Urgent: demanding immediate attention or action. When shoppers are browsing your online store, they’re often acting with an unfortunate lack of urgency. With multiple tabs open, comparing reviews, prices, and delivery options, customers like to behave like they have all the time in the world. What this means for your online store is a race to the bottom for grabbing customer’s attention with low prices — it erodes your profit margin, as well as devaluing your products.

On the other hand, if you instill a fierce sense of urgency in your users, you’ll separate yourself from this price-slashing competition. Urgency can become a powerful motivator in your store if you get it right. We’ll take a look at some effective ways for leveraging this psychological strategy, but first, let’s see exactly why urgency is so important for eCommerce.

Why urgency drives conversions

In her paper The Psychological Effect of Perceived Scarcity, researcher Shipra Gupta developed an extensive theory about how creating a sense of scarcity changes the psychological environment in which shoppers operate. By fostering this idea of scarcity, shoppers acted more impulsively and make decisions based on less information. 

Importantly, Gupta reveals that even a carefully curated yet artificial sense of scarcity can have powerful results on consumer psychology. Creating urgency in your shopper’s minds entails this suggestion of scarcity.

Often, digital shopping gives consumers feelings of power — with so many options to choose from and resources to assist comparison, consumers are empowered to make well-considered choices. By reminding your customers that the products, deals, and delivery options they’re seeking are scarce, this psychological state of urgency is induced. This means you’ll have more people clicking buy in your store.

eCommerce mistakes that are costing you money

Even if you are a professional, making mistakes while creating urgency in your online store is very common and can be a challenging task. 

With the availability of online shopping, the clients are exceptionally cautious about where they are going to spend their money, and making a simple mistake can hand a client to your competitors.

Below you can discover the 3 of the simple mistakes that are costing you money:

Lack of strategy 

Running giveaways or promotions onsite can be an effective marketing tool but many professionals make the mistake of not creating a follow-up for that and the result ends up being forgotten. Make sure your giveaway or discount is used in a strategic way — remember, if you’re doing a giveaway, you want to create a social promotion. Otherwise, you’re just giving away free or heavily discounted products, which is great for the client but not for you.

Ignoring the competition

eCommerce is amazingly straightforward which means that the client can easily browse to check for prices, promotions, and the best deals for them. Analyze your competitors, check what prices they have and which bargains are pulling the clients away.

Not adding any value

It can be annoying for the client when seeing a company talking only about themselves. Make it about the client, know your demographics and psychographics, show the benefits that can bring to them, why they can not miss out. 

7 tips for creating urgency on your online store

So, you know that creating a sense of urgency is more likely to drive sales. How exactly do you do that on your eCommerce site or online store? Here are seven methods worth looking into.

1. The language of urgency

There are many ways you can create urgency in your store through deals and deadlines. To build an online store that really instills this feeling into your shoppers, you need to integrate the language of urgency into your copy. Urgency is driven by the emotion of your shoppers, and the copy creates this broader feeling, a fundamental platform for your short-term urgency-inspiring strategies.

Keywords and phrases such as “last chance,” “hurry” and “don’t miss out” are the vital language of urgency. Additionally, peppering exclamation points throughout your copy will turn the tone towards a high-tempo urgency.

2. Leveraging the holidays

Deadlines are powerful motivators for your shoppers, so you should be creating them artificially wherever you can. Sometimes, however, deadlines exist for a reason — and when holidays such as Christmas and Valentine’s Day come around, urgency goes global. eCommerce sales spike between Black Friday and Christmas, so make sure you’re primed to leverage these holidays in your store. Running specialized sales for popular items can boost demand, and a ticking clock counting down the hours to the big day will remind your shoppers that time is slipping away.

These holidays also offer an opportunity to integrate delivery deadlines into your urgency strategy. With the added strain on postal networks, make it clear to your users that the window is closing. For example, a banner could indicate they have X hours to purchase to ensure guaranteed delivery before the 23rd of December.

3. Remind viewers they aren’t alone

Scarcity can be induced in a variety of ways, for example by suggesting that product stock is limited. However, scarcity isn’t exclusively a function of quantity — it’s about the supply of a product relative to demand. Reminding your shoppers that they’re not the only ones out there induces a sense of competition that’s highly relevant to urgency, prompting immediate purchases rather than risking missing out. 

Car hire companies have been leveraging this strategy to great success, displaying information about other browsing users. For example, you could say “15 others are browsing this product right now.” A dynamic view counter that rises as customers browse is a strong motivator.

4. Show dwindling stock

Showing stock numbers brings home the immediate fact that there is a limited supply of the goods customers desire and this strategy can create store-wide urgency for even casual browsers. To have the greatest impact, target specific products with a tag that suggests stock numbers are low. Using specific stock numbers gives this strategy greater integrity in the viewer’s eyes, so suggest to your store users that a product is down to the last five or even one.

5. Using delivery options to instill urgency

When shopping online, there’s an inevitable delay between purchasing a product and receiving it. For many shoppers, delivery time is vital to their interest in a product as shopping is about instant gratification and those days of waiting are an unwelcome delay. Logistical networks are now enabling next-day and even same-day delivery, and these appealing options often encourage shoppers to buy quickly. Leveraging this impulse by reminding customers of the closing window with which they can access these delivery options creates a powerful sense of urgency.

Another way of introducing urgency in your delivery options is by making delivery itself a scarce commodity. Offer free delivery for either a time-limited window or for the next few buyers. If the next three purchasers receive free delivery, everybody will want to snatch up the offer.

6. A day for charity

Sometimes urgency can be created by giving back. Combine your community spirit with this powerful marketing technique by offering a proportion of your proceeds to charity on a certain day. Customers will recognize the additional moral value in buying now rather than waiting. This will strongly incentivize an instant purchase.

7. Using pop-ups

Through artfully curated urgency-inducing copy and targeted deals and deadlines, the sense of urgency can permeate your store. Make sure your customers are constantly reminded of the imperative to purchase your products through pop-ups. This can often be the final nudge they need to buy. 

Whilst pop-ups are much maligned as invasive when you’re building a sense of urgency pop-ups can bolster this atmosphere by appearing as essential prompts. For example, a pop-up could tell a customer that a product they’ve viewed is selling out, or remind viewers of the closing window for next-day delivery.

Signing off

Urgency is a powerful motivator in eCommerce, so tailoring your store around the ideals of urgency shouldn’t be left to tomorrow. Integrate the language of scarcity and urgency throughout the copy you’re using on your store, from the landing page to the product details. There are so many ways to instill urgency so make sure every discount and every deadline is geared towards this psychological strategy. Don’t wait: it’s a matter of urgency.

2020 was an incredible year for eCommerce — 10 years of growth in just three months saw leaders in the field pioneering faster, hyper-personalized experiences while neophytes jumped aboard the bandwagon with fresh ideas. Businesses need to be prepared to keep shifting toward this new eCommerce reality.

As business leaders navigate and seize opportunities in this new and expanded market, they’ll inevitably face a few roadblocks. For example, supply chains will now seem outdated; the ways we move and stock products will need reinvention. Transforming traditional and analog models into high-speed, efficient digital experiences is going to be a challenging task.

Despite these challenges, the shift will also be quite lucrative. According to a global eCommerce growth study, eCommerce sales increased by nearly 15% in 2019 and by about 32% through the first three quarters of 2020. A pattern of change was already forming with consumers becoming digital-savvy and increasingly getting used to the convenience of online checkouts and delivery. But we’ve only scratched the surface of what’s possible.

What new eCommerce norms mean for the future of business

While this unprecedented level of eCommerce growth may slow as vaccines are distributed, the expectations the pandemic has created aren’t going away anytime soon.

For starters, social restrictions imposed by the pandemic have already shifted consumer behavior in a significant manner. Shopify studied 11 different markets and found that 84% of respondents shopped online during the first wave of the pandemic — and most of those people came from older demographics that, until recently, weren’t big proponents of eCommerce.

Consumer needs combined with online shopping’s inherent convenience has likely signaled a shift in traditional eCommerce demographics. The sheer number of consumers who want to purchase online will change how businesses must operate, and infrastructures will need to adjust — something they’ve struggled to do in recent months.

Without adequate provisions (e.g., ensuring correct inventory levels, order processing capabilities, etc.), growth can quickly take a sour downturn. Delayed or faulty orders, shoddy customer service, and regression in product quality can yield some miserable customers and — ultimately — a steadily declining trajectory for once-promising companies.

How to prepare for an eCommerce revolution

New business realities also bring new responsibilities. In this case, the shift to eCommerce means learning new skills and making new investments. While producing and stocking items is cheaper with an online storefront than a brick-and-mortar hub, businesses must now take the time to develop and operate their websites.

Companies — particularly small businesses — need to develop new capabilities and train new staff, often from scratch. Despite the challenges, it’s still possible for digital newbies to succeed. Here are some action steps you can take today to ensure your business is primed to overcome these challenges and maintain growth.

1. Create a watertight life raft

Detailed plans have a way of working out. Studies show that companies with fleshed-out business plans are 16% more likely to attain viability than those that lacked strategies.

Your business plan will be your best friend as you transition to eCommerce and help your company stay afloat. Writing down your plan — in complete detail — will give your organization a road map of strategies that lead directly to clear-cut objectives.

Even if much of your eCommerce journey remains to be discovered, working from a business plan will eliminate most unnecessary surprises. Plus, you’ll be prepared to budget and manage your finances to cope when any unexpected hurdles appear.

2. Make progress more likely by tracking it

As with any business objective, you’ll want to measure KPIs and adjust your strategy accordingly while adapting to eCommerce. Start by determining which success markers are meaningful to you and then attaching KPIs to related milestones.

You might choose to focus on conversion rate or the number of visitors to your site that turn into buyers. You could track customer satisfaction and use on-site surveys to assess user happiness. Whatever is important to you, track your progress while nudging the needle on your productivity and bottom line.

3. Keep an eye on future trends

CRM solutions. First-party data insights. Investing in fulfillment and automation. These are just a few of the trends expected to emerge within the eCommerce industry this year, but they’re surely not the only ones you’ll need to keep tabs on.

