After the global outbreak of COVID-19, the on and off lockdown and the highly contagious situation altered the ways people use to shop and how companies or businesses use to sell. What seems absurd, shopping online without physically evaluating or touching the texture and quality of a product, is no longer considered an alien concept. Now buyers are shifting from brick & mortar to e-commerce due to its feasibility and this trend has also forced businesses to shift to eCommerce websites. However, setting up an online store requires the same level of attention to detail and documentation that a physical store. Rather, the process goes beyond then setting up a store to the point that you had to ensure that everything works in a right and legal manner.
There are many things which one needs to consider while setting up an online store, ranging from marketing research to eCommerce model selection and from finding the right platform to writing the right description of a product. If you are wondering how a new business can create an e-store then this article will guide you through the process and will tell you how one can use Zoho Commerce to set up a store. Lastly, at any moment, when you feel like things are not going your way or you can’t understand the interface of Zoho Commerce then you can get it customized by contacting Zoho Consultants or Zoho Partners, Techloyce.
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What You Should Consider While Setting-Up An Online Store
1. Market Research
The first and foremost thing about setting an online store is identifying the competition a business has to face, along with the opportunity an online store can cling to. The best way is to start with keyword research and product keyword research on search engines. Now carefully evaluate which keywords and ranking high and where your business stands on the SERP results. This will help you in setting up a goal. And, the best part is Zoho Websites can help you in setting up an online store and converting it to an online store. For this you can contact Zoho Site Consultants to set things up for your smooth business operation.
2. Market Selection
After conduction keyword research, the next step is to identify which commerce model suits your business. There are 4, from which you can choose e.g. B2B, B2C, C2B, and C2C. Every model follows an entirely different workflow, to select this you have to conduct a business analysis.
3. Cataloging
Here comes the most important part that is to write a compelling product description. Remember you are not only writing for the buyers, here you have to take into account how the search engine bot readability. And, this can be easily overcome by adding keywords to the content, and meta titles, etc.
4. Inventory, Marketing & Delivery management
The last thing in our guide to set up an online store includes inventory synchronization with the online store. This will help you in keeping the stock filled and monitor the quantity of product in hand without losing the sights of stocks. In addition to this, having Zoho MarketingHub integrated with the Zoho CRM assists in optimizing marketing efforts. In the end, you need to integrate and establish a smooth workflow that automatically sends notifications to the merchant whenever an order is booked, and simultaneously empower the buyer to track the order using online platforms.
5. Platform Selection
This step is interlinked with the previous one. It means once you are done with deciding on a model, you have to hunt for the platform which supports your business. When it comes to B2B Alibaba is considered a reliable option, however, for C2C, OLX is the most used platform. However, there is another thing that you need to consider such as whether you are opting for the hosted one or want to prefer self Host. Along with this, you have to take into account the security of the platform, PCI compliant, integration it is providing, whether it is mobile-friendly or not, and how much the store settings can be customized.
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How Zoho Ecommerce Can Assist YouI In Setting-Up & Maintaining E-Store
1. Setting up a Website
Setting up an online store requires a lot of things. But the initial thing that you need is to set up a website. And, Zoho CRM exactly that. You can use the pre-built template and customize the store as you like or you can simply create a new one by using the Drag-and-Drop feature. This requires zero to no coding or technical experience. On top of that, you can create a product catalog, optimize descriptions, add images and create categories for products.
Moreover, Zoho CRM is integrated with dozens of payment gateways that can help you globalize your business and receive payment in local currencies with PCI-compliant payment pages. Lastly, it empowers you to create as many landing pages as you want, and conduct A/B testing to retain the ones which bring more conversion.
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2. Online Store Set-up & Management
Zoho Commerce interface also provides a seprate dashboard that deals with the online store setting. This includes everything that a business needs at the backend to run the business smoothly including auto product management and order workflow, set-up for batch and service tracking, payment solution optimization, and shipping method integration to delivery.
Furthermore, it provides a customer management portal, where merchants can communicate directly with customers, while the customer can modify, pay the invoice and track the order without any hassle, view past purchase or active product details, etc.
3. Marketing & Sales Management
The most important element for online store set-up is marketing. Here, Zoho MarketingHub suite integration goes ahead than just providing the marketing tool, rather it offers an AI bot that you can use to proactively recommend personalized products to the customers. Apart from this, using Zoho you can automate everything from welcome series to cart abandonment email campaigns to the upselling and cross-selling campaign.
Since the store had to create multiple sale campaigns and offer coupons, you can create coupons, determine coupon expiry. Lastly, with report and analytics, you can actively measure the success, conversion, and optimize strategy as you go.
Conclusion
Whether you are selling a product or service, the first thing that you need to vary of is your audience. And in a pandemic, nor businesses can reach the customer directly neither the customer can visit the physical stores to shop. Thus, the only way left to reach your audience is a website, and by setting up an online store. However, the successful transition from physical to online store is depended on the security of the platform, smooth cash flow, and timely delivery of the product. To know more about how the thing works, and efficient ways to set up a store you can contact Techloyce.
