Never jump head-first into building an e-commerce website for your business. Always go with the proper course. Start with planning thoroughly with initial basics. When you’re all clear with visualization of your end-product then move to craft the life of it.

Read this 5-minute guide to know how to get started with planning an e-commerce business.

So following are the three basic question statements to create a strategic outline of your business plan. Answer them carefully and analyze what you are equipped with and what do you need further.

01 – What To Sell

Selling products online is a huge discussion. Whereas, basically, there are three options to sell online i.e.:

Goods

  • Electronics
  • Gadgets
  • Clothing
  • Furniture
  • Food
  • Household utilities
  • Fashion accessories
  • Beauty & Skincare products

Services

  • Remote Medical Consultations
  • Remote 3D Printing & their Shipping to Clients
  • Virtual assistant service
  • Remote organizers
  • Personal Stylist Services

Digital Products

  • MP3s
  • PDFs
  • Videos
  • Plug-ins
  • Templates
  • Games
  • Educational products such as e-books

Every online-selling business sells either of these products or a mix of them. Similarly, for your e-commerce store, you have to select what you want to sell. You can either select a single product, multiple products or a range of mixed products.

Whatever you choose, always perform the SWOT analysis first. Thus, identify and analyze what are your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats within the market and outside it as well.

Moving ahead, you also need to tell your visitors what’s your aim behind selling the particular object. Also, make sure your content is sufficient enough to demonstrate the product quality; influencing the visitors to buy them.

02 – Whom To Sell

Once you are done with knowing what you are selling, come to identify your potential customers. But you should know that not every e-commerce business targets customers only. Some work on the models of B2C or B2B i.e. Business-To-Consumer and Business-To-Business respectively. The e-commerce industry has both types of models.
In the case of the Business-to-Consumer (B2C) model, a business sells its products to consumers. These consumers use your products to make final products to sell them to customers. The examples of such business models are:

  • Selling of raw food ingredients to food manufacturers.
  • Selling of electronic components to electronic gadget manufactures.

Whereas, as far as the Business-to-Business (B2B) model is concerned, a business sells its products to another business. Or in other words, a manufacturer sells its products in bulk to multiple retailers. An example of such a B2B model is selling via Amazon and Alibaba etc.

Whether you’re B2B or B2C, you have to analyze what gives you more profit and customer satisfaction.

Once you are well aware of your business model, you can satisfy your customer demand.

It’s not always necessary that you must have a good number of customers. You can also go for selling high-end products at higher prices to a small circle of either customers, consumers, and businesses.

03 – How To Source Products

Some e-commerce companies manufacture their products in-house. Perhaps you make bespoke furniture or fishing rods; maybe you create iPhone apps or accounting software. In that case, all you have to do is buy shipping supplies or set up a downloading service, and you’re all set.

Some e-commerce businesses manufacture their products by themselves. While others get this task outsourced. For example, take an example of a software house.

  • You can produce your own software products to sell.
  • You can outsource software development to multiple freelancers. Similarly, many e-commerce retailers run their businesses depending upon the supply chain.

Therefore, in the latter case, you have to have a good professional relationship with the supplier in order to run your business.

Other product-sourcing options include the selling of wholesale products. In this strategy, you’ve to buy products in bulk and then send them to customers at your own decided cost.

Closing Thoughts

Always take initial steps first to step up. Answer the above statements clearly and prepare your e-commerce business plan. Once you’re well prepared with your business plan, the next step is to learn the basics of building an e-commerce website . However, if you’re an experienced professional, you can start building your e-commerce store with 3S Cart. Or you can try its FREE 14-Days Trial, click here to proceed.