Forecast trends whenever possible. They will help you please consumers in the near future and use your investment dollars wisely. A trend like green consumerism, for instance, will be significant as you design and roll out products to Millennial consumers. More people are choosing to take a stand for sustainability — if you can speak to those people with your business choices, you may win over a loyal bunch of shoppers.

Yes, staying present with your eCommerce strategy is the surest way to keep it on track. Just don’t lose sight of what might be ahead and how that future could affect your business.

4. Learn and grow with feedback

Getting feedback from every area of your business is vital for steering your growth in the right direction. Feedback from customers is great. You certainly don’t want to interfere with purchases or pester people, but you can look for creative ways to log satisfaction at the browsing, buying, and delivery stages.

Feedback will give you the fuel you need to make your website experience more personalized. Customers will begin to feel like you understand them, their needs, and their desires. Building this bridge will ultimately inspire consumers to cross over and engage with your eCommerce services.

5. Balance manual labor and automation to avoid errors

Human error is inevitable in business, and the lack of a personal touch is common online. Avoid needless errors by backing up your manual processes with automated technology.

Shift your traditional or antiquated systems onto newer programs. You could, for example, outsource your order fulfillment to a third party. You could also automate inventory levels so customers can see immediately when products they frequently buy are running out of stock. Whatever you do, allow automation and human context to work in tandem to make sure nothing falls through the cracks.

6. Create a clear line of communication with your supply chain

As your business embraces eCommerce and prepares for growth, your supply chain will be your lifeblood. How products are made, moved, shipped, and delivered can be the difference between happy customers and disgruntled ones.

Start with your internal communications by making sure team members know the systems they’re using. Maintain clear means of updating stock levels, demand, and goals to keep your supply chain transparent. This transparency is important for you and your customers, but it’s also useful insight for every manufacturer, shipping carrier, and logistics provider along the way. Increased clarity will inspire more trust in your system and higher growth potential.

Embracing eCommerce for business growth

Staggering levels of growth have already transformed the eCommerce landscape and altered consumer behavior — perhaps permanently. While this pace might seem shocking or intimidating, you can chart a path forward for your business. Once you embrace the unprecedented growth of eCommerce, you can begin to enjoy the spoils of this shift.

Marketers and business owners know that they won’t convert every customer that lands on their website. Most people will add items to their virtual shopping cart but leave before completing their purchase. This action is called cart abandonment, and it’s far more common than you think. 

On average, businesses see a cart abandonment rate of 68%. That means that over half of all the people that make it to your checkout page will leave before clicking the submit button on your payment form. At first, that might sound alarming. But here’s some good news; there are a ton of ways to optimize your eCommerce checkout process. 

If your abandonment rate is far above the average, there’s even more room for you to improve by fine-tuning your checkout page. Today, we will reveal six simple strategies you can use to reduce abandonment and increase sales. 

Let’s dive in! 

1. Avoid payment page distractions

Research suggests that removing navigation links can result in twice as many conversions. When people are not distracted by unnecessary links and promotions they can stay focused on placing their order. 

If you want people to stick around and complete their order, you should first consider removing distractions from your payment page. When businesses want users to focus on important parts of their website, like landing pages and payment forms, they remove links that are available on other parts of the website. 

For instance, some business owners include recently published blog posts on their website’s sidebar. This strategy is an effective way to get more people to engage with your content and increase dwell time, but it can decrease conversions if included on the checkout page. 

Imagine someone is getting ready to complete their order but sees a blog post they want to read; there’s a good chance they will click away from the payment page and forget about their order. You want to keep users on track, so removing extras is a must. 

2. Remove unexpected costs

Unexpected costs are the number one reason consumers abandon their virtual shopping cart. You can increase sales if you are consistent with your pricing from the moment a customer looks at a product through the checkout process. 

Additional costs can come in several forms. First, there are extra taxes that appear after the items are added to the cart. You can mitigate this problem by encouraging users to sign up for an account so you can include their local taxes in the price before they add the item. 

Shipping costs are also a contributing factor to cart abandonment. One of the best workarounds for this issue is either offering free shipping for all orders or based on what the customer spends. Make sure you let users know on every product page your shipping policy.

Believe it or not, 46.5% of small to medium-sized business owners report that offering free shipping led to significantly more sales. 

3. Simplify your form

Next, let’s talk about simplifying your payment form. A confusing or complicated form will result in users leaving in frustration, which means they likely won’t come back and complete their order. 

There are a couple of ways to solve this problem. You’ll first want to go through and make sure you make specific fields on your forms optional. Think carefully about what information is necessary for the order and make those fields mandatory. 

For example, if you’re selling a SaaS product, you may not need to know your customer’s home address, but this information is crucial for eCommerce businesses since they will likely be shipping a product for delivery. 

We also recommend including a progress bar on your payment form. Consumers are likely to back out if your payment section has more than one page and no progress bar. However, if users can see exactly how close they are to the end of the process, they are more likely to stick around and finalize their order. 

4. Use FOMO marketing

Fear of missing out, also known as FOMO, is something that many of us have experienced in our lives. Have you ever bought something because you received an email or spotted an on-site offer that was only going on for a limited time? If so, your quick purchase was a result of your fear of missing out. 

You can use this marketing strategy to get more visitors to become customers. The most effective way to use FOMO marketing is to include a banner at the top of your website that promotes a limited-time offer.

Some businesses choose to hold holiday promotions, while others like hosting flash sales. In this case, the choice is yours. The thing you have to get right is the sense of urgency. 

Include a countdown timer that shows users exactly how long they have to act on your offer. The time limit can cause FOMO, which will result in customers making purchases when they otherwise may have left your site. 

If you sell physical goods, you can inspire FOMO by showing a live inventory feed on items that are running low. Amazon does an excellent job using this strategy by showing in red writing how many products are left when the number drops below a certain amount. Showing a limited supply is a major FOMO trigger and can result in more conversions. 

5. Show trust signals 

If you want people to complete their order, you have to make sure they trust your company. When consumers are getting ready to check out, they often look for trust signals that help them feel like they are making the right choice. 

The best way to show social proof and encourage more customers to take action is by showing trust signals directly on your payment page. You have several options when it comes to how you display these signs on your website. 

You could add a trust badge to your payment form. Trust badges are given out to businesses that are scanned and safe from companies like Norton Antivirus and McAfee. Consumers trust these brands and are therefore more likely to go through with their purchase if they see a reputable security company’s approval. 

Another way to show trust signals on your payment page is with testimonials. People like seeing what other paying customers have to say about their experience with your company. Look for honest, glowing reviews and include them on your payment page. When a user is thinking about whether or not your product is worth it, they will have evidence from another real customer right in front of them. 

6. Create a cart abandonment email campaign

Finally, let’s talk about what you can do to boost sales after a user leaves without completing their order. Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies you have at your disposal. On average, business owners see a whopping 4,400% return on investment when using email to keep in touch with prospects and existing customers. 

We recommend creating an email campaign that you send to users who subscribe to your email list and add items to their cart but don’t complete their order. 

On average, we send three emails to users after they meet the above criteria. Our first email goes out immediately after the customer abandons their cart. The purpose of this message is to help them get back to their order without navigating through the site again. 

If there’s no response, we send another email 48 hours later. This email includes an exclusive discount that the user can redeem to save on their order. The typical promotion we use is 25% off their entire purchase or select items. 

The last email we send goes out a week later. This message is considered our “last call.” If the user doesn’t come back at this point, we don’t keep pushing. 

There are a ton of reasons why someone might abandon their shopping cart. Creating an email campaign designed to bring a percentage of those users back to your website can help you dramatically increase checkout conversions. 

Keep optimizing your checkout experience

As you can see, there are plenty of options when it comes to optimizing your checkout page and sales process in general. Feel free to use the tips offered here today and measure your progress over time. You can experiment with different techniques and track the results to find the perfect checkout page strategy that works for your business. 

The first thing most eCommerce companies did in February of 2020 was to smash their crystal balls and toss out demand forecasts because the world was shaping up to be like nothing we’ve seen before. That uncertainty still exists, but we can now turn to it to see patterns and set some expectations for 2021. But keep the grains of salt ready because no one is quite sure what the year will shape up to be.

To offer what help we can, we’ve put together a list of seven predictions for 2021 eCommerce and what it means for large and small brands. These are based on elements that should strengthen your store and limit disruption while building better customer relationships. The economy and your customers are still changing, so let’s look at what the driving forces of change have taught us.

1. Greater social integration

eCommerce marketing tends to follow broader sales and social trends, prioritizing ease of access for its innovation. For instance, Instagram’s shoppable posts and stories allowed users to check out almost immediately and were a considerable success. They led to a Shops program that arrived during the COVID crisis. These tools have helped companies increase their general eCommerce capabilities and capture more interest from a captive audience.

Other social channels also made inroads as 2020 ended. Shopify’s partnership with TikTok is one move that’s gaining attention from brands and consumers because ads can arrive in a user’s feed and are styled like the other content they consume.

We expect this trend to continue as users remain home through 2021, and many social media increases of the past year solidify into more permanent habits. Mobile was a common way that engagement increased, and TikTok’s mobile focus made it a place to watch for social eCommerce. Companies will want to observe which channels their audience use but should expect to shift some of their more traditional ad spending to social shopping and new integrations between sales channels and social apps.

2. Customers want you to get out of the way

A feature of the 2020 landscape was a sharp rise in digital self-service tools. Human-powered chatbots and phone service tools also increased because of the need to stay remote. The average consumer liked these options before, but now more than  75% of buyers say they prefer them, according to McKinsey.

That same research highlights the preference extends to B2B and B2C customers, and only 20% of B2B shoppers want to return to in-person sales. That cuts against many practices in the space and demonstrates that you’ll need to do relationship building on websites and through content. Interactions are digital now, and customer preferences are going to keep it that way.

