Building a profitable eCommerce business is like running a marathon. You need to start preparing from the very beginning, so you don’t run out of fuel halfway through.

• 5 Steps To Creating An Engaging High Conversion Website Design
• 5 Steps To Creating An Engaging High Conversion Website Page

1. Creating an ecommerce website that visitors will love (and purchase from) is a bit harder. That takes a combination of good design, solid marketing, and plenty of grit. Using an ecommerce website builder, you can create an online store in just five easy steps. Follow the step-by-step instructions that I’ve outlined in this guide.
2. If you own a website or blog, you probably already know that the bulk of your visitors have the attention span of a gnat. Unfortunately that's just the way it is. So if you are creating content, and you want them to stick around and read some of it, it's got to be engaging. So here are 21 easy ways you can spruce up your content and make it more engaging and interesting to your readers.

Jan 21, 2015 10 Ways to Spice up Your Website and Make it More Engaging 10 Ways to Increase Engagement on Your Website No matter how great and useful your products or services are, poorly designed and boring website that does not engage your visitors will simply fail to attract and maintain their attention and convert them into customers.

90% of eCommerce startups fail in the beginning, according to Forbes. But don’t let that figure scare you off. Your business model has the potential to become a success—that is if you know what you’re doing.

There’s no easy way to create a successful eCommerce business. However, a series of essential steps will help you set the ground for a profitable online business. Let’s check them out!

Step 1: Don’t Rush the Launch

As obvious as it sounds, one of the common mistakes entrepreneurs make is rushing the launch of an eCommerce website. Remember, you only get one shot at kickstarting your site, and you cannot mess this up.

While it is okay to buy your domain and set up a “Launching Soon” page, we recommend you hold back until you have laid some essential groundwork, such as SEO, social media, content marketing, paid advertising, and so on.

Also, don’t start cheap. Remember, you’re opening up a new business, and it’s likely to bring you profits in the long run. Therefore, strategically investing in it will be a huge reward.

Unfortunately, our current economy is rough, and unemployment rates are still at an all-time high. In today’s ever-changing economic climate, small business loans are the only option entrepreneurs have for generating revenue to further their businesses.

Luckily, enterprise loans like an SBA small business loan can take your eCommerce business to the next level. This particular enterprise loan is partially secured by the government, and the SBA works closely with a large network of financial organizations, such as Fidelity. With an efficient enterprise loan, your business can see instant growth so long as you utilize the additional capital wisely.

Step 2: Strategize Your Business Plan

“Do I need a business plan?”

Well, the short answer is yes! Every eCommerce business can benefit from a robust business plan, and here’s why:

• You are just starting out: A solid business plan will help you set your targets and create an action plan to approach them.
• You are seeking outside funding: Business plans are a standard way to show investors why it is worth trusting your online business.
• You are considering to go all-in: Since you’re planning to make your eCommerce business a full-time job, a strong business plan will help you decide whether or not it is a viable option.

“Okay, but how do I create a perfect business plan?”

Well, if you’re having a hard time creating or strategizing your business plan, don’t worry. Consider hiring a business plan consultant. Why? Because they don’t just document your ideas on paper; a highly-skilled business plan expert will conduct research and collaborate with you to implement strategies that will help you succeed in today’s competitive market and over the long-term.

Step 3: Leverage LinkedIn for Your eCommerce Business

You already know the power of social media in eCommerce, especially in terms of building your marketing and sales campaigns. It’s time to include LinkedIn as part of your social media promotion as well.

LinkedIn is quickly becoming one of the most popular places for B2C businesses. It’s an effective platform to share content, gain awareness, and connect with your target audience on a more personable level compared to other types of social media channels. LinkedIn is a great way to engage and convert prospects while being an easy-to-use platform to learn and employ.

You can further use an automation tool that allows for LinkedIn bulk messaging. Although there are times when a simple LinkedIn post is enough to convey your message, there are situations where a bulk message is more appreciated, such as:

• To tell customers about an upcoming event.
• To spread the news about your current promotions
• To disseminate business news like new product offerings, additional locations, etc.

Step 4: Find the Right Vendors

You will have plenty of competition, selling a variety of products online. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to look for the highest quality and best prices for the product you’re going to sell or materials you will be using to create your product.

