Lily Of The Valley Designs

As an up and coming e-commerce consultant I like to stay up to date on the latest e-commerce news. You can take a look at my blogroll and find out what e-commerce blogs I have subscribed to. But my favorite e-commerce blog is Get Elastic.

The reasons are:

• daily content
• great content
• good advice
• and did I say fresh content daily..

Get Elastic is offering a great contest called ‘The Big Ecommerce Conference Contest’ . You can win full conference passes to one of 3 e-commerce events and a book.

I have been to an e-commerce conference and as a small business owner with an-e-commerce site you can really learn a lot to help your business and meet a lot of great people.

All you have to do is subscribe to their blog for the latest e-commerce news delivered to you daily for a chance to win.

Yes, I may have a degree in E-commerce and worked in the field for a couple of years, but I am talking from an e-commerce consumer perspective. Yes I am an avid online shopper; I just happen to love the convenience of shopping online and according to statistics so does 60 million other people.

It has been said that anyone can start an e-commerce company. That is true but not anyone can have a successful e-commerce business.

So here is my 7 Do and Don’t list for e-commerce merchants or want-to-be e-commerce merchants.

Let’s Start with the Don’t list

1. Don’t start an e-commerce business without a mission or vision statement. Understand why you are doing this and what you want to accomplish by doing this. Try to be customer focused.
2. Don’t try to sell everything and all the accessories for everything too. Try to find an untapped niche market. Like big shoes for women with big feet you never know!
3. Don’t assume everyone wants your stuff. Find out who your target market is and target them. Where are they virtually hanging out?
4. Don’t start an e-commerce business without a strategy. Try the good old SWOT analysis to find out what your strategy is. You know, how you are going to use your strengths to overcome your weaknesses and exploit your opportunity to defend against your threats.
5. Don’t start an e-commerce site without preparing first. Create a navigation flow chart. Start from your home page and decide how customers will navigate to find things EASILY. If I go to shirts.com and I am looking for a green polo shirt I should be able to find it within 2 clicks and I should be able to find out everything there is to know about it and I want to see a picture too. Optional views won’t hurt.
6. Don’t just leave your site sitting there waiting for customers to come. You have to now continually maintain and update your site.
7. Last Deadly mistake; don’t listen to what your customers are saying. If you don’t know how can you better serve them eventually you won’t be serving anyone.

Now the DO’s

1. Do get a nice design. Doesn’t have to be fancy, just professional. This shows customers that you are a professional company and they will enjoy their shopping experience.
2. Do make your site secure. This is the #1 concern among consumers when shopping online. And who could blame them with the amount of fraud out there. So make sure your checkout process is secure.
3. Do market your site. Start link building and get those search engine keywords placed in your meta tags on every page and product page.
4. Do have a unique value proposition. Why should your customers buy from you and not somewhere else?
5. Do create a community of roaring fans. What better way to have repeat customers and Word of Mouth Marketing than with a community. You can form a community by letting customers voice be heard like in reviews, or a blog. Don’t forget the monthly newsletters with a forward to friend link.
6. Do your homework. Research your competitors see what they are doing daily. Research anything to do with e-commerce it is ever changing and now that you’re an e-commerce merchant you are going to want to stay ahead of trends. By a book it won’t hurt you. Try “Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide” how did they make the list?
7. Do get Creative. I love when e-commerce sites do something creative. I got a forwarded email the other day from franklincovey.com. They have a new feature that I love called TryIt On. WOW I thought that is one thing I miss about shopping, trying stuff on. Click on Try It On and see how a binder or bag will look on you in different sizes.

   

Any more suggestions drop me a line.