The eCommerce takeaway is that you need to provide pathways for customers to shop and explore, getting the information they need to make a purchase decision with minimal interruption. The sales journey is now self-directed, so most touchpoints for human interaction should be driven by customers. Clicking to call or access a chatbot, tweeting for service, or being able to schedule a video conference/demo should be in their hands.

Digging into the report shows that buyers and sellers expect these patterns to stick through at least 2021, giving you plenty of opportunities to test and optimize the efforts that your customers prefer. 

3. Niche markets become a bigger play

In 2020, the eCommerce boom initially played right into the hands of the largest digital marketplaces around. For example, Amazon posted its largest-ever profits and likely will blow that number out of the water again.

However, Amazon’s profits, and those of its founder and CEO, have spurred some conversation about how consumers should spend their money. The company’s treatment of workers, delays, and closer looks at its business practices are causing small communities to look elsewhere. Bookstores have become one area where people are shifting their dollars, and niche markets that avoid the behemoths may be more enticing for consumers who want to give back to their local community and smaller businesses.

We’ve seen it in the marketing and sales for smaller eCommerce companies and even in some B2B circles. There’s a desire to look local and focus smaller. For the seller, having a presence on this smaller scale also provides greater flexibility for responding to consumer demands. It can open significant doors, especially if you let your audience drive the conservation.

What eCommerce companies should watch in 2021 is how well their competitors can capture niche areas and what can or can’t be mimicked. For example, the Capitol Hill Books bookstore in Washington D.C. tried to mirror some competitor’s exclusivity offers for shopping, but it had mixed success. Then, a single email from a customer turned into one of its most successful sales tools during the COVID-19 pandemic.

4. Voice will prioritize better buying

Voice interactions on devices with and without screens are significantly increasing thanks to personal assistants such as Siri and Alexa. You’ve likely seen voice search and buying as a trend to watch for a few years, and we would agree that the space has been expanding in exciting ways for eCommerce.

However, 2020 showed us that it is a potential powerhouse for eCommerce because people feel comfortable buying via voice. The industry went from expecting this trend to seeing 43% of smart speaker owners in the U.S. using the technology to make a purchase. That’s roughly 17 million Americans.

For eCommerce, this means ensuring that your content works on smart speakers. Make this a review process for everything you do, from search ads and capabilities to your website and even emails and offers you send. When you’re simpler and easier to understand, you’re a better candidate for sales.

Many smaller eCommerce brands don’t realize these search tools often rely on Bing for search queries. That should guide marketing and site development efforts, at least in part. It’ll create additional work and emphasis but ensuring that your content is correct on Bing may help you land some additional eCommerce sales. 

5. Dynamic pricing will see a thorough test of data

Dynamic pricing saw an increase during the pandemic, and it is expected to continue according to companies with data on it, like 3dcart. That comes with a lot of potential for revenue and customer satisfaction. At the same time, there’s a significant risk if customers perceive you as price-gouging or experience large price increases during their buyer’s journey.

In 2021, eCommerce brands are expected to perform more competitor research, informing prices and likely yield changes throughout the year. The ability to capture this data and more consumer information will make it easier to develop “price intelligence,” allowing businesses to maximize revenue while minimizing threats and cannibalization.

Supply and demand will continue to be in flux. That creates an opportunity to test new dynamic pricing models and methodologies, and makers of pricing intelligence products are likely to start offering more data and tools. Retailers will need to prioritize metric tracking and forecasts, including how competitors adjust promotions that might push something below an advertised price.

Customers are doing dynamic pricing work, too. Browser extensions — such as Honey, Amazon Assistant, and Invisible Hand — to check prices across sites, apply coupons, and even track your pricing over time. The data available to consumer tools will inform their shopping and ultimate vendor selection.

If you plan on adjusting pricing often, realize that your 2021 customers will likely learn what you’re doing and may reward or punish you depending on how good of a deal you offer versus if they feel you’re getting too greedy.

6. Customers will want more shipping information and touches

As a provider of eCommerce fulfillment services specializing in large, heavy, or bulky items, we at Red Stag Fulfillment track a variety of consumer and company requests around shipping and fulfillment. 

Starting with 2019 data, eCommerce brands saw increases in customers wanting more options and information on their shipping capabilities. Customers wanted to see different pricing and speed selections during the checkout process, plus estimates while shopping. Integration with cart tools allowed many to estimate price and still note that final selections rely on shopper ZIP codes.

Transparency was the key for starting 2020. Then, the market experienced some of the biggest disruptions to fulfillment in recent memory. Local and regional sales were less likely to be impacted, but we still saw increases in demand for information around availability, speeds, reliability, and processing times. Your customers are becoming savvy about all aspects of fulfillment and will be asking deeper questions than before.

eCommerce brands are going to want to learn how they can provide information and automate these steps while also offering free and fast options. Beyond broad categories, they’re also asking about your specific industry elements. Luxury goods and fragile products have customers demanding a better unboxing experience that includes branded shipping and inserts. If you’re targeting health- and planet-conscious customers, be ready to answer questions about your sustainability in shipping.

Free shipping is no longer the only thing brands will need if they want to be seen as innovative and offering the most compelling fulfillment options.

7. Quick decision-making may be a permanent feature

The customer’s decision-making process drives the other factors we’ve looked at for 2021. Consumers are becoming more informed and expect you to deliver various information and options while also meeting them where they want to shop and play. When they decide that your store is where they’ll spend, shopping needs to be easy and efficient while picking the products, shipping, and getting other details they want. 

Your customers are in the driver’s seat. That also means they’re free to change lanes at any given moment, and the boom in eCommerce options only makes that easier. A break in the sales journey might not be something they work through on their own. eCommerce companies will need to manage expectations and repeatedly test to ensure everything is working and data on refunds, returns, shipping, sales, and more are always available.

While customers have been very forgiving after making a purchase in 2020, it’s unclear if they will be forgiving before making a purchase in 2021. Your mission is to help them while not getting the way and supporting an easier buying experience. When they’ve decided to purchase from you, speed it along and don’t give them a chance to change their mind.

Prepare for more changes

As a result of the pandemic, trends in eCommerce advanced at an incredibly fast rate in 2020. And it’s likely that the changes we listed here will continue to solidify as necessities throughout 2021. Be prepared to jump on them now and make the necessary changes to keep your eCommerce business competitive. There’s less of an opportunity to wait and if you aren’t at least considering adapting to a handful of these trends, you’ll soon find yourself struggling to keep up.

Though it’s a cause of great concern for merchants, one frustrating point persistently rings true in the eCommerce world — there’s no static recipe for a successful conversion. This is partly due to different retailers having different customer bases, but it’s also subject to external factors, particularly recently. Let’s just say that 2020 was hardly what you’d consider a conventional year.

In recent times, conventional wisdom has persistently pushed online sellers to look past pricing or product quality and focus on just one thing above all others: experience. When you’re up against plenty of other sellers with similar prices and products, so the reasoning goes, you need something to give you an edge — and customer experience is the tool for the job.

This argument has a lot of merits. In truth, I’ve made it before, albeit in a weaker form. But times change, the recipe for success shifts, and businesses need to adapt — and in the midst of a perilous year, how you price your products has once again become the dominant concern for customers. In this post, I’m going to explore this development in more detail, so let’s get to it.

1. The internet is full of generic products

This is something that’s often used as a reason to dismiss price as a primary concern, largely due to the massive influence of the drop shipping fulfillment model. It allows sellers to list items from a range of third-party suppliers in their own stores, take orders as though they stocked them, then pass those orders to the relevant suppliers for processing.

Because the suppliers take set cuts for the products and the fulfillment, the sellers can’t reduce the prices without losing money. But it’s extremely difficult to raise prices too much without becoming uncompetitive. This is why most drop shippers fight over modest items that can accommodate substantial profit margins. Phone cases, hats, toys, hobbyist equipment: a phone case can be manufactured for cents, sell to a supplier for $1, sell to a dropshipping merchant for $2, and sell to its eventual owner for $5.

Since it’s so hard to rely entirely on such items, numerous sellers end up offering the same items at nearly-identical prices, concluding that price can’t be a big determining factor. Well, it can, and it is, and here’s why. When it’s abundantly clear that you are seeing the same product everywhere, you stop paying attention to the copy or the extra details and simply assume that the buying experience will be the same no matter which retailer you use.

The presence of meta shopping tools such as Google Shopping and the Amazon Marketplace has really pushed this visibility along. A given product might be described or illustrated differently, but its unique identifiers will always give it away. Given that, all that matters is paying as little as possible — why would you pay even a cent more than you need to?

2. Most websites are more than good enough

Back when a lot of eCommerce sites were poorly designed, a strong experience could make one stand out. But usability standards have come a long way — and the average website today is more than good enough to pass muster. Even the weakest stores in the online world are fast enough and adequately mobile responsive for most people.

This is largely due to the standardization of platforms and integrations, as well as falling costs. There’s no need to put time and money into developing a custom store site when it’s so much easier to choose a platform and a template. Something like having a knowledge base to provide instant answers to your customers went from high-end luxury to something anyone can do without burning through their budget.

Most checkout systems allow guest accounts to use social logins, feature varied product photos, have accessibility options, and provide customers with options for getting assistance (whether through live chat or through regular support systems). There really isn’t that much to complain about — and when most stores are perfectly fine, it’s the prices that matter.

3. Sales proxies are becoming common

It’s been common for smaller sellers to list their inventories through third-party marketplaces for quite some time now, with the aforementioned Amazon and eBay dominating eCommerce. This evens out customer experience. Two competing sellers can dress their storefronts up differently and use various tweaks, but they’ll ultimately use exactly the same conversion process. This makes it very hard to stand out through providing superior shipping or processing.

In addition to this, more and more retail sites are taking advantage of social selling options — adding direct conversion functions to their social media accounts. Some sellers allow everything (including the creation of an account and the provision of payment details) to be managed through those functions without the users needing to visit their sites. It’s still in its infancy and certainly doesn’t have mainstream popularity, but give it time. 

