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Opening a successful online store
What steps do you need to take?
How do you successfully open an online store and which steps are essential?
We answer this complex topic with our 5 key questions.
Based on these, you will know what products you should sell at the beginning, which store system is suitable for you and which mistakes to avoid.
All this in this online store tutorial.
What is an online store?
Let’s start thematically and define an online store in the first place.
Basically, an online store is a digital sales area for products of all kinds. So imagine Saturn, Peek and Cloppenburg or H&M as an online sales area.
This has some advantages, but also some hurdles.
You can’t try on the clothes, you have to wait at least a day for the product to arrive and send it back if it doesn’t fit.
However, eCommerce hasn’t just been around since yesterday, and some solutions to existing problems have now been found.
For example, a product can be
For example, a product can be presented much better in a product video than in a simple photo, so that the customer knows exactly what they are buying.
Opening an online store - the advantages
Other advantages are:
- Convenience – shopping from the comfort of your couch at any time of day
- The larger range – you usually have a much larger selection online than in a store
- The information on offer – In a store you have to rely on information from a salesperson, but on your laptop you can quickly look at YouTube and get authentic reviews.
- Perhaps you have already used price search engines such as Check24 or idealo to help you find the online store with the best price.
The online store operators therefore save the wages for sales staff and checkout staff, for renting the presentation area, etc. As a result, the products can also be offered at a lower price.
The advantages from the retailer's point of view
The advantages for you as a seller are therefore obvious:
- No expensive store rent
- Lower personnel costs
- Low initial investment
- Greater range
- You can study user behavior and benefit from it
- You can use cross-selling offers
Opening a successful online store - the 5 key questions
So much for the advantages.
But what questions should you ask yourself before you start?
1) Which products do I want to sell?
2) Where do I get these products from?
3) Which store system is the most suitable for me?
4) How do I create my store?
5) How do I get visitors?
We will now go through these 5 questions for you in chronological order. If you would like to find out more about the topic:“Opening an online store“, then take a look at the linked page.
What kind of products should you sell?
Which products you should sell depends on a number of factors.
How much storage space is available, how high is your starting budget, do you want to handle the fulfillment process yourself or would you rather rely on dropshipping, etc.
As both are usually rather low, you should prefer smaller products with a low purchase value at the beginning.
However, to avoid being one of many retailers in a saturated market, you should initially focus on trend products that solve a specific problem.
But how do you find them?
Minea is a frequently used research tool.
This shows you Facebook, Pinterest and TikTok ads of successful products.
You can see how they are advertised, for which country or in which language, what is being advertised, how the ads are performing and much more.
You will also receive the integrated link to this ad and can then see how much the product is selling for.
You also get an overview of how the online store is structured.
So you can learn a lot.
Let’s take this dog and cat cushion as a reference product.
It’s not too expensive and small.
Opening an online store - Where do you get the goods from?
But how do you get hold of this product?
One website that most retailers use is called Aliexpress.
We enter Cat Pillow here and see a similar product.
If we compare the price in the advertiser’s store from just now, the high margin becomes clear.
You could now order on Aliexpress and store the products on your premises.
A dropshipping variant, on the other hand, would be e.g.
CJ Dropshipping.
To find the same product here, you can download the image from Ali Express or from the reference store and upload it here.
You will then be shown similar products.
Configure the order for your case and you will see how much the product would cost you to buy.
Which store system is the right one?
Now you just need to showcase your products in a sales-oriented way.
For this you need a store system.
There are several on the market.
The best way to get a better overview is to take a look at our linked playlist.
There we have compared the most common systems.
The challenges that a store system has to overcome are as follows:
- Is the performance sufficient for the number of your products?
- Can you scale with this system?
Or do you want to scale at all in the future? - What does your budget look like?
- Is the system inherently GDPR-compliant?
- Would you rather have a simple setup and all your data in the cloud or be in control of your data at all times so that you can migrate it later?
Why do many retailers choose Shopify?
A popular solution, especially for beginners, is Shopify.
Why?
In one of our most popular videos, we showed you how to set it up in 12 minutes.
This means you don’t need to be a programmer or designer to create a store quickly and easily.
An important indicator for the choice of store system is also connectivity, namely to merchandise management.
A merchandise management system is an administration system for several sales platforms.
For example, if you sell
For example, if you sell on an online store and a marketplace such as Amazon, it quickly becomes confusing and time-consuming.
Adjusting prices, matching stocks, managing invoices.
A system that manages everything in one instance – an ERP and merchandise management system– can help you with this.
This is available from JTL-Software, Xentral or VARIO.
