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3 Things To Consider If You Want To Start An Online Retail Business

There are plenty of great business ideas for 2016 but my favourite is starting an online retail business. And, on that note, here are three things to consider if you want to start one:

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Promoting Your Online Store

An online retail business will require an online store. Once you’ve got your website up and running, you need to promote it. Focus on driving traffic to your site and making people aware of your store. A good way to do this is by improving the SEO of your site. Look at keywords relevant to your business and make sure you improve your search ranking. If you sell a brand of clothing, you’ll want to be near the top of the results when someone searches for it. If you aren’t, your competitors will swallow up all your potential customers. Also, create a social media presence and start gaining followers. You can post links to your store on sites like Facebook and Twitter to get more people on it. I also recommend Instagram for online retail businesses. You’re able to take pictures of your products and share it on Instagram with a link to it. It’s a guaranteed way to promote your online store and gain customers.

Storing Your Goods

All retail businesses will need a place for you to store all the goods you sell. Usually, this is in the form of a warehouse. They’re big, and have plenty of room to store lots of products. It’s even more important for an online retail business because it’s likely you’ll have a lot of stuff up for sale. Having a warehouse is necessary if you want to run a successful online shop. But, it also brings a few concerns with it. You’ll need to hire people to work in the warehouse and get loads of equipment for it too. To save money when purchasing equipment, think about getting business finance for warehouse equipment. It makes everything more manageable and you can save money through tax benefits too. Plus, it’s better than paying for it with your own cash.

Delivery & Delivery Costs

A huge thing to think about is how you’re going to deliver your goods to people. The best way to do this is to find a courier delivery service. They’ll deal with all the deliveries and ensure your customers get their items on time. Then, you have to think about where you’re going to deliver to. Will you only deliver on a national scale, or will you deliver globally? Global delivery means that the costs will be higher for people outside of your country. Which brings me nicely onto my final point, delivery costs. I suggest you try and offer free delivery to your customers. Give them a free delivery option and then some paid ones. People love free delivery, even if it takes longer for their items to arrive. Similarly, you must include a ‘next day delivery’ option too. People will pay loads to get their items ASAP!

That just about wraps things up for today! If you want to start an online retail business, you have to take these things into consideration.

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