Due to this, sellers are having fewer opportunities to really impress their customers with bespoke experiences. Much like buying through Amazon, buying from one brand through Facebook will be pretty much the same as buying from another — and when everything else becomes equal, as we’ve already noted, it’s the cost that matters.

Can you avoid this by sticking to your own independent store? You can certainly try: it isn’t overwhelmingly expensive to use a fully-featured hosting platform and steer well clear of larger marketplaces. But bear in mind just how dominant those marketplaces are. While Google is still a popular opener for online retail journeys, Amazon surpassed it for initial product searches back in 2018. Plenty of people will only buy outside of Amazon on rare occasions — such is the level of convenience inherent to using one store for almost everything you want.

4. COVID-19 has damaged spending power

Most significantly for this year, in particular, it’s inarguable that the broad impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has left people throughout the world with severely reduced spending power. In addition to leaving numerous workers either furloughed or seeking new employment, it has limited people’s options for shopping at traditional retail outlets through store closures and stay-at-home orders.

Even in cases where it hasn’t damaged spending power (and there are plenty of those cases since some industries have been able to operate largely unaffected), it’s made shoppers keenly aware of how quickly everything can go wrong. With many lockdown measures already lifted, others being tightened and more set to be lifted in the near future, long-term prospects are entirely unknown.

The result is that many people have significantly lowered their budgets, looking to focus on the staples and save as much as they can. What’s more, these aren’t short-term alterations to be abandoned once office life resumes. They’re adjustments to a new way of life (the need for which is clear to anyone who understands the full implications of the global recession).

And while it’s hard to be frugal when shopping for groceries (being limited by what’s in the store or available for delivery in your local area), it’s much easier when you’re looking for things you don’t really need through big online retailers. You can afford to look around for someone who has a particular product at a marginally lower price, even if it will require you to wait a little longer or deal with limited transparency with order tracking.

How much does customer experience matter?

To say that pricing matters more doesn’t mean that customer experience doesn’t matter at all, because it certainly does. Perhaps the best way to look at it is that exceptional customer experience isn’t very significant — even the slickest conversion funnel won’t win someone over if your prices are too high — but terrible customer experience has the power to ruin things.

Think about how you can draw someone in with industry-leading prices but still manage to irritate them enough with your checkout process that they give up and go elsewhere. It’s really about covering your bases. Then establishing a solid foundation to ensure that every part of your operation is at least adequate. And the better you make your buying process, the more leeway you’ll have to tweak your prices slightly without losing your edge.

How to approach adjusting your pricing

Let’s say you’re convinced at this point that you need to focus on pricing. How should you adjust your prices? Should you just set them all as low as you can manage without sabotaging your entire operation? Well, no, obviously not. Here are some core tips for proceeding sensibly:

Monitor the prices of dominant retailers 

Prices are meaningless outside of context. What matters is what you’re charging relative to other sellers. By paying close attention to how prices are trending on sites like Amazon and eBay, you can keep yours competitive without going lower than you need to.

Know when you can take a profitability hit

Sometimes it’s worth eating into your profit margins to gain a temporary advantage and build up your brand, but you need to know when to go for it and when to refrain. This will involve a strong understanding of your financial situation and what your long-term goals are.

Offer varied ways to bring costs down

If you can’t outright cut the cost for a particular item, why not offer savings for large orders, or for customers who’ve bought from you numerous times before? Using such tactics can allow you to undercut the competition when it’s going to be most effective (and without hugely impacting your profitability).

Turn price and experience into a competitive advantage

To wrap up, then, customer experience will always matter (particularly for customer loyalty), but price matters more at the moment. These are extraordinary times and shoppers are trying to be rational consumers. If you want to keep up, don’t put everything you have into a slick buying experience: get your prices down instead.

With an eCommerce business, your website is everything. It’s the driver of both sales and marketing and establishes a 24/7 representation of your brand. 

When it comes to an online store, how much you put into the store paves the way for how much you’ll make. Unfortunately, many entrepreneurs make the mistake of investing too little into their website while expecting large returns. But if you start with realistic expectations for how much it may cost to launch a successful eCommerce store, you’ll be far more likely to succeed.

So, before starting an eCommerce business, follow these tips to better plan out your site and accurately budget your startup costs. 

Budgeting for the initial website build

In general, eCommerce websites require a larger investment than informational websites because there are more complex systems involved. You’ll need to consider the design and build of product pages, setting up shipping and payment processing, and implementing the proper security protocols to protect customer’s data. All of this work takes more time and resources whether you are building the site yourself or with a web agency. 

Choosing an eCommerce platform 

Your choice of eCommerce platform will determine your initial investment in the site. The two most popular eCommerce platforms are currently WooCommerce and Shopify. 

In a nutshell, WooCommerce is a free platform, which can be integrated seamlessly into WordPress. However, it’s not easy to do this on your own, and you should expect to hire a skilled developer to implement some of the more complex steps. You’ll also typically need 2-3 WooCommerce extension plugins, which can cost anywhere from $50-$100 per year per extension. One large advantage of WooCommerce is that it is an open-source platform, so there are hundreds of thousands of web teams who specialize in this technology. 

Shopify, on the other hand, is a proprietary eCommerce platform where you’ll need to pay for a Shopify account in order to build your online store. An advantage of Shopify is that you have a clear breakdown of costs per month based on your required features whereas different WooCommerce features may require different amounts of development work. One potential drawback of Shopify is that the code is proprietary so you are limited to the customization options offered by Shopify and their support services.

There are numerous pros and cons when comparing WooCommerce to Shopify. Keep in mind, that switching from one eCommerce platform to another often requires rebuilding your site. So take your time, make sure you know what you hope to get out of your site and weigh the differences when deciding on the best platform for your store. 

Template vs. custom design 

After you select your eCommerce platform, you’ll need to decide on an approach for the design and development of the website. There are two options — utilizing a pre-designed template or taking a custom design approach. 

So, which should you choose? Here are some factors you need to consider:

• How competitive the market is for your products
• Your time to market and timeline for the website project
• The complexity and customization required for your products

Working with a web template

Both WooCommerce and Shopify offer pre-designed templates, which give you a starting point for your online store. Customizing a template can be a cost-effective option for a new site because it reduces the website team’s work. It can also reduce the timeline to build the site if you need to get the products to market quickly. 

Working with a custom design

In comparison, a custom design approach means that a web designer is creating mockups from scratch. This option may be worth the larger investment and timeline if you need a high-quality design to differentiate your business from competitors. Or if you want the flexibility to actively update your site on a regular basis.

Your products and store may also require a custom approach if you’re selling products that involve complex development work. For instance, selling a product with a handful of variations, such as t-shirts of various sizes, is more straightforward compared to a paid subscription service where customers are receiving a unique t-shirt design on a monthly basis. 

Consistently rotating products and subscription services often require a lot more design and development work. Which means the custom option will likely make more sense.

Selecting a Merchant Processor 

A payment gateway is a merchant service that allows you to process credit cards on your website. Your choice of payment gateway will also impact your ongoing costs.  

If your eCommerce site is a major pillar of your business, you’ll want to set up a check out process where visitors can pay directly on your site. You want to avoid having them redirected to a third-party site to submit payment, as this can deter purchases.

To help you narrow down your options, the 3 most popular payment gateways are: 

• Stripe
• Paypal
• Authorize.net 

All of these payment gateways integrate with Shopify or WooCommerce. The processing fees for Stripe, Paypal, or Authorize.net are currently 2.9% and an additional $0.30 per transaction. However, there can be additional setup fees, depending on your choice of payment gateway. 

For example, there is a free WooCommerce Stripe plugin available for the setup on WooCommerce sites, while the WooCommerce Authorize.net extension is a paid yearly add-on. Before selecting a payment gateway, you should also consult with an experienced developer or development team about the best solution for your given situation. 

For instance, PayPal does not offer the best options for paid subscription services that require recurring payments. So if you operate as a subscription-based business, you can immediately eliminate it as an option and look into Stripe or Authorize.net instead.

Planning for long-term costs

While the initial build of the website will demand the largest investment, eCommerce sites also require long-term costs to keep the site running smoothly.  

These costs often include: 

• Hosting & SSL certificate
• Security monitoring
• Regular maintenance & development support 

Your choice of eCommerce platform also affects your monthly payments for these services. As a proprietary platform, Shopify offers monthly plans based on your website’s traffic, security, and support needs. WooCommerce websites have similar needs, but you’re given the option to decide which security protocols to set up, and select which hosting service you’d like to use. In this case, you get to shop around for the best hosting solution for your site, while with Shopify, your site only has one hosting option — Shopify’s proprietary servers. 

While it can be tempting to place a WooCommerce site on a cheap hosting platform to save money, this often turns into a critical mistake once the site launches. WooCommerce sites tend to perform poorly on a shared server with limited resources, especially as the traffic to the site increases.

For WooCommerce sites, you’ll also want to budget for a developer or development team to regularly update the plugins on your site. These WooCommerce security updates include critical security patches and failing to update your website can put it and customers’ data at risk. 

Jumpstart your eCommerce business

Sadly, many eCommerce businesses fail because they can’t generate enough sales to offset the above costs. Making the right choices at the beginning though can set you up for long-term success. Be sure to reference your business plan and financial forecasts to ensure you’re making the best and most feasible decision.

While your budget may determine a lot of your choices as to which platform you go for and whether you work off a template or build your own unique site, remember to consider all of the needs of your business while making these decisions. If you find thst funding is a core problem for launching your business, you can always work with a coming soon landing page to validate your eCommerce product or service. Having these results can make it much easier to pitch to investors if you’d rather spend more up front to build out the best website you possibly can.

If a loan or funding is simply not something you’re interested in pursuing, you can still make small strides to build a solid foundation for growth. Just be sure to carefully review your eCommerce site options carefully and look ahead to what you intend your business to be in 6-months, 1-year, 5-years, etc. That way you fully understand what you’re getting into, why you’re investing in the site, and won’t be surprised by any drawbacks or complications as your business grows.

