Strategies to build an eCommerce store

Building & launching an eCommerce store requires you to put a strategy in place first. We’ve seen that many store owners make the mistake of doing everything at once. However launching an online store needs to be done very methodically.

Below I’ve put together a useful list of To-Dos for you in finalising a strategy to launch your online store.

1) Make a list of items you want to sell – this is your inventory

2) Decide how you will procure this inventory. You could adopt various strategies here –

• You can manufacture AND stock the items
• You can procure the items from other manufacturers such as well known brands AND stock the items
• You can setup a network of existing offline vendors who are willing to be your partner and take part in order fulfillment. In this case you don’t have to stock the items
• You can decide to not procure at all till there are a sizeable number of order requests. In this case you can indicate to your shoppers that what they are buying is a “Pre-order”.

3) Decide how you will deliver orders

• You can have your own delivery team
• You can outsource delivery to shippers who will provide the shipping at a cost
• If you have a retailer network you can sign up with them to deliver your order for you

4) Decide how you will accept payments

• You can accept Cash On Delivery – this is a very popular payment method in India and is gaining popularity in other countries also. Since shoppers pay on delivery, their trust in your business increases multifold when you deliver.
• You can accept Cheques
• You can accept Online money transfers

• You can accept Credit card/ Debit card payments.
• You can connect your store to Internet Banking portals of various banks.

The last 2 payment methods require you to tie up with a “Payment Gateway” provider and integrate your eCommerce store with them. If you setup your store on Shopnix the shop will be pre-integrated with multiple payment gateways. We can also help you in choosing the right payment gateway providers for your store.

Like any other strategy you will need to fine tune yours as you go along. However the key thing is to decide WHAT to sell and try it out for a period.

After you have decided WHAT to sell, you will need to move onto HOW to sell online.

This is where the Shopnix eCommerce website builder will be useful to you 🙂

Obviously, to sell anything online you will first need an ecommerce website which showcases all your products with details like their pricing, name, brand (if applicable), discounts (if any).

You will also need an eCommerce store manager to upload product details, organize them into a catalog, change pricing on a regular basis, publish discounts to push sales. Shopnix Store manager makes it very easy for you to run all these activities. Find out about the features of the Store manager – here.

Hope you choose a strategy & start selling online soon!