5 Must Taken Steps before Landing Your Online Store

With the advancement in online shopping in Pakistan, new entries have been observed in online business. Both freshers and seasoned sellers are stepping in various niches either to manage their full-time bread and butter or to earn some extra bucks. There is a spacious room in an online business to flourish. Here,  little things can make you prosperous, while small things can endanger your existence.

Being e-commerce advisors, we have heard many complaints from newbies. They cry about their failures but remain hesitant to mention their blind steps confronted them to crash. Learn from their mistakes, to run a successful business.

It doesn’t matter how productive you think your idea is, make sure that you have sound knowledge of your product. No wise man will ever suggest you to rush ordering $5,000 worth jewelry from a Chinese merchant in the kickstart. Knowing the demand for your product is essential before starting. Otherwise, you may flush your all investment and time down the toilet. 

Let’s talk about a few quirky ways to know the demand for your product. You may try all or at least one of them to make sure that you don’t counterfeit with failure.

Get Hands on Search Results:

It is an easy way to analyze your product market. Google Keyword Planner can give you a sensible idea of your product demand. People launch search engine queries to find what they are looking for. And search engine saves their entries for analysis purpose.

A keyword planner is a super-smart tool where you can enter specific keywords related to your item to learn search results. If you find a few results for what you want to sell, it’s alarming. You don't have any market on the internet. However, if you see thousands of monthly searches, it means that there is a vast competition in this business. 

Use Google Trends to Analyze the Trends:

Just as Google Keywords, Google Trend is another fantastic tool to get a notch of your product acceptance. Use this free tool to search your product idea, and it will show you the search volume trend over time with a graph. From an hour to a couple of years, this tool can give you a solid idea of your product acceptance in the market. 

Not only this, but you may also get region-wise search for a specific product. Here, I have searched for solar panels, and done a bit research on it. Combining research and Google Trends result, I have found that the demand will increase at least in the upcoming months. The tool also enables you to get relative search volume with its comparison feature. 

Book Pre-Orders Rather than Buying:

Yeah, it matters. Maybe someone bars you from getting involve into pre-ordering, saying that it may ruin your reputation, blah blah blah. However, we strongly recommend it. It saves you from a significant loss, eventually. Pre-order is a practice that many beginners make to avoid uncertain circumstances. It is a fabulous way to determine your product demand before buying or crafting a product. 

By setting up a testing webpage, where you can derive traffic, make the viability of your product before spending a penny on the inventory. It will tell you how many people are interested in. Mention them that the product is not ready for shipping yet, however, give them expected delivery date. In case, you don’t get an expected response rate, simply drop an inbox and refund them the amount, if any. There are also many benefits to pre-ordering. It supports you financially to fund for inventory production or purchase. It also helps you to create your brand buzz even before having an in-hand product.

Analyze your Competitors: 

Know businesses who are selling in your niche. Analyze their websites and social media pages to gauge how they are doing. More reviews you find about their product, means more people are finding your product online. Even, negative comments show acceptance in online shopping along with offering you space to effectively fill the gaps where your competitors are lagging.  

Look up their, Pinterest, FB, Twitter, and Insta pages to know their audience engagements, likes and reach. If you find enough likes and comments, it shows the product expectation in the market. It will be another edge if you find their creation date to get a sound idea of how much it took them to reach there. So, you may predict your growth behavior by combining it with other factors. 

Invest in Advertisement: 

Yeah, you may drown your investment, if the test fails. But, we recommend investing in AdWords or Facebook Ads based upon your business type. You know that time is money too, so why to spend a lot of time on an item that doesn’t generate sufficient money. 

Create a buy button on your product page and let ad to bring traffic to you. If you get purchase requests, it means that people are not just roaming around for the item but seeking it to purchase from you. You may later send them a message, mail or a pop-up saying that the product is out of stock, etc. Compare the ratio of visitors to buyers to get your sales idea if you are actually selling. 

Suggested Readings 

Conversion Rate Optimization- 5 steadfast ways

Final Word 

We observe a significant increase in online shopping trend in Pakistan and still there is also a lot of space persists to grow here. But, your blind action may spoil your investment and money, kicking you out of the race. Before landing here, you must have an understanding of your product, its market demand, your competitors, and the audience. A little homework will help you to get in-depth stats to stand firm in the landscape.