Keep shopping around until you find a vendor suitable for your business needs—also one that you’re willing to do business with long-term. Think scalable from the start. Which brings us to our final step…

Step 5: Scale Your eCommerce Business

As we mentioned earlier, creating a profitable eCommerce business is no joke, and scaling it can be a hassle, even for professionals. As your business starts to grow, you notice an increase in sales. But that isn’t to be considered a success, yet.

5 Steps To Creating An Engaging High Conversion Website Design

To meet buyers’ demands, you need to scale your eCommerce store to outgrow your actions. Simply keeping an eye on your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will do the job. Such detailed stats will provide enough data to help you make future decisions.

Consider measuring the following E-Commerce KPIs:

• Visitor conversion rate
• Traffic sources
• Sales per month
• Site traffic
• How long a visitor stays on your website
• Cart abandonment rate
• Average order size
• Email subscribers
• Social media followers

Wrapping Up

The Internet is growing healthily, and if you are creating an eCommerce business today, it will certainly benefit from that growth.

No matter what niche you choose or which business model you go with, make sure to optimize your eCommerce store a month or two before going live. This will provide enough time to use effective online marketing strategies.

Did this article answer your questions about creating an eCommerce business? If so, please give it a share.

We have spent years helping business owners like you. Your success is important to us. If you take the time to follow the steps above carefully, you will save days of hard work and know where you are more likely to get your money’s worth in the world of eCommerce.

According to a ‘Managing Digital Marketing’ study by Smart Insights, 46% of brands don’t have a defined digital marketing strategy, while 16% do have a strategy but haven’t yet integrated it into their marketing activity. But here’s the thing: if you don’t have a plan in place how can you expect to grow and innovate, to measure meaningful results and to learn from past mistakes?

It’s time to stop panicking about next year or next month and start crafting a plan that can pack a powerful punch. We’ve selected the 5 most important steps that you, the decision maker should take to ensure that your digital marketing efforts create a real impact on your bottom line.

1. Know What You Want (& Set the Objective)

Nail Your Mission:

• Define your business’ overall mission/objective first – your digital marketing mission must fit into your grand plan.
• Answer this question: what is the overriding objective you want your digital marketing efforts to achieve (for example do you want to position your company as the go-to online provider for computer parts in Europe)? This is your mission.

Set & Measure Your KPIs:

• Get specific with your KPIs by identifying the figures you will be held accountable for achieving.
• Get realistic with your KPIs by analysing your previous digital marketing efforts first – this will ensure you aim for a positive increase on your current results, while helping you to avoid setting your expectations too high.
• Identify a method to help you measure each of your KPIs – for example, will you use Google Analytics to measure your conversions, your individual social media analytics to track engagement or a tool like BuzzSumo to assess the success of your content marketing?
• Here’s a handy KPI template for you to steal: (Insert goal, e.g. ‘Increase traffic’) by (insert figure)% in (insert number of months).
• Before you begin planning your KPIs find out which metrics matter most to your CEO.

2. Analyse Your Past (& Learn From Your Mistakes)

You don’t have to (and shouldn’t) go into the planning period in the dark. Analyzing your digital marketing strategy’s past success and failures can help focus you on setting the best KPIs for your business. You, therefore, might want to complete step one and two together.

Choose a time period you’d like to analyse (it’s best to set this time period as the same length of time you plan for your new marketing strategy) – for example decide on whether you’re going to analyse the previous year, quarter or month.

How to Analyse:

• Determine the time period you would like to analyse and set your Google Analytics calendar to match this timeframe.

• Try out Google’s Benchmarking Reports in your Analytics account to compare your progress to your competitors.
• Don’t forget to analyse your competitors’ marketing strategy too – create an analysis spreadsheet of their online activities (you can use SEMrush to identify the SEO strategy of a competitor, i.e. what keywords are driving the largest volume of organic traffic to their website. It can also be used to compare the organic and paid traffic of different websites so again quite useful to see how aggressive they’re being with their paid spend.)
• Ask yourself this question at regular intervals: is there anything else I need to analyse that I haven’t thought of before – e.g. should I be testing the times I post my content or the types of images I use?