For a tech start-up or other online business, there are many smaller nuances to consider, including the wording of your pages, payment plan flexibility, and the navigation of your customers’ journey. Even your website speed has a huge impact on whether people are likely to stick around.

When you’re so ingrained in the finer details of your company, it’s difficult to take a step back and see where your website needs improving. Some current page layouts may be confusing, or perhaps your messaging doesn’t connect with your target audience. 

Any of these aspects, if not optimized, can mean the difference between conversions and lost sales. Making it vital that you fix these issues quickly and if possible, long before you launch your eCommerce shop. 

To help get your eCommerce platform in order, here are our top tips to help maximize conversions on your website.

1. Test price comparison tables

Customers have access to all your online competitors. Within a few clicks, they can look at other providers. If they do leave your site, how confident are you that they’ll return? 

However, by including a price comparison table of your competitors on your own website, it can help boost conversions as much as 30%. This is especially the case if you’re the least expensive option on the market. If so you should be shouting that from the rooftops. 

Even if you’re more expensive, you can control what the customer sees. After all, you may offer more services or have better reviews than your competitors. By controlling the customer’s comparison you get to showcase your better features. All of which helps to give you the edge over rival brands.

Ultimately, price comparison tables are about giving the information the customer wants without them having to go searching elsewhere for it. That’s important when the ‘elsewhere’ is your competitor who may just clinch the sale instead. 

2. Reformat old school customer forms

No one likes having long-winded forms to fill in. To increase conversions for your start-up, you need to cut out what isn’t needed to make the process as seamless as possible.

Scrutinize every field on your customer forms and ask yourself: “Do I really need to capture that information?”

Remove any fields that aren’t necessary. The less time your customers have to spend inputting their data, the more likely they are to convert.

If your customer forms do need to collect a lot of information, consider breaking it down into stages. A long list of fields is very daunting, but bite-size chunks are far more palatable and will likely lead to more conversions.

You should also check the placement of the forms so they don’t disrupt the customer. There’s a fine line between prompts and distractions. Keep everything clean and simple to fill out and submit.

3. Customer price plans & being discount savvy

The financial preferences of your customers will vary widely. Some will prefer to pay in smaller increments. While others would be happy to pay a large fee upfront to get a discount.

Offering monthly and yearly pricing is a great idea to cater to different payment preferences and is all related to the psychology of pricing. In short, you have to squash any price related doubt the customer may have about buying your product. 

While you’ll need to offer discounts on yearly payment plans, you’ll at least be getting the money upfront. As a start-up, upfront payments are extremely beneficial to the health of your business and your overall cash flow, compared to being drip-fed smaller monthly payments. 

4. Utilize user testing

As the founder of a start-up, you’ve put your heart and soul into starting your company. You know every pixel and product inside out. You know the quickest ways to get through user forms, which buttons get you to the product page, and how to alter payment methods like the back of your hand. While many hours have been spent on what you’ve built so far, it’s still worth remembering that your customers are brand new to your idea. 

With a fresh perspective comes vital points you may have missed. That’s why it’s crucial to refine your user experience before you launch. After all, you only have that one shot to make the right first impression on your customers. 

Paying users to test your website is money well spent. Or you can even ask friends and family for their input too, though neutral parties are more likely to give an unbiased response. Ask people to run through your site, you’ll be surprised at where they get stuck or how they find various functions confusing.

While it can be frustrating listening to how your site needs to be improved, ironing out any issues before you launch will ultimately help boost conversion rates once you do. 

5. Optimize wording to increase conversions

When you first create your tech start-up, it can be difficult to know what wording works best for your customers and ultimately your conversions. 

Headings, slogans, and pitches on your site impact how your customers take in certain messaging. Changing one word in a sentence can flip the switch from positive to negative or even from purchase to an abandoned cart.

That’s why it’s a good idea to create multiple landing pages and see how they perform. Utilizing software such as Hotjar or Google Analytics can simplify this process for you while providing valuable insights.

Once you understand what is working, build on that wording, and use similar phrasing on other pages. If you identify a strong CTA (call to action) that leads the customer to the next part of your sales funnel, adopt it elsewhere. Instead of persuading them with everything else on the page or an additional step, make it easy for them and stick with what works. 

On that note, be sure to refine your wording regularly to identify anything that’s just not working. And be sure to keep up to speed with the latest SEO techniques too.

6. Improve your page speed

You may remember the days of accessing the internet via dial-up. This involved waiting 10+ seconds for images to load. These days waiting anything longer than 3 seconds will annoy customers who will quickly move onto another site. 

How to improve your website speed

If your page load time is slow, expect your bounce rate, the number of visitors that view your page, and immediately leave, to soar. If that sounds familiar it’s time to speed things up. Here are the best ways to go about doing that.

Use CDNs

Move servers to the country where most of your users are based. This means switching to a CDN (content delivery network). The less distance the data has to travel, the quicker it will load for your customer. 

Improve caching

Your websites caching can dramatically speed up how fast a user can access your content. Think of it as storing a virtual roadmap of a city, so that the next time you visit you already know where you are going without having to start from scratch. Only, your computer is the one storing the files and what it’s memorizing is your website. That’s the essence of caching, and it’s worth brushing up on if you haven’t already.

Troubleshooting

Run diagnostics to see if anything obvious is causing the issues. While you’re there, ensure there isn’t anything that is slowing your page down. Large images or even videos can eat into your page load time, so try to limit these as much as possible. 

7. Avoid using annoying pop-ups and ads

Everyone finds it annoying when you’re navigating through a site and a pop-up appears. Usually, you close it without batting an eyelid. But sometimes, pop-ups can be particularly irksome especially if they appear on multiple pages or are difficult to exit away from. 

While there might be reasons your site includes pop-ups, it ultimately diminishes the customer experience. You want your customers to feel good about using your site, because the better they feel, the more likely they are to convert. And if a half-page ad continues to disrupt their session, you can bet they’ll be quickly looking for an exit.

Consider removing nonessential pop-ups. If you really must have pop-ups, ensure their appearance and wording enhances the user experience. Typically this means that any pop-ups or slide-ins relate to the content on the page, only appear at a certain time and are easy to dismiss if uninterested. 

Similar to pop-ups, a site filled with an extensive amount of banner and rail ads can be equally unappealing. Sure, sometimes ads are essential for your website’s revenue but that doesn’t mean they should disrupt the user. If you utilize ads, at least consider the sizing and placement to ensure they are as unobtrusive as possible. You’ll likely want to utilize user testing for this to verify that nothing negatively impacts the user journey. 

8. Payment options

These days, there are numerous payment portals available to websites, such as Paypal, Square, and Google Pay to name a few. 

These portals make the lives of customers easier as it avoids the need for them to find their bank details and laboriously enter their 16 digit card number. Customers will have a wide variety of preferences for how to pay online and will expect eCommerce sites to fit their needs. 

Adding multiple payment portals will require more integration, but, that will be offset by your ability to cater to a wider audience. Now, this doesn’t mean you should offer fifteen different payment options. Instead, do your research, see what your competitors offer and what your target market tends to utilize.

If your business is subscription-based, you also need to consider if you should be locking in your customers to recurring monthly or annual payments. By locking in payments over a certain period, you improve your chances of retaining customers and receiving a steady stream of income.

However, a proportion of your customers may be looking for flexibility in how long or often they have to pay. So you may want to consider monthly rolling options for your subscriptions alongside any annual or quarterly options. While you won’t have payments locked in, you are serving your customers’ needs and can offer slight price cuts for longer payment terms.

9. Answer questions on support pages

A portion of your customers will have questions they want to ask you about your products and services. This is why it’s vital to include comprehensive FAQ pages to help customers quickly find the answers they may be looking for. You’ll want to be sure it’s well-organized, searchable, and that you’re actively updating it as more common questions emerge.

Unfortunately, even a well-designed FAQ page won’t provide answers to every question. But having a team on hand to answer questions in live chat can be an excellent alternative for nuanced customer support. 

For customers, opening a quick live chat is far more preferable than having to wait in call queues, send an email, or fill out a support form. That being said, it ultimately depends on the nature of your business to ensure the customer feels comfortable reaching out using the communication methods you do have. 

For those businesses that don’t have the budget to man live chat options, there are cheaper alternatives. Automated response setups are available that can be embedded within your site, and social channels like Facebook messenger offer a similar experience. Such ‘bots’ are based on keyword lookups to provide answers based on a detailed FAQ database and can be fine-tuned to serve your needs, to a certain extent.

10. The wrong images on your site

Images play a vital role on any website. They aren’t just there to make your site look pretty, but to help your traffic engage with your content. This means having the right imagery that reflects your audience is a necessity.

If you’re a software company offering communication services for businesses, you’ll likely want pictures of business owners, remote strategy meetings, and product screenshots. But if your site only features images of landscapes, buildings, and teenagers, your users simply won’t connect.

On that note, you’ll want to avoid stock images whenever possible. These often look staged, cheap, and aren’t representative of your company. Pay a bit upfront for a professional photo shoot that features your office space, employees, current customers, branding, and anything else that represents your company. It’ll be worth it in the long-run as you work to optimize images on your site.

Keep in mind, images can slow your page load speed down so you’ll need to find a balance between file sizes and overall image quality. 

11. Showcase customer review ratings

There are an abundance of customer review sites that customers refer to when researching products and services. You have Google, Facebook, Trustpilot, Yelp, and Feefo, just to name a few. And on top of that, you even have industry and platform-specific reviews to keep in mind.

To leverage review sites, make sure to request reviews from your happy customers. If you have some already, then visually display these ratings from trusted sites on your sales pages. A high volume of strong ratings creates credibility for your brand and provides greater exposure online for your business.

If you’re struggling with negative or middling reviews, be sure you’re actively reaching out and responding. And if a review seems fishy or unwarranted, reach out to the site itself about having it removed. While this won’t always be successful, it’s worth the effort when it does work.

12. Highlight the size of your social media

Social media can be incredibly powerful. If you have thousands of followers and likes, that indicates credibility for your business. The more credibility you have, the greater the chances of successful conversions. 

