Building An Ecommerce Business

There is a lot of infrastructures available for you to capitalize on, and make it big. However, this makes it a prime business opportunity if you have some old clothes in the back of your closet and want to make some extra cash. A sneak peek into revenue streams and business models you may want to consider before jumping in.



Foundr, for instance, didn’t launch with crowdfunding. But several years into the business, we did run a highly successful Kickstarter for our first physical product, a coffee table book about entrepreneurship. It’s also a really powerful way to build awareness and market your product. Besides helping get initial attention to your product, platforms like Kickstarter also help validate your idea. If people are willing to invest, you may have a good thing going.

Learning how to run an ecommerce business is as exciting as it is challenging. The process can feel like you’re solving a head scratcher of a puzzle, but it’s rewarding all the same. With a better understanding of search engines, it’s time to build out your store. There are many crucial elements to consider in this step of how to start an ecommerce business.

Meet with people in your target demographic, maybe at a coffee shop, and give them a chance to try it out. Create a meetup group for like-minded individuals and bring the prototype. Give away free copies of the product as an incentive for signing up for your email list. Whatever you do, take this chance to make connections with the kinds of people you’ll eventually want to sell to. As a kind of “rough draft” for your ecommerce product, a prototype will give a more concrete idea of what you want to sell.

Some situations will require a drop ship business model, where you act as the order taker and a third party handles the fulfillment. Your brand name needs to be not only memorable and appealing to your target audience, but it also needs to be available in the form of a domain name and social media handles. I suggest going for the dot-com version always, even if you have to pay a premium for it from a domain flipper. Beatriz is a Content Marketing Manager at BigCommerce and the fashion and lifestyle influencer behind The Letter Bea, an Austin, Texas based blog. In Communication and Sociology/Anthropology from Lake Forest College and specializes in ecommerce, marketing and merchandising strategies, influencer and branding work, and social media. When she's not curating content, Beatriz loves to travel the world, share her journey with Type 1 Diabetes, and find Austin's most Instagram friendly spots.

Once a customer completes his or her order on your website, you will be sent a notification through the help of inventory software . Once the notification is confirmed, then you need to ship the product in question. While setting up your website, you could either choose a pre-built platform or make it from scratch. Both have distinct advantages, though building a website from scratch is usually the more favoured option. The market for food and groceries is as vibrant as it’s ever been, and you can use that to your advantage. Whether you want to make the food yourself or retail packaged food, it doesn’t matter.

By now you should have a great idea of what your business will look like. You have your target market, your product niche and your brand name. Niche-ing down also gives you the benefit of having a lot of “shoulder” niches, related to what you do, but not identical.

Granted, it’s possible to do quite well with one killer, beloved ecommerce business for beginners product. But even a company like Casper, for example, which celebrates simplicity and convenience in its offerings, pretty quickly added new products as it took off in popularity. There are some really neat tools to help you target the right keywords, including Adthena, KWFinder, and Market Samurai. Targeting the right words is important, because Google’s algorithm tends to give more weight to the relevancy of an ad than to the amount of money a business has poured in.

Make sure you analyze the data you collect from this tool as a source of inspiration on how you can further expand your catalog. Also, don’t forget to take note of the customer feedback left in the reviews for your competitors, and use it to your advantage to improve the quality of your version. At Foundr, we’re lucky enough to have Gretta now teaching our Start & Scale ecommerce course. One student of that course, Shannon Willoughby, launched her own ecommerce business, Aromarrr. This is how her income skyrocketed in just four months. Just like your product selection, you want to keep your stock levels and other expenses in the business as low as possible as you get started.

You could solve a common pain point in the marketplace, appeal to a small niche market like hobbyists, or lean into your own personal passion. Use these strategies for finding the perfect product or service to sell. There’s a lot to do when you’re first figuring out how to start an e‑commerce business.