While this isn’t a technical ‘how-to’ list on how to start an ecommerce company, it’s the top 10 list I’ve developed on how to start an ecommerce company in 2013:
- Give back – be a socially conscious company with a cause
- Use keywords in your titles (the most impactful part of SEO)
- Make it shareable and shareworthy (Gamification/viralness)
- Write about peoples problems (and how to solve/escape them)
- Go small within a niche first – build up a “beachhead” then expand
- Repurpose your content (ex. record you reading a blog post)
- Build a platform for marketing (ex. a website + social media)
- Be a real, transparent person (as a opposed to just a company)
- Don’t worry about anything you can pay for (ex. design elements)
- Start with the product first, then build out from there #sellfirst
As I wrote on my Twitter profile, I am “an IT business analyst in Indianapolis specializing in WordPress web design & technology consulting & I’m now building an ecommerce business.” I have decided to document the building of this ecommerce business on this blog and a lot of these ideas have to do with content development, which I have talked about in customer development and how to get more customers. It’s really about creating systems for ecommerce and developing success by management. According to Steve Blank, startups are simply a, “organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.” An e-commerce business is not a startup because it is already a well-defined business model that is proven and repeatable. The only question is to how you will run your e-commerce business. This is not a search for a new way of making money, but of your way of making money. Essentially it’s a question of how you will run, or manage your business. In other words, it’s a search for your internal business model, or management style, that can be repeated and replicated within your own company (or e-commerce business). This above list on how I choose to run my e-ecommerce business is a glimpse into the how I think an ecommerce business should be ran.