If you or your customers are active on social and regularly mention your products, it may even be worth featuring a live feed on your website. At the same time, having a clear and easy way for customers to go from Instagram, Facebook and Twitter directly to your eCommerce site is a must. Add pricing tags, direct links to pricing pages, and actively update your company website to relevant pages whenever possible.

13. Create product packages to suit your customers

Some of your customers may only be looking for a certain part of your product or services. But if you have bundled all your products and services in one package, you’re isolating a portion of your potential customer base.

This is why many sites offer basic, standard, and premium packages. The premium packages cater to customers that are willing to pay more for a wider variety of features, while, the basic packages appeal to those looking for a lower cost. 

Similar to offering multiple pricing models, being flexible with how your customers buy from you, expands the potential to attract and retain customers. You’re servicing their specific needs, providing premium options they can always upgrade to later on, and actively testing which packages connect with your target customer.   

14. Offer free trial periods

Suitable for online services and subscription businesses, free trials are a great way to attract new customers. You simply set a period that allows the user to experience the benefits of your services without having to pay. 

A critical component of free trials is setting customer accounts to auto-enroll. This means once the free trial ends, the customer will begin to be charged automatically. Of course, you need to be upfront and clear with customers that this will happen, and prepare your customer service team for an influx of customers that forgot to cancel.

You will likely see a large percentage of individuals simply cancel after the free trial, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come back. Follow-up with a sales recovery email drip campaign or targeted messaging that reminds them of what they’re missing, possibly even offering a discount on their first month after a few attempts.

If a free trial doesn’t make sense for your business, you can always implement a money-back guarantee instead. Same concept, but the customer is paying up-front with the knowledge that if they aren’t satisfied, they aren’t at risk of losing money. 

15. Keep iterating and testing

Lastly, as you develop and implement these changes the best thing you can do is continue to iterate and test. Don’t stop with just one change or one attempt at optimizing that happens to be effective. Instead, look to continue improving your efforts by A/B testing messaging, image selection, pricing options, and anything else you feature on your site.

Basically, continue to make improvements that make your customer experience as joyful and efficient as possible. After all, with high levels of online competition, it’s imperative that your website doesn’t hamper your business growth, but elevates your operations.

So if you want your business to be successful you’ll want to start with a business plan first. Not having a business plan is one of the primary reasons businesses fail and it’s an easy first step that you can start for free. Businesses that do take the time to plan are actually proven to be significantly more successful than those that don’t.

Why write a business plan for your eCommerce business?

If you’re looking for funding from investors for your eCommerce business, you’ll definitely need a business plan. But, business plans aren’t just for entrepreneurs who are looking to raise money for their business. There are many other reasons why you should consider writing a plan.

• Strategy. Writing your plan down will help you clarify your business strategy and figure out key aspects of how your business will run. You’ll think about your marketing plan, fulfillment, sales strategies, and more.
• Test ideas. Business plans can help you figure out if an idea will work. A plan will help you figure out which ideas will be profitable and which will struggle to make money.
• Know your numbers. Developing your financial plan as part of your business plan will help you understand what it’s really going to take to start an online business. Running the numbers will help you determine profitability and what it will take to get your business up and running.
• Market research. Your business plan will help you answer questions about who your customers are and how you can best get your product in front of them.
• Marketing and advertising. Getting your eCommerce business running online is just the first step. Now you need to bring customers to your website. Having a plan and knowing how much it will cost you before your start will improve your chances of success.
• Business plan competitions. An often overlooked way of getting money for your eCommerce business is business plan competitions. There are thousands of them every year that include cash prizes. With a solid business plan, it’s usually free to enter.

A business plan can help you develop your strategy, test your idea, figure out how much money you’ll need to get up and running and identify potential roadblocks. It’s a critical step that will ensure that you don’t waste time or money as you get your business off the ground.

How to write an eCommerce business plan

Every business plan follows a fairly standard format, but for eCommerce you will need some extra detail in the marketing and fulfillment sections. Here’s an outline of what you should include. 

If you’re ready to get started you can also download a free business plan template right now.

Executive Summary

Every business plan needs an executive summary. Usually, you write the summary last, after you’ve fleshed out all the details of your plan. The executive summary isn’t a repeat of the full plan—it’s really just a brief outline that should be 1-2 pages at the most. 

When you’re getting introductions to investors, you’ll probably just share your executive summary to start, and then share the full plan if an investor is interested. 

Your executive summary should summarize your vision for your online business, the products you’ll be selling, a short description of your target market, and highlights of your management team and financials. If you did a market analysis, don’t get into tons of detail, but cover enough that a casual reader will understand what you’re trying to accomplish.

Opportunity: Problem and Solution

The first chapter of your business plan describes your opportunity. That’s a description of the business you are building and the problem you are solving for customers. 

Every business needs to solve a problem for customers. For your business to stand out and be successful, you’ll ideally fill a gap that other companies haven’t filled yet. 

Even if you’re selling the same types of products as other companies, your business could offer a better shopping experience, lower prices, or better customer service. The problem you are solving then is that customers can’t get good customer service or low prices from other companies in your industry. They will come to you, instead, because you do offer those things.

You can also solve problems for customers by offering a product they’ve never seen before. Perhaps you’ve developed a new line of kitchen utensils that are designed for older hands and wrists. Or maybe you’ve invented a new line of soap that is more sustainable than traditional hand soap.

Target Market

Arguably, the target market section of your business plan is one of the most important components. Your target market describes the types of customers you hope to attract. Trying to please everyone is bound to be a failure—instead, focus on a specific group of people or type of person and build from there.

For example, maybe you’re trying to sell to young professionals who value good design. Or, maybe you’re targeting new families who are looking for sustainably made, affordable kids toys.

When you’re writing the target market section of your business you’ll describe exactly who your ideal customer is, what their demographics are, and how large your target market is.

There are a lot of details that you can include in your target market section of your business plan and we’ve got a great article that covers everything you might want to include.

Marketing and Advertising

For an eCommerce business, getting the word out about your business is critical. Unlike a physical storefront that potential customers might walk or drive by, an online store needs to figure out how to get customers to its virtual doors.

In the marketing and advertising chapter of your business plan, you’ll want to detail your marketing plan for your business – how are you going to get customers’ attention? How will they know you exist?

Here are a few tactics you may want to consider:

• Content marketing. Start writing blog posts that your potential customers may find interesting so that you can attract prospects to your business. Also, consider guest posting on other blogs that your potential customers might read.
• Social media. These days, most consumers expect that the companies they shop at will have some form of social media presence. Pick the networks that you plan to be active on and determine a strategy that will engage your potential customers.
• Traditional PR. Traditional PR isn’t dead. If you can get popular publications to cover your company launch and your products, you’ll be able to drive new customers to your door.
• Advertising. Online advertising will almost certainly be in your plans. The good thing about online advertising is that you can measure its effectiveness and fine-tune things as you go. Depending on your business and how much cash you have on hand, you may consider traditional off-line advertising as well.
• Email marketing. For many eCommerce businesses, email is a core strategy for driving sales. If you have a content marketing plan, you can use that content to drive email subscriptions. You can also offer deals to build your email list, such as free shipping or discounts on orders.

Operations

Successful eCommerce businesses are all about ensuring that their operations are running smoothly and efficiently. Use your business plan as your chance to figure out what your operations plans are ahead of time before you jump in and get started. This is where many businesses can get tripped up, so taking the time to get your operations set up properly is worth the up-front investment of time.

Areas you’ll want to cover include:

• Locations. Even though your business may be online, you’ll still need to run the business from somewhere. Perhaps you can run the business entirely remotely, but potentially you may need some office space for employees or warehouse space for product storage. Think about where these locations are located and what it will cost to keep them running.
• Suppliers. You’ll need suppliers for raw materials if you’re making products and you will also need suppliers if you are reselling products. Use your plan to figure out who you’re going to work with, what their purchase terms are, and what kind of delivery timeframes they can provide for you.
• Production. If you’re assembling raw materials into products, you’ll need to know how and where you will be producing your products.
• Storage & fulfillment. If you’re not drop-shipping from products from a supplier, you’ll need to store and ship your own products. Your business plan should detail where and how storage and fulfillment will take place and what the costs will be. Don’t forget to think through how you’ll handle returns and exchanges.
• Technology & payment processors. All eCommerce businesses need technology to function. You’ll want to think about the platform you’ll use for your online store, what functionality you need, and how you’ll accept payments. 

Company & Management

This chapter of your business plan describes the structure of your business and who is running it. If you’re going into business with other people, you should establish a partnership agreement. Your plan will need to explain how your business is structured and who owns what portions of the business. 

You’ll also want to include a company description that includes details on the management team and the highlights from their resumes. Potential investors will be looking for experienced owners and managers to get an eCommerce business up and running, so this section of the plan should explain why your team is qualified to build the business into a success.

If you aren’t looking for outside investment, this section of your plan is still important. You should think about the different positions you’ll need to fill and who is going to do each job in the business. Even if you don’t plan on hiring employees right away, having a plan for who you’re going to hire and when will be enormously helpful when the time comes.

Financial Plan

Finally, your business plan will need to include a financial plan. Investors will want to see a sales forecast, income statement (also called profit and loss statement), cash flow statement, and a balance sheet. If you use a tool like LivePlan, you’ll be able to build out your financial forecasts relatively quickly, even if you don’t have experience with business numbers.

Even if you’re not working with investors or getting a bank loan, you should run your numbers. This is arguably the most important part of your business plan. You need to know if the numbers work for your business based on your forecasted sales and planned expenses. 

It’s much better to find out if you need to make changes to your business model while it’s all just an idea on paper rather than a business that you’ve already invested money in.

If you need additional help, we’ve created a guide to creating the financial statements you need to include in your business plan.

Ecommerce business plan templates and examples

If you want to see how other eCommerce businesses have created their plans, check out our free library of eCommerce business plans. You can download all of them in Word format so you can jump-start your own business plan.