3. Remember Who You’re Talking to (& Speak Their Language)

Don’t let the planning take away from the people you’re trying to reach. You already know who your audience are (at least we hope you do) but sometimes they’re the first thing a digital marketer can forget amidst the KPI setting, budget fretting and channel selection.

You’re not going to make this mistake – not this time. Instead you’re going to put your audience at the heart of your digital marketing strategy, cater to their emotional needs and satisfy their deepest desires. How? Through the creation of well fleshed out and well thought out personas, of course.

Develop Useful Personas:

• Start with the basics and note down all the demographic information you know about your target consumer – like age, gender and location.
• Then dig a little deeper and Identify the problems you can help your target persona solve.
• Delve into their emotional desires, goals, aspirations and fears and document all of the factors that could make them tick (think about their conscious and unconscious desires).
• You can dive deep into the ‘Audience Reports of your Google Analytics account to identify key characteristics of your target persona like age, sex, career, etc.
• When creating your personas this is the perfect time to identify the people who will be of influence to them – these will be the influencers your marketing strategy should target.

4. Identify Your Means (& Stick to Your Budget)

Three things are important for identifying your means: these are your budget, your digital channels and your team (or people). It is important to take stock of all of your resources before deciding on what else you might need for the next period.

5 Steps To Creating An Engaging High Conversion Website Page

For example, now is the perfect time for creating an audit of your existing digital channels and to decide whether you’re going to outsource specific sections of your digital marketing and whether you need to set budget aside for a new hire or two.

How to Identify Your Means:

Your Budget:

• Define your overall digital marketing budget.
• Look at the historical data of what has worked before (for example, have any specific channels brought you quality leads at a low cost?)
• Decide whether you will use paid promotion (for, example Adwords or paid ads on social media).
• Allocate a specific portion of the budget for each digital channel you want to use for paid promotion (delve into your Analytics to help you assess the most cost effective digital channels with the largest reach and conversions and the lowest Cost Per Click).
• If a certain element of your paid promotion strategy isn’t bringing you the results you desire, revisit it and invest the allocated budget figure into the channel that’s bringing you the best results.

Your People:

• Look at your current team and assess what you are capable of achieving (be realistic here and ensure that no-one will be over stretched or over worked).
• Identify whether you need to hire more people and whether you have the means to do so.
• Decide whether all of your digital marketing activity will take place in house or if you’ll need to outsource some elements to a third party agency.
• Get each of your team members to review their digital marketing activity and brainstorm a few ideas for their future marketing strategy (the more autonomy your employee has in their role the more they’ll be on board with your new plan).

Your Channels:

• Review your current digital marketing channels and decide which channels to keep and whether you’d like to invest in any new ones (this depends on where your customers are and the time you have available).
• Clearly articulate what each digital channel is trying to achieve.
• Make sure you have at least one KPI attached to each of your digital channels.

5. Make the Plan (& Don’t Stick to It)

‘Create a plan and don’t stick to it? But, but, what do you mean?’ Before the panic sets into the most organised of digital marketers let me explain…your plan is never going to be perfect from the outset. Not every assumption you make is going to be correct.

And although you’ve taken every care to craft a carefully constructed plan based on a set of insightful assumptions and analysis you still can’t predict exactly how your customers will behave. It is, therefore, essential to continuously measure and monitor the performance of your digital marketing strategy and to change elements where needed.

Create Your Digital Marketing Calendar:

• Try creating your timeline using Google Calendars – that way you can share it with your team members and allow them to edit it where necessary.
• Highlight the key campaigns you’ll create and promote throughout the year and allocate a timeframe for each.
• Document the digital channels needed to ensure the success for each campaign.

Review Your Marketing Strategy & Identify Changes Needed:

• Create a measurement and monitoring plan (this should fit in with your KPIs).
• Check the success of the individual elements of your digital marketing strategy at continuous intervals.
• If something is not working (i.e. you’re not achieving the KPIs you’ve set out) isolate the different elements and try to identify what is not working (e.g. is it the time you’re posting content or the taglines you’re using for your ads?).
• Revisit your previous analysis, personas and budget allocation and try something new.
• Create a clearly defined KPI for your new venture.

You’ll learn how to strategize, budget, select the correct digital channels and analyse your campaigns’ performance. Find out more

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