If you are thinking to open a shop online to enlarge your business, today we see how to do it and which characteristics it must have.
Set the targets of your shop online
First of all you have to decide to whom the product is addressed. Basically you have to find your target of reference.
Evaluate then even which is the final purpose of your shop online. You might want to start from zero to sell products and services only through the web platform. Or you might use it to enlarge the sales and the resources of your company which already exists.
Now you have to make an analysis of your brand and understand which kind of website is great for you. Mainly one chooses the ecommerce formula. A formula which is literally exploding even because the change of the habits of the consumers, which have always less time – and possibilities – to buy in the physical shops.
Here below you have some guidelines about the errors to avoid while opening a shop online and how to do it step by step.
Analysis of the context
We already said that you have to firstly analyse yourself and your company. If you are more focues on the sale and at the possibility to expand your business, the analysis will converge on the target and the competitors.
Basically you have to consider all the aspects that can make an added value for your reference marketplace, which will allow you to draft the marketing strategies and to find the strong suits and the criticality.
If the targets of the online shop are mainly about the reduction of the costs, or a better service for the consumer, the analysis is focused on the company processes and on their completion about the available technologies.
In this case you have to analyse the competitors and the resources available to improve the experience of the consumer.
Creation online shop project
Now you are ready for the creation of your ecommerce. You have to choose the elements and the sections, considering even if insert or not further sections in addition to the simple sale categories.
In the action plan of your online shop, you might decide, for example, to put a blog section where you might interact with the users, or you can publish the review of the products.
All of it will allow you to access to the global marketplace through the web, which will be an useful instrument to introduce yourselves.
Let’s though remember that not all the websites are the same. Infact, every commercial activity is different and it’s focused on a proper planning phase.
In this phase we have to evaluate which structures you might put in the ecommerce according to the needs of the company to let it know continuosly, stable and consciously.
Advantages of the online shop
The advantages of an online shop can be different and they are strictly connected to the needs to which we decided to give an answer.
A company, with its own reference marketplace, will do different choices than a start-up, or than an organization with a stable presence on the marketplace.
In this case it’s about a system profitable to sale your own products or to introduce ourselves and to enlarge the possibilities, especially in the period that we are living where the social distancing is forcing us to live away and to contact and to meet someone only through the pc.
The right platform ecommerce
The commerce will be the face of your activity, which means it will be what the customers will see and what they will use to buy your products and services, the platform of ecommerce that you will choose will be the base of your online shop.
You can build a platform in-House that allows you the maximum possible customization. Let’s though remember that it might be a not economic choice, because you will need a great developing team and long times of realization.
The cheapest choice is to use a platform CMS Opensource, which means an already made platform, that you can customize according to your needs.
Most of the available platforms allows you to create your online shop, and then to customize the design of your website and your offer, to manage the archive, the orders and the payments. The ecommerce platforms are so many.
The top of the line is PrestaShop
PrestaShop is a complete platform of sale online, which is highly customizable.
You can choose the colours, the themes and the design and you can add many free or paid plugins to customize your service.
A system of creation ecommerce that allows you to better organize the products of your shop online and the orders, by taking care of the relationship with the customers and by checking the stats.
It can be easily integrated with a section blog and with the company socials, which will allow you to expande your business. But not only. Thanks to the possibility of simultaneously translation of the website in many languages you can expand your business even abroad.
PrestaShop is the perfect platform for who is at the beginning and wants to enter in the world of the online shop by having even a small budget available.
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