A tool for writing a restaurant business plan

Here at Bplans, we recommend LivePlan for writing your business plan. It walks you through the process step-by-step with instructions and examples for all aspects of your plan. It includes all of the financial forecasts you need—no experience necessary. Learn more about how LivePlan can help you write your business plan for your online eCommerce business.

While starting a business online may be more accessible, in order to grow and maintain you must follow a similar process to starting a traditional business. To help you navigate and successfully launch your new business venture, here’s our five-step process to starting an online business.

1. Decide on a business idea

This first step likely sounds like a no brainer. But you’d be surprised how often potential entrepreneurs jump ahead to branding or web development before having a firm idea in place. Here are a few things to consider when sorting out what your new online business will be.

Why are you doing this?

It’s a simple question to ask yourself and the answer can very well determine if your business will be successful. Every good business needs to have a mission and a purpose behind it. And you need to be sure you’re pursuing the startup with the intention to keep it going. Sure, you can have an exit strategy in mind, but if you don’t have the passion or drive to push your business forward it won’t get very far.

Are you leveraging your strengths?

Alongside the first question, it’s also good to ask yourself if you’re really equipped to handle your new business idea. Developing a business around a hobby, skill, or side hustle that you know inside and out gives you a certain level of expertise to leverage. It can help you build clout amongst potential customers and provides familiarity to fall back on as you learn how to manage and grow your business.

What problem are you solving?

Now just because you have a certain skill set or hobby that you like, doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s a market for it. You need to be solving some sort of real-world problem and ensure that there are potential customers that are looking for a solution. 

And if there are, is there competition already solving that problem? If so, how will you differentiate your business to compete? Walking through a market analysis and confirming that a problem exists and that there’s room for your business, ensures you aren’t wasting your time with a nonexistent or crowded business concept.

Can your business function solely online?

A unique aspect of starting an online business is determining whether it can solely operate online. Something like a SAAS business or online learning business likely doesn’t require any sort of physical infrastructure to operate. But an eCommerce business, on the other hand, requires physical shipping and distribution and has the potential for a physical location. 
This is just an element you’ll need to consider, especially if you’re operating from your home.

2. Validate your business idea

After you’ve determined that you should start a business and have an idea in mind, you need to validate it. This process can be as simple as chatting with potential customers, asking questions about their needs, and if they’d consider your solution. But when starting an online business there are additional methods you can employ to test the market.

Look through customer reviews

One simple method for gauging current customer interest is looking through competitive reviews. See how people respond, what they like and dislike and check the overall volume of feedback. It can give you an idea of the active market size and if your business concept avoids the pitfalls of current offerings or features some of the requested additions mentioned in reviews.

Set up a landing page

Without setting up a full website, you can run a simple preview landing page to tease your business, product, or service. Give a quick rundown of features, pricing, a release window, etc. and include an email subscription signup prompt to start building out a mailing list. Then it’s as simple as running a handful of social media or search ads that target your potential customers to drive traffic to your website.

Validation here is somewhat up to you. Do you base interest on the number of visitors that checked out your website? The number of email sign-ups? Social shares? Whatever the case pick a handful of these metrics and set some goals to gauge success.

Survey potential customers

As mentioned before, one of the simplest ways to validate your business is talking with customers. But if you can’t interact with them in-person, another option is to conduct online surveys. Similar to driving traffic to a preview website, you can simply run a handful of digital ads promoting your survey to gather responses. 

And if you already set up a landing page and started gathering an email list, you can even send out your survey to those that already displayed a level of interest. This may be even more vital, as you can ask more specific questions with a greater chance of receiving actual feedback.

3. Start your business plan

Once you’ve determined potential interest in your business, it’s time to start developing your business plan. Luckily, as you’ve gone through the process of defining and validating your idea, you’ve actually laid out the initial pieces of your business plan. But now you need to place it in a format that you can use to pursue funding, forecast financials, and regularly revisit as your business grows.

Lean Planning

Start with a Lean Business Plan, something you can do in 30 minutes rather than six weeks. A Lean Plan is quicker and easier to write and distills your plan down to the essentials. Here’s a free Lean Planning template that can help you get started.

Conduct a market analysis

You’ve already done pieces of a market analysis through the exploration of your business idea. But conducting a thorough market exploration alongside a SWOT analysis is necessary to confirm the market for your product and identify your competition. It can also help you determine pricing models, distribution methods, and other potential competitive advantages you can leverage as you enter the market.

Consider funding and success metrics

Take some time to identify your startup costs and think through how you plan to fund your business. Even if your online business will just be a side gig, for now, do yourself a favor and think through the business and sales metrics that you should be tracking so that you know if you’re heading in the right direction.

Review those metrics regularly, comparing what you forecasted with your actual sales. You can do this with a set of spreadsheets, but a business dashboard can help you stay on top of your finances, and if you use a system like QuickBooks, you can even automatically pull in financial information so you don’t have to add it manually.

4. Set up your website

With your business plan in hand, you can now look to get your website up and running. But this won’t be as simple of a process as setting up a preview landing page. There are a number of decisions to be made regarding hosting, platform and design to effectively represent your business. Your website, especially for an online business, is the greatest representation of our business and needs to accurately reflect your products, services, and mission. 

Here’s what you need to consider when setting up your company website.

Third-party platform, eCommerce marketplace or build your own eCommerce site?

An eCommerce site is the most direct form of online business you can start, compared to a business that uses a third party platform or marketplaces like Etsy, eBay, Amazon, or Airbnb.

When you build and host your own eCommerce site, you will be selling your goods and services directly to your customers, without a “go-between.”

Hosting your own site

You retain control. The best part about a direct eCommerce site is the level of control you have over your store. You’ll be able to customize virtually every aspect of your eCommerce site, including the look and feel of your store. But this flexibility can make the process of getting started more complicated, too.

Focus on user experience. Your biggest considerations with an eCommerce site will be setting up your website to offer the best user experience. Choosing the right web design is crucial, as is making sure that your shopping cart software is well-suited for your business. Be sure to check out the various shopping cart options available—from Shopify to X-Cart and many more.

Do you need to build from scratch? Also keep in mind that depending on your particular business, it may or may not be necessary to build (or pay someone to build) a site from scratch. Especially when you’re in the early stages, options like Squarespace and Shopify simplify the process of setting up an eCommerce site by providing templates that don’t require much if any knowledge of HTML or coding.

Using a marketplace

There are more and more third-party eCommerce marketplaces available, like eBay, Etsy, Amazon, and even Airbnb or Fiverr, depending on your product or service. Building a business through one of those eCommerce marketplaces can simpler, since you’ll have to make fewer decisions, and you won’t have to build your website yourself—you’ll use an existing template.

However, one way or another, you’ll end up paying to use that third-party platform. Some sites charge by the number of product listings you use each month, and others, like Airbnb, charge you a service fee when you accept a booking.

Evaluate the pros and cons. The fact that your customers will have to visit the third party to buy from you has benefits and drawbacks. If you are interested in renting out your vacation property, using Airbnb’s platform means that it will probably be easier for anyone to find you when they search for lodging in your area because of Airbnb’s growing popularity.

But it’s also easier for consumers to compare similar products, which makes your ability to differentiate yourself more important. For instance, if you decide to use Etsy to sell handcrafted cutting boards when a potential customer searches for cutting boards on the site, they’ll wade through potentially hundreds or thousands of relatively similar listings.

Focus on what makes you stand out. If you’re using an eCommerce marketplace, pay particular attention to the quality of the images you use on your page. Good product photography can set your listing apart. But remember, hosting your own eCommerce site isn’t a free pass for using mediocre images either. Either way, customers will rely on images to form an opinion about your product or service’s value.

Pick the right platform. Have you ever tried to sell a $10,000 fine oil painting at a farmers market? It’s not entirely impossible, but it’s pretty rare. Pay attention to whether the marketplace you’re considering attracts people in your target demographic.

Also, keep in mind that there isn’t really one platform that works for every type of business. Take the time to research the best one for you. If you’re selling art or crafts, look for a platform that is used by other artists. If you’re selling used comic books, look for a platform that attracts lots of shoppers looking to buy used comic books. And read the fine print. Almost every platform has its own list of prohibited items.

Decide on a name

Deciding on your business name and registering your domain name should be done in tandem. The last thing you want is to find out that one or the other (the domain you bought or the name you chose) is registered to some other business.

There are clear benefits to having a domain name that’s the same as your company or product name. You want to make it as easy as possible for people to find you when they search for you online. The same is true when you’re naming your storefront if you’re using an online platform like Etsy or eBay.

Build your own site

In some instances, it will definitely make sense to build your own site. If you’re building an actual online product, like a SaaS product, your team probably already has the skills necessary to build your marketing website.

If you’re simply using the web as a platform to sell something analog (clothing or a subscription meal box, for example) or a service like consulting, design services, or even vacation rentals) you might benefit more from using an existing platform, or at least a templated eCommerce option, so you’re not starting from scratch.

Hiring a web design firm is always an option. Either way, remember that it’s never a bad idea to build out a minimum viable product (MVP) site first. Meaning, you don’t have to build a 100 percent perfect site right out of the gate. Test your hypothesis that your product or service is marketable using a lower cost, simpler option at first.

Make it mobile-friendly

It’s still possible to build websites and elect to use templates that aren’t mobile-friendly. You can pretty much broadly assume that it’s a bad idea. However you decide to build your online presence, don’t skip making it mobile-friendly.

If your site is not optimized for mobile, your users will have a less positive experience when they try to find you from their phones, but Google will also penalize you in search results, meaning you’ll be harder for new customers to find organically.

Pay attention to image quality

Poorly lit or sloppily composed images on your site don’t do anything to build your credibility. Whether you’re selling products, ideas, or experiences, using high-quality images will make a difference.

If you’re selling products, either hire a freelancer to do the job right or invest in the equipment that you’ll need to take and edit high-quality photos. If you’re not sure you can afford professional images, check with local colleges to see if there are students looking to learn and build their portfolios that cost less than well-established professionals.

