Did you know that 90 percent of online businesses fail within their first four months? Starting an online business has the potential to make you extremely wealthy, and being a member of the e-commerce business means that you can work on your own terms. You can run your business the way you want, and you can work the way you want without someone looking over your shoulder and telling you what to do.

It all sounds great until you realize that selling products online is an extremely difficult thing to do because the competition is so intense. No matter what industry you operate in, you’re going to have competitors, and it may be a long time before your business makes any money at all.

Running an e-commerce business isn’t easy, but every successful online entrepreneur was new to the industry at one point. To succeed in e-commerce, follow this guide to create a solid business plan and execute it effectively. In it, we’re going to present a roadmap that can help you build a successful online business from nothing. Here’s how to do it.

Know Your Market

Before you can even start to think about selling products e-commerce business, you need to know what you’re going to sell and who your competitors will be. You need to know whether you’ll actually have a chance to break through the static and get noticed, and when people do visit your site, you should have a one-sentence answer to the question of why people should buy from you instead of your more well-established competitors. You need to know all of these things because if you don’t have a plan for competing, you’re doomed before you even begin.

Remember that although you may be interested in or passionate about a particular industry, it doesn’t mean that you should necessarily own a business in that industry. The competition may be so intense that you won’t have a chance to break through unless you have an enormous promotional budget. Look for an industry that gives you a realistic opportunity to compete.

Choose a Catchy Domain Name

To run an online company, your domain name needs to match your business and be good. Your domain name should be short and easy to remember. Make it something people can spell right away when they hear about it from friends or on the radio. It should also be short enough that people will remember it after seeing an advertisement.

Finding a good domain name for your e-commerce business is tough since many of your favorite ideas are often taken. There are over 350 million registered domains today. Invest ample time in developing your business’s domain name as it defines successful online businesses.

Invest in a Good Web Developer

Web hosting companies often try to rope new customers in by offering ready-made e-commerce packages. Simply add your products to a template, and customers will flock to your site. Selling online doesn’t work if your website looks generic; people will shop elsewhere.

Before you launch your website, search for the keywords for which you would like your site to rank well. Consider the search results, then choose where to spend your money as a consumer. Your site needs to look at least as good as your competitors’ sites, and that means you’ll probably need to enlist the services of a web developer. Developers aren’t cheap, but this is one of the best investments you can make as an e-commerce business owner.

Sell the Products Your Customers Want to Buy

Choosing your industry is just one aspect of being a successful e-commerce business owner. You must choose the products you’ll sell, with plenty of options available in almost every industry. To discover consumer trends in your industry, explore Reddit and discussion boards to identify popular products. If a product is generating a healthy volume of discussion—like the Firerose vape is in the vaping industry, for example—there’s a good chance that it’s worth carrying.

Fill Your Website with Helpful Content

To be found online, your website must appear on Google’s search results, not as a mere product list. Google primarily runs on text. People use text phrases to search for things, and Google returns results with text that seems to satisfy those queries. To show up for various search terms, your site must have text that satisfies them. When you create your site’s content, you should focus on these three areas.

1. Product Content:

The product pages on your site are key because people searching for specific products are likely to consider buying them. Each product page should contain unique descriptive text to explain its value and encourage purchase.

2. Category Page Content:

Your website will use categories for product organization, and every product will fit into at least one category. For instance, spaghetti is categorized as “Pasta” and can be a subcategory under “Food” on a larger website. Category pages often have high search volumes due to the broad ideas they represent. To rank for broad search terms, each category page needs a helpful text intro to aid navigation.

3. Blog Content:

Although the product and category pages will always be the most important pages on any e-commerce site, it’s also wise to have a blog. While product and category pages give you a chance to rank for commercial search terms, blog posts tend to be informational in nature, and informational search terms also receive a great deal of traffic. When developing content for your blog, you should try to come up with article topics that can help people have a better experience with the types of products offered on your site.

  INFOGRAPHIC