Do you want to succeed in E-commerce? So here is a complete guide to avoid making mistakes, invest your money properly and make a living from your activity! But why this advice and who am I? My name is Benoît Gaillat, I am an e-commerce expert with more than 15 years of experience in the web, e-commerce and the Internet. I went from a small e-commerce intern to a worldwide project manager, then e-commerce manager, e-commerce director to set up my own e-commerce consulting agency and I even set up an e-commerce startup. So why give advice to succeed in e-commerce?
For two reasons: to share my passion and to make myself known. I have been writing and sharing articles on e-commerce for 10 years now. I have always enjoyed helping others succeed. And succeeding in e-commerce is feasible, but it requires a lot of work and analysis. And a little help too, which I hope you can find here. This guide to successful e-commerce is updated regularly, do not hesitate to bookmark it and come back regularly to see the new tips for success. I wrote this guide also to make myself known, I am indeed a freelance e-commerce consultant, if you have any problems with your e-commerce, do not hesitate to contact me so that I can help you to solve it. Indeed, even with a complete super guide to succeed in e-commerce, we cannot list all the problems we encounter during the life of an e-commerce site because there are so many cases. And sometimes, you just need a little help to succeed.
To be successful with your e-commerce site, it is necessary to clarify some small points and myths about e-commerce. You can read my more complete articles on "why go into e-commerce" or "7 bad reasons to go into e-commerce". There are indeed very bad reasons for launching it in e-commerce and which can cause a site to lose momentum or a failure of an e-commerce site. To succeed in e-commerce, you will need: time AND skills AND money and a little help. Without the first three points, it will be complicated. For the fourth point, you are in the right place. What you need to know is that the preparation of your e-commerce project upstream is extremely important for the success of your site in order to avoid mistakes in e-commerce.
But what is a good e-commerce preparation? To make it simple, it's at least:
What's all this about? Offering a certain amount of products online is not very difficult, there are many sites like Wizishop or Shopify that allow you to do it quickly. Being an e-merchant and making a living with your e-commerce site is harder because you have to respect the e-commerce equation.
The e-commerce equation is simply your ability to attract customers, make them buy and bring them back for a lower cost than your sales margin. Once this point is reached, you will become an expert in e-commerce. To see this point in more detail you can consult the article: the secret equation of e-commerce. To put it simply, each customer will cost you money, basically we "rent" their traffic to Google and Facebook and we will have to make them want to buy your products and come back. To earn money, your margin (the selling price of your products minus the purchase price) will have to be higher than the "rental price" of your visitors from Google and Facebook. If you thought you had free traffic, it's a failure! You can read in detail the link to Why free traffic does not exist? And that's all right! But you just have to know that. Calculating your customer acquisition costs, logistics costs and sales margin is therefore essential to manage your business and make profits. During my monthly E-commerce support, it is by working on the management of these indicators that I can help many merchants to achieve profitability
In the initial preparation, the implementation of the business plan is often considered incidental or too complicated. It's true that it's not always easy, but as they say, "The best way to predict the future is to create it" (it's not from me unfortunately). A business plan is exactly that: forecasts to know where we're going. My customers often answer me: Yes, but how can I put figures in the business plan because I don't have any activity yet? It is true that making the first e-commerce business plan is complicated. But not impossible. Assumptions must be made, regardless of whether they are true or not, and everything must be done to verify them in the first few weeks of activity. You don't know what conversion rate you're going to do? Expect two percent (the French average). However, update your business plan as soon as you have real figures from your Google Analytics for example. The business plan can therefore remain in the form of forecasts and assumptions as long as you have nothing better. It is important to carry out this business plan, for you or with a view to making a loan from your bank, and it will allow you to ask yourself many questions and therefore to be better prepared.
The real secret of success between one e-commerce site and another is its product catalogue. The assortment will make the difference between a site that sells and a site that does not sell and a good catalogue will generate traction. Building the initial assortment and a job that many new merchants like less than building an online store. However, you will always find competent people to create a shop. The assortment of your site is however at your expense in all cases.
A good catalogue is a catalogue that sells. A little easy as an answer maybe. A catalogue that makes a successful e-commerce site succeed is above all a catalogue that is understood by customers, organized in a logical way for them and in which they find the products they are looking for. Basically, you have to have the new products before everyone else and correctly identify the latest trends. It is also necessary to build a coherent catalogue, with market top sellers, high margin products, premium products, products made to increase the average basket, rare products in small quantities. And of course not to seal your accounts with a stock (stock is the bad thing, we'll come back to it a little lower) you must of course have enough product to meet the demand but not too much not to overstock. A quick reminder: if you are just starting out, don't buy quantities from your suppliers just to pass the postage free, don't pay shipping costs. You will overstock and it will cost you more in the end. Remember to keep cash to buy new stock and rotate even in case of poor sales!
Having a high-performance e-commerce site is obviously an important key to e-commerce. However, during my e-commerce coaching sessions, every time I meet neo-merchants, they have often invested too much in the technical part to the detriment of stock or marketing. It is better to redo the site every year with more resources than to invest 90% of your fortune in a site that will never welcome a visitor. For the first few years, it is better to stay in a site that requires little maintenance time or technical knowledge. You have to get used to the idea that you will not keep your site for 10 years! And that if you do it it's a bad idea, see: why keeping your e-commerce site too long is a bad idea?
So what is the minimum to succeed in e-commerce and have a high-performance website? Already if this is your first e-commerce site: don't get ahead of yourself with the technology. Do not go on Magento or Prestashop. You will have to manage many technical parameters and this will take you time. As an e-merchant, your most valuable resources are time and money! Save both! To get started, you can start with an easy-to-use solution like Shopify or Wizishop. You will certainly pay a monthly subscription but I guarantee you it's hours saved for you!
Once your site has been created, your products online and a payment method configured, you must also organize the logistics! You don't look like much, making packages will take you a little while, unless you're in dropshipping. Packing is not very complicated either but requires being well organized. A work table, tools nearby, a few boxes of different sizes, I will certainly do a check list to start its logistics. Saving time in preparing packages is important because you will see that Monday morning will become a real working day for you. And yes because there are often Friday, Saturday, Sunday orders to ship!
To finish this first part of the guide "succeeding in ecommerce" I would like to conclude with some advice. Perhaps the most important of all. Starting an e-commerce business is neither easy nor difficult. You can succeed if you give yourself the means, but it will not happen on your own. There is no limit to your business but don't spend 24 hours a day on it and 7 days a week. I have seen many exhausted e-merchants after a few years of hard work. Take the time to organize things and grow your shop at your own pace, try it out, give yourself permission to fail on certain points to learn. No one holds "THE TRUTH" in E-commerce. But through hard work and analysis, you will understand your customers' expectations, better select your products, better buy your stocks, make a better marketing campaign and increase your margins. At that point, you will know that you are on the road to success in e-commerce!
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