And don’t fall into the trap of settling for terrible stock photos. You know the ones. The super corporate looking or 1997-esque images won’t be doing you any favors, especially if you’re entering a more crowded market.

Think about blogging

Content marketing (blogging) may or may not be part of your initial marketing plan. The key here is to retain optionality. If you’re building your site from scratch or using an eCommerce template through Squarespace or someone else, make sure to build the site in such a way that adding a blog wouldn’t be a major reconstruction.

Consider monetization and affiliate partnerships

Monetizing your eCommerce site through affiliate partnerships and on-site ads is something to consider.

If you do decide to incorporate third-party ads on your site, start slowly, especially if your site is minimalist at first. You don’t want prospective customers to be confused about what you’re actually trying to sell on your site.

Don’t set it and forget it

When you launch your site, if it’s self-hosted, set up Google Analytics, or look into whether your third-party solution can offer you monthly insights on how well your site is performing. Use that data to test small changes to your site that might have an impact on your sales.

5. Make it legal

There are a few steps you’ll have to take to make sure your business is legal. While generally speaking, the same rules apply to online businesses as brick-and-mortar businesses, there are a few subtle differences.

Read up on online business regulations

The most important distinction when it comes to doing business online versus in person is online business law. These laws regard the distribution of your customer’s personal information, as well as other privacy and intellectual property regulations. The SBA gives a thorough rundown of the specifics of online business law, so make sure to brush up on them before you start your online business.

Register your business

Decide how you want to set up your company’s legal structure. Lots of businesses opt to form an LLC, but do your research to figure out which is best for you. State-specific requirements will, naturally, vary state by state. Visit your local secretary of state office’s website for more information on compliance at a state level.

Learn about tax obligations for running an online business

Do you operate your business from your home? If you run an online business, it’s likely. As such, you may be eligible for certain tax deductions. You’ll additionally be required to pay income tax, so before setting up your online business, it may be a good idea to consult with a lawyer and make sure that you’re all covered going forward.

Make sure you’re familiar with your state sales tax requirements, but also your online sales tax obligations. One of the best things you can do is make sure that your shopping cart solution is configured properly so that it automatically collects the right amount of sales tax depending on your customers’ location.

Maintaining your online business

Ultimately, starting an online business is similar to starting a business with a physical storefront. You’ll still need to validate your idea, do business planning and you’ll benefit from making sure you understand your tax obligations from the start. Just don’t underestimate the importance of putting together a functional website and getting it in front of your target market.

If you need some inspiration when working on your own business plan, you may want to check out some of our online store sample plans. You can even download a free business plan template to fill out as you work through some of the business plan examples.

If you’d like more assistance, you might want to check out our business plan template available through our software, LivePlan. You can also check out LivePlan’s business plan consulting, which will give you a professional business plan written by an MBA in five business days

You’ve got a great eCommerce product idea and you’re ready to get started building a new online business venture. But, before you dive headfirst into developing and producing your product you need to do some serious fact-checking.

One of the most valuable things any business owner can do before launching a company is to determine that there’s a demand for whatever they want to sell. Do other people a.k.a your potential customers think your new product is as amazing as you do?

As exciting as it might be to jump into your new life as an entrepreneur, there’s nothing more painful (or expensive) than spending all your time and energy on a venture that just can’t succeed. Did you know a lack of hungry and interested customers is the number one reason new companies crash and burn?

Let’s not let that be you.

The unfortunate truth is that figuring out whether a business is going to be successful or not is easier said than done. There are some bizarre eCommerce product ideas out there that have turned out to be an incredible success – like CBD infused candies for example. There are also products with plenty of merits that just never took off.

Learning how to validate interest in your eCommerce products before you take them to market gives you an incredible opportunity to save money and build better relationships with your target audience.

So, where do you get started?

The Basics of Ecommerce Validation: Understanding Your Product

Before you can begin testing the validation strategies that we’re going to outline below, you need to start with the right information. One of the biggest problems that today’s business owners have is that they don’t fully understand what they’re trying to sell before they jump in head-first.

To start, sit down and answer some questions about the logistics of your product. These questions include:

•   Who you’re trying to sell to: Who’s your target audience? What pain points does your new product idea solve? And are you offering the easiest solution on the market?
•   How are you going to sell: What is your marketing strategy? How are you going to bring your target audience to your website? Maybe it’s through targeting people on Facebook or perhaps you want to attract customers looking for your eCommerce product on Google? 
•   Are there any special requirements to think about: How are you going to store and ship your products?  Are your products fragile and in need of extra packaging? Which companies are you going to use to ship products to your customers? 

Once you have plenty of information about the kind of product you’re going to be selling, and why you’re selling it, you can begin the validation process.

Step 1: Conduct a Competitor Analysis

Research is at the heart of any validation strategy. Exploring what’s going on in the current market helps you to understand what your customers are looking for, as well as the solutions that they already have available to them.

Competitor analysis is one of the most important pieces of research that you can do. With competitor analysis, you can see if there’s already a demand for whatever you’re selling. You can also see if there’s too much saturation in the market. For instance, if you’re selling fidget spinners in a world where there are billions of fidget spinner companies, you’re going to have a hard time standing out.

During your competitor analysis, look at things like:

•  Pricing: What kind of revenue and most importantly profit can you expect to make on this new idea?
• Popularity: Are the items you’re looking into selling currently best-sellers for your competitors?
• Gaps: Is there anything that your product or service can do that your competitors can’t offer?

The easiest way to find competitors is to try a quick Google search. For instance, if you were looking for local marketing companies:

You can also search for #Hashtags on social media or check out what people are saying on forums. Listening to your customer’s complaints and comments about competitors will help you to figure out which features you should be focusing on most with your new product.

Step 2: Check Google Trends

Google is a very valuable tool for business owners validating their eCommerce product ideas. It can give you insight into how popular your products are by showing you things like top-ranking pages, and keyword search volume.

However, Google can also give you insight into whether your product is just another trending idea or something that’s going to deliver a solid and steady return over time. Google Trends allows you to track the search volume for a specific keyword over a period of time. You can use this to check whether people are starting to talk about your products more regularly, whether interest is consistent, or if excitement is dying down.

Let’s take a look at the incredible rise and fall of fidget spinners for instance:

We can see that interest over time quickly peaked at the beginning of March 2017 and immediately fell within a few months. 

The best ideas for your eCommerce site are the ones that can generate revenue and engagement for you over time. This means that you want to look for a trend graph where the line of interest is increasing over time or one that has remained steady over the years. 

Step 3: Get Customer Feedback

There are two ways that you can get customer feedback during the initial validation stage.

First, you can check some of the reviews and testimonials left by customers on review sites for your competitors. This is an excellent way to see what other companies are doing wrong with a specific product, so you can make your offering stand out.

The other option is to send samples of a possible product to a few stakeholders and people that you can trust. Pro tip: don’t try and gather feedback from your friends and family – you need the information that you collect here to be as objective as possible.

You can also see what comes in when you type “best online [Product]” into Google to get feedback from influencers and thought-leaders too.

The feedback that you collect in all of these areas will help you to decide whether:

• People regret purchasing the product in question.
• You can deliver a better product than your competitors.
• If there is enough demand and interest in the product.

Step 4: Build a Landing Page to Accept Pre-orders

Here’s the cool thing about creating landing pages online.

You don’t have to invest in a product before you do it. You can decide on the eCommerce product idea that you want to validate, design your website, and then purchase supplies only if you get a significant response.

You can even run Google ads to drive people to your landing page and then retarget them without making a lot of initial investment.

Running a landing page allows you to get a basic insight into the kind of response you’re going to get from customers when you launch your new product. Keep in mind that various things can affect the performance of your landing pages however, including your wording, layout, and even your CTA buttons.

One excellent option to start generating interest for your product is to add a button to the page that allows customers to sign up to be informed when your new product is ready to purchase. This will give you a list of customers that you can immediately expect sales from when you’re ready to launch. At the same time, you gain greater insight into the kind of people that are interested in your items.

Step 5: Do The Math

Finally, this might be one of the most boring parts of validating your eCommerce idea, but it’s also one of the most essential. You’ll need to figure out exactly how profitable your new product is going to be. You will lose your enthusiasm and interest in the long run if you aren’t making a good profit and maintaining positive cash flow.

Financial plan

You’ll need a few pieces of information to create your financial calculations, including the price of your product, the number of customers you think you’re likely to get (based on your landing page tests), and the cost of your goods sold. Additionally,  consider the cost of any extra expenses like building and running an eCommerce website, logistics, marketing, and paying for staff too. 

Price

If you’re not sure exactly how much you should be charging for your new product, check out the competition. You should be able to get a reasonable idea of how much something should cost by looking at the businesses that came before you. Then based on your financial calculation, check if the price of the competitors can cover all your costs and that you can still make a profit. If not, then maybe you need to increase your price but also consider what extra do you offer to charge a higher price? 

There are even places that you can track down case studies from other growing businesses online that might help you to make a more informed pricing decision.

Startup costs

Finally, once you understand your financials, calculate your startup costs, and how much money you need to get started. Remember that building an eCommerce website can be expensive, especially if you decide to hire a professional company to build it for you. Don’t forget costs such as branding, graphic design, photography, content writing, this all will need to add up to your startup costs. 

Once you have all of the right numbers in place, ask yourself how much money you need to get started and how much money you’ll be left with when you subtract the price of making and selling the product, with the profits from purchases.

Is the effort worth it?

Only you can make that decision.

Are You Feeling Validated?

Validating your eCommerce product idea before you launch your business is a bit like creating a full business plan. It can be a time-consuming process, and it requires some effort. However, it’s also one of the best ways to make sure that you’re investing in something that’s going to pay off. It’s better to know before you’ve spent your life savings on a new product idea, whether it’s going to be a good idea or not.

If you discover that the item you were planning on selling isn’t nearly as valuable as you thought – don’t despair. You can always go back to the drawing board and consider something new. You may even discover new sales ideas when you’re doing your validation process by checking out the gaps in your competitor’s portfolio or examining the latest trends.

Remember: imagine, plan, validate, and then implement.