Ecommerce provides a number of opportunities for retailers and brands. Businesses seeking to take advantage of the benefits must also address some tough decisions. These tips will help you get started on your eCommerce business!

Select an eCommerce Platform That Suits you

The choices are endless; but what's really important? Of course, you want to choose the platform that works best for you today – and that's an essential part of your decision. However, if you're serious about taking the business forward over a period of time, it's vital to choose a platform that can grow with your business and meet the growing challenges you'll face. We all want more traffic and customers as they lead to more sales; but they also place extra demands on your store – if it's ill-equipped, this can lead to slow speeds and unresponsiveness, which is a sure-fire way to discourage your customers and send them elsewhere.

Think About the Budget

Budget is a major aspect to consider in any business decision. Choosing the right eCommerce platform for YOU, is a delicate balancing act. You want as many great features as you can get your hands on, without paying for the things you don't need.

Test Before You Invest

There’s nothing worse than developing a product, creating a website and building out marketing tools only to find that your product just isn’t profitable. All that time and money; wasted! But it’s one mistake that can easily be reversed using a simple test; with a small product-viability testing budget, it’s fairly easy to see just how well your product could sell using paid advertising. It gives you an idea of how many people are engaged and interested in your product; enough that they want to stay tuned for its actual release date. This simple tactic can help you quickly and easily price your product before it’s even developed and ready to sell.

Don’t Underestimate the Power of SEO

Your search engine optimization strategies are going to make up the bulk of your traffic. That said, there is a right and a wrong way to do SEO. Do it right and you’ll be rewarded with long-term results and steadily rising traffic. Do it wrong, and you’ll get on Google's bad side and your site will suffer for it.

Niche Social Media Can be a Huge Business Driver

A social media strategy — particularly paid advertising and an engaging content strategy using the big two (Facebook & Twitter) