are published to your Shop section. These pages can be viewed on the Shopify Customizer’s frontend.
Your theme will affect the look of your product pages. You should now move on to the next steps and determine which themes are most appropriate for you.
Shopify themes offer a complete web design and online store design. You don’t need to be a web designer, or have any knowledge about coding.
Shopify Dashboard > Online Store > Themes. This will show you the active theme for your site. You can also look at other themes and modify what you have already configured.
To help you decide on the style of your website, we recommend visiting the Premium and Free Shopify Theme Library. You should choose a theme that is consistent with your brand image. You don’t need to modify the theme. Instead, you can add your content and sell products.
After you have chosen a theme, click the Customize button. This will open the Shopify Customizer. This is a visual page builder that allows you to drag-and-drop sections from the left side.
You can open each section individually and move them around or modify the settings for each one. Instead, the Header section offers options to upload a logo and change the height of its header.
Next, configure payment settings to allow online sales and collection of money from customers who order products from your website. Navigate to Settings > Payments on the Shopify dashboard.
Shopify Payments is the best option for most brands that use Shopify. You save money on transaction fees and monthly fees. It can also reduce credit card fees depending on which Shopify pricing plan you choose.
PayPal and Amazon Pay are also options.
We recommend doing your research on the best payment portals so you can determine which one is more cost-effective and easiest for your business.
While Shopify has many more features, a domain name remains the most important thing to get. You can purchase or transfer domains within Shopify.
Click on Online Store > Domains and then choose the appropriate domain button for your situation. You can connect an existing domain, transfer a domain to another location, or purchase a new domain directly from Shopify.
Shopify is a great option for online store owners looking to reduce costs and still have a beautiful website to sell on the internet. Shopify is also a more DIY platform than Magento and WooCommerce, which makes it easier for non-coders and designers to launch products and start selling immediately.
Promotion of Your Store
An online store that is fully functional does not automatically attract customers. You have the option of marketing your ecommerce shop via your ecommerce platform. There are many ways to advertise your shop and make the public aware about your products. There are many ways to promote your store and make the public aware of it. You can go to craft or trade shows, pay for a billboard or advertise on TV. These may be useful in certain situations but are usually more expensive than modern promotional techniques that come with your ecommerce platform.
It all depends on the platform. However, we will outline some promotional strategies using Shopify below. While Wix and Ecwid offer unique features, the most important ones are available on all platforms.
Continue reading to find out the best ways to market your store.
Email Marketing
Email marketing can take many forms. From newsletters with new content to promotional emails that include coupons and details about discounts, to more general newsletters. Email marketing is still one of the best ways to promote your business online and offline, regardless of how you approach it.
Shopify and other ecommerce platforms offer email marketing tools that allow you to send promotional emails from your dashboard. Shopify Email allows you to send out emails about updates and promotions.
Other email marketing tools are also useful. Seguno and Omnisend offer amazing ecommerce email marketing tools, email templates and automated emails for transactional communication.
Email marketing will almost always require you to pay, but it is at least a reminder that you have it consolidated in your dashboard.
Omnisend tools also offer SMS marketing to send text messages to customers.
Email Automation
Email automations are a different approach to regular email marketing. We have already covered email marketing in the past section. This includes manual communication, such as newsletters and promotional emails. Shopify, Ecwid and Wix offer automated email marketing options that can be used to send receipts, abandoned cart emails and welcome messages.
You have to choose the right email marketing tool for you. Either you choose Shopify Email as your email marketing tool, or you can opt for Omnisend which offers a wide range of actions and rules that can be configured to send your emails.
Social Marketing and Selling
Promoting your store and products on social media is a must. While you don’t need to be on every social network, it is important to do some research to determine which one works best for your industry. Fashion is a big hit on Instagram while home improvements are a huge success on Pinterest.
Wix and Shopify offer multiple social selling channels and marketing features to get the word out about your brand via places like Facebook and Twitter.
Shopify Campaign Templates are a favorite, as they combine marketing messages across multiple social media sites. These templates can also be used for online advertising and email marketing.
You could, for example, start with a template marketing campaign that launches ads on Facebook and Snapchat.
This allows you to market your business more efficiently and raise brand awareness on your website.
A content calendar is another way to use social media. You can post every day, or you could use Buffer to plan the content for a month in advance. Once the plan is in effect, it’s published to all your social media profiles for the month.
Social media has many options. You can share sales, post memes and videos that are relevant, or even post videos that show the inner workings your business.
Online advertising
There are many options for online advertising. You can promote through Facebook ads or Instagram ads. Or, you could go the search engine route with ads on Google or Bing.
Although it is possible to design your campaign through these websites, we recommend that store owners find a platform that allows them to create ad campaigns from within their store dashboard.
Shopify allows you to create ad campaigns that work with your products. You can also activate them based on specific timelines. To determine which search engines and social networks bring you the best results, you can choose from several types of ad campaign.
This screenshot shows how to set up an advertisement campaign for Microsoft (which goes towards Microsoft products such as Bing), and ads on Pinterest, Snapchat and Facebook. There are many other advertising systems you can choose from, including Instagram and Google.
Shopify advertising is simple. You can create an ad, and then use it on multiple platforms all from the Shopify dashboard.
Get Discounts
Although discounts don’t necessarily promote themselves, they are something you should consider including in your social marketing, email campaigns and any ads you decide on.
Shopify offers a similar feature to its competitors. You can create discount codes from scratch that will only be registered on your site. You can also set up an automatic discount for customers who reach certain cart totals.
The best thing about discount codes is the ability to set your own restrictions and control how they are used. You could create a discount code to reduce a product’s price by a certain percentage or by a set amount. A discount code can be used to get free shipping. You can also set a limit on how many times a coupon can be used or expire it.
Content Creation and Distribution
The organic promotion of content creation is more natural, as you are creating useful content for visitors. They may also find it through Google searches or social media.
Content marketing’s purpose is to deliver the highest quality content and make it useful enough to encourage people to purchase from your store.
Content marketing is best illustrated by blogging. Shopify and all other ecommerce platforms include tools for creating and sharing your own articles.
Blog posts can bring you organic traffic. However, you can share them with other websites so that they might share it with their customers or followers. You can also use guest posts on other blogs to bring more customers to your website. SEO is easy with a blog!
Our conclusion on learning how to sell online
It doesn’t take much experience, nor design knowledge, to learn how to sell online. Learning is the key. You are not alone. Successful ecommerce entrepreneurs were once in your shoes. You now have more tools to launch an online business or make a website that is professional and functional.
It’s important to identify a niche market and determine the types of products that you want to sell.
Next, you can start exploring ecommerce platforms and building your website. It’s now time to promote your products by looking at other channels such as email marketing and ads.
You learn so much as you grow your business about how to best sell products and how you can minimize costs. It’s all part of the process. You have many resources, such as this article and a variety of ecommerce tools to help ease the pain and reduce mistakes.
We’d love to hear from you about your questions regarding selling online.
