Published on July 24, 2012 Why now is the time to get your online shop idea started
If you’ve been thinking of selling online, there’s not a better time than now. The under-performing global economy is driving more shoppers online looking for bargains, while larger firms are putting growth projects on hold to tighten their expenditure, reducing the potential for competitors in niche industries. Smart marketers have a unique window of opportunity to start selling online and build a reputable online brand.
If you want to be one of the successes of the online world, it’s time to get on with it and start selling with Ozcart. With fantastic custom designs personalised to your business brand at a fraction of the cost of what you would pay a traditional design company, and affordable monthly fees for a serious desktop and mobile compatible ecommerce system, it’s a good time to start selling online.
Getting started – your idea
Finding a great idea for an online business is as simple as figuring out a problem that hasn’t been solved yet, and solve it. How many times have you thought “if only there was….” when thinking about a product or “if only I could do ….”. This is how many of the most simple but powerful ideas have been invented. Another way is to think of something that you could use in a different way. For example, Post It notes were invented by 3M by accident – they were trying to invent a kind of glue that didn’t work and thought about using the end result in a different way.
Once you have an idea it’s time to think about who might use it. Never say “anyone who will buy it” or you’re setting yourself up for failure. A well targeted marketing strategy is what you need to grow – you can’t take on the biggest players head-to-head without plenty of money and resources. As a small business starting up, the way to go is to find an idea of some part of the market that’s not being covered and do it better than anyone else. That way you will build up a loyal following .. and a brand.
Build your brand
When you’ve got your idea and start developing your product for market, you’ve got to think about how you will differentiate your end product from competitors.
How will you stop competitors from copying your product and service offering? Anything that is not protected could be copied – today in the news for example, the Chinese have reproduced an entire physical village to the last detail and if that’s possible, you can be sure that if you have a good idea someone else will want to replicate it. Protect your rights:
- If it’s an invention, talk to a solicitor about getting a Patent
- If it’s your brand, trademark it. A trademark is a legal form of protection of your unique look/word/logo or phrase that is stronger than common law copyright protection or the uniqueness of a business name. For example, when you trademark your business, you’ll have legal protection of your name and logo. It stops advertisers from bidding on your name in Google Ads (we have to get some offenders taken down from time to time), it stops people from advertising as you, or using your logo without your permission.
- Talk to a solicitor about anything else you need to do, specific to your industry. The money you spend on a solicitor up-front is money saved down the track when it comes to having to enforce your intellectual property rights.
Remember that a brand is more than your logo. It’s everything about your product and service offering considered together. It’s the way you greet customers, the feel of your website, the look of your business cards, the way you reply, the rules of how you will use your logo and colours together, your marketing strategies, your ethics, and what you stand for (your values). If your brand was a person what would it be like? Your brand is the personality of your store and business.
You want your website to reflect the look of your brand, because first impressions do count and it’s easier than ever for customers to click away from a site that does not instill confidence in their service and product offering.
Time to start selling – get your shopping cart off the ground
When it’s time to get your business online, you’ll want to choose a shopping cart application to suit your business. You’ll want something that is low risk, that:
- Has affordable monthly prices as your budget can be stretched to other startup expenses.
- Has no contracts. So if you don’t like your site, you can go to a different provider and try again.
- Has a shopping cart design that is enticing to your target customers. Do you want a design that looked great in the ’90s or one that is contemporary, modern, compelling and Australian?
- Has a design that you don’t have to do yourself. If you have to choose a design and then edit all of the colours yourself, unless you are a professional graphic artist you might end up with something that either looks terrible, the same as everyone else or end up paying a designer to do it for you.
- Has a design that is customised for your business colours and graphics.
- Can help you sell to customers using mobile devices as well as PCs or laptops. So many more people are going to the web via smartphones and if you’re not targeting those people, then you’re missing out on potential sales.
- Has Australian features – so you don’t have to take a foreign cart and reconfigure everything for Australia. Do you want to spend hours configuring Australian GST, currencies, languages, Australian spelling and dates and trying to buy modules to cover the payment and shipping options that you want to use? Or would you like this built in?
- Can help your business grow. Does it have extra, more powerful features that you can “grow into” as your business grows? Do you get free monthly reports on how well you are doing against your direct competitors, and practical things you can do to improve your search engine rankings?
- Has Australian support – so you get help during Australian business hours (and sometimes outside of hours too) so you actually get help from someone who understands Australian business and can speak English?
If you need any more motivation think of this: Australia’s online economy was worth about $10 billion last year and by the end of 2012, is predicted to have grown an extra $3 billion to $13 billion – with 70% of Australians shopping online. On top of this, with the massive surge of mobile usage in Australia, it’s time to get on with it and sell online. With your own Ozcart Ecommerce shop.
No Comments