Launching a commerce company in today’s business environment means understanding that ecommerce has fundamentally taken over the landscape. With very few exceptions, businesses in 2020 must be formulated to sell products and services online. Without ecommerce worked into your business model, you’re like a dinosaur waiting for extinction. Brick-and-mortar stores were already suffering and then Covid-19 came along and showed just how vulnerable traditional storefronts are in the modern economy.
That means when you launch your company, you not only need strategic web development but BigCommerce development.
A BigCommerce developer will help you create an effective online storefront that is user-friendly, mobile-friendly, and configured for product syndication and payment gateways. The following 5 tips demonstrate how and why this happens:
Carve out your market – No matter what kind of company you’re creating, the essential first step (well before you even launch) is determining what market there is for your product or service. Even if it seems obvious, you need to break it down into sub-categories and specific items. Who else is selling what you plan to sell? How much revenue are they earning? How can you sell that product or service better?
Do a trial run – Before investing big in BigCommerce website development, you need to conduct a controlled experiment that tests some of your items and see if consumers take the bait. Even if you know these particular products sell well, doing a trial run helps you organize and prioritize your items. Additionally, a trial run helps you work out some of the development bugs.
Be realistic about what you can initially sell – Do not overestimate how many product units you will sell during your launch. You don’t want to end up with a bunch of unused inventory. For every failed business there is a sad garage full of old boxes somewhere containing unsold products. To avoid this, it’s smart to diversify so that you can shift your marketing suddenly if there are market fluctuations. Don’t go all-in on a product until you know it sells.
Test your storefront online first – Even if you plan to have a brick-and-mortar storefront, try it first with an online storefront and see how things go. Renting a physical storefront is expensive and if you get locked into a contract only to find out the products aren’t selling, you will have problems. If you can’t sell your products online – especially if you use the services of a BigCommerce developer – you probably won’t be able to sell them in-person either.
Consult with experts about pricing models – It’s important that you charge the right amount for your products or services. Enlist the help of BigCommerce web development consultants who know how to analyze your market and crunch the numbers. Even if your items sell like hotcakes, you can lose money if you’re undercharging. If you’re overcharging, you’ll probably eventually be undercut by the competition.
BigCommerce developers are critical in launching your business with an effective online storefront. This kind of strategic web development ensures your company’s digital storefront is compatible with all major browsers and mobile devices and ready to appear on the big ecommerce websites like eBay and Amazon.
Such consultation ensures compatibility with all platforms, shopping feeds (Google products, etc.), and payment gateways (Google Checkout, Apple Pay, PayPal, Skrill, Western Union, etc.). Additionally, BigCommerce development helps you manage returns and determine the ideal shipping provider (UPS or FedEx, etc.).
Finally, you will have a user-friendly website storefront that doesn’t confuse customers and scare them off before they finish checking out. One of the saddest things to watch is an exciting young company with a hot product that has an ineffective storefront. Customers fill up their cart and are ready to fork over the money but get spooked by a payment gateway lag or a glitchy feature.
Having a user-friendly website ensures that you can adequately test the demand for your product and the market activity around you.