It is therefore important to research at an early stage which features are offered and whether the preferred system can also be connected to your desired store system.
Open an online store - We will be happy to advise you
We at eBakery will be happy to advise you here.
So if you are still undecided, fill out the contact form at the end of the article and make an appointment.
Other store systems we like to work with are the German store system Shopware, the WordPress store system WooCommerce and the JTL-Wawi store system JTL-Shop, Prestashop from France, Oxid eShop, Adobe Commerce and Gambio, to name but a few.
Other store systems in comparison
Each has its advantages and disadvantages.
Shopware is a very high-performance system, but requires more knowledge than, for example, Shopify.
Shopify and is generally more expensive.
With JTL Shop, you don’t need to link to JTL Wawi, as one only works with the other and is therefore linked by default.
There is a huge community for WooCommerce thanks to WordPress as the most widely used CMS, so you benefit from the forum where your problem may have already been solved.
So you can see that a general recommendation is almost impossible.
So it’s better to invest the time at the beginning to get professional advice.
Let’s move on to our question number 4 – How do I create a store?
We won’t go through this in full in this video, instead I’ll show you the minimum requirements using our “Create a Shopify Shop” video.
Opening an online store - how to create one
Step 1: Installation or registration – It’s super easy with Shopify.
You enter “www.shopify.de” in your browser and enter all your personal data.
This means you don’t have to book a server, buy a domain or install anything.
However, this would be the case for many other store systems such as WooCommerce.
You can test Shopify for 14 days free of charge.
Step 2: The order doesn’t play such a big role here.
One possible approach would be to create the products and categories first.
Pay particular attention to high-quality product images.
The AI tool Shopify Magic can now help you with the texts.
Step 3: The heart of every online store is the theme.
This determines which elements are displayed where and how.
So will there be text, an image or a video?
Will it be animated?
Which font is used, how are the individual blocks arranged in relation to each other?
All these settings are included in a theme.
All you then have to do is fill these blocks with your products, texts and media.
The theme
This is all done in this step 3. Shopify offers many free themes as well as paid themes.
You can find out where you can find both in our linked Shopify Playlist.
Step 4: This last step includes all the formalities.
You need to configure your shipping and payment methods, so should the customer be able to pay with PayPal?
Then you need to set up a PayPal account and link it.
Will your products be shipped with DHL?
This also needs to be set up so that a shipping price and shipping time can be defined.
To avoid being warned at the end, all legal texts must also be included before the launch.
This includes the legal notice, the revocation policy, the data protection provisions, etc.
Opening an online store - How to get traffic
The store is now basically ready for use.
However, the challenge that every store operator will now face, regardless of which store system they use, is contained in our last question – How do you get visitors?
This also highlights the often misunderstood difference between an online store and an online marketplace.
If you sell on an online marketplace, you don’t necessarily have to advertise.
If you sell with your online store, you can’t avoid it because nobody knows you at the beginning.
So what are the options?
You could fill a whole video with this alone, so let’s give it a rough outline.
Why SEO / SEA is so important
1) SEO – In order to be found organically on search engines such as Google or Bing, your most important pages should first be indexed.
Once this is the case, it’s time for optimization.
Integrate SEO optimized texts, use H1, H2, H3 headings, possibly create a blog in which you also integrate videos, improve your PageSpeed.
These are just 4 measures to push your rankings on Google.
Outside of your store, you can also initiate off-page measures, such as pursuing a backlink strategy.
pursuing a backlink strategy.
This means that other websites link to your store, which in turn gives you trust and causes Google to favor you.
2) SEA – This includes, for example
paid advertising campaigns.
So Google Shopping ads or video ads campaigns on TikTok, Meta & Co.
Alternative marketing methods
3) Alternative marketing campaigns – These take more time, but have a more long-term effect.
One strategy would be a content marketing campaign for YouTube.
You could present your products through reviews and recycle this content in the form of shorts for TikTok and Instagram.
Another option would be influencer marketing.
We have already produced several videos on how this works, what benefits are offered and how you can get in touch.
A cheaper option would be UGC marketing – letting users talk about your product and recording the whole thing as a vertical video or having it recorded.
Opening a successful online store - summary
As you can see, there are several approaches to generating traffic for your new store.
Not every method works for every target group and every product.
As an online marketing agency, we are happy to help and advise you here too.
We have answered all 5 key questions and hopefully given you a useful overview of what you need to consider in advance.
If you have any further questions, please leave them in the comments. Our store experts will be happy to take care of the more complex issues.
Haben Sie Fragen oder brauchen ein individuelles Angebot? Zögern Sie nicht, uns zu kontaktieren.
