A Complete Guide on How to Start an Online Business

Why and How to Start an Online Business – Simple or Complicated Process?

Today, the market gives has given the freedom to the customer to buy products and services they need by sitting on their sofa comfortably. Online businesses are high in demand, and a more significant number of people are getting connected to online shopping. So, you must have an online store to generate more income by connecting with new customers who are miles away from you. Thus, we at 3E Accounting assist you in how to start an online business without investing a lot.

There are a few necessary steps which are involved in setting up an online business irrespective of what you do – whether it’s product selling, services, or subscription packages. These key steps are:

Conducting a thorough market research
Developing a website
Writing SEO content
Launching your company on social media platforms
Engaging and attracting customers to your business

Let’s understand each of these key features which will be helpful on how to start an online business.

Conducting a Thorough Market Research

Before starting an online business, conducting market research to understand people’s requirement and feedback for your niche will be quite helpful. You can do thorough market research through the following techniques:

(i) Conduct a competitive analysis: Understand who your competitors are and understand how their online business works. This analysis is time-consuming but will give you an insight of your targeted customer and how you can target them by doing better things than your competitors.

(ii) Understand your target audience: For any business to be successful, be it online or offline, it is essential to define your target audience. So that you can design your website accordingly and also handle your social media platforms. Understand the following factors of your target audience: Age, gender, profession, income group, interests, hobby.

(iii) Ask your friends and relatives for feedback: Seek feedback from your known target audiences as they will help you the best with your market research.

Developing a Website

Hire an experienced person who can develop the website for your online business by meeting all your requirement. A web development professional can create your online dream store, which is not only attractive but also easy to use by the customer. What’s the point of having an online store where the customer cannot direct himself to purchase on your website, right?

Before building a website, you will first need to buy a domain name through Godaddy or other similar sites, and you also need to buy a hosting server.

Alternatively, you can try your hands on building an online website through sites such as Wix or Squarespace. They provide many tools and layout templates to create an attractive website.

Writing SEO Content

Writing blogs and SEO content for about us and services page will be beneficial to the target audience to find you online. SEO is a technique through which you can land your website higher in Google’s search engine. It is always a good idea to create blogs on the products or services you sell.

For example, if your online store sells cosmetic products, you can write a blog on the top uses of coconut oil. The blog should be informative and must engage the customer to buy your product through a call to action tab.

Launching Your Website on All Social Media Platforms

Your business needs to have a social presence as you will find many potential customers on these platforms. You need to find the right marketing strategies which work on different social media handles such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest.

Following are some ways through which you can get customers:

(i) Run competitions to engage your customers and give gifts to the winner.

(ii) You can opt for paid ads through which different social media platforms display your adverts on the customer’s feed or homepage.

(iii) Be active on social media and keep posting about your website and blog posts. Don’t forget to share the links of your online store

(iv) Create a hashtag of your brand name and ensure your followers share the hashtags

(v) Be quick in responding to your customer’s queries or comments

(vi) Ask your customers to review your product on the social media platform

(vii) Add links of all your social media handles on your website.

Engaging and Attracting Customers to Your Business

There are a few more ways that can drive traffic to your online store, aside from good social media marketing and engaging SEO content on your website.

(i) Pay Per Click Marketing: In this campaign, your website will be displayed on the top of the result page when the customer enters a specific keyword found on your site. You need to pay the search engine whenever a customer clicks on that link.

(ii) Affiliate Marketing: Place your adverts or hyperlinks on other websites which are relevant to your business. Similar to PPC marketing, you need to pay the affiliate website when a customer clicks on the link the ad shown on the affiliate website.

(iii) PR Professionals: A PR professional will bring media coverage to your site through newspaper, advertisement, and magazines. When they notice your website, you can gain multiple benefits from the high-value publication house.

These are the key features which you must follow as they are a comprehensive guide for how to start an online business. Although the entire process looks simple, it is not. There are many unseen challenges which can be tackled by digital marketing experts. They are expert with the tactics of starting an online business and can make you trending on social media. We offer professional digital marketing services, which can guide you entirely on how to start an online business. We can guide you from selecting the right domain name to marketing your website on Google’s search engine and social media. There is an assurance that our clients receive maximum benefits from such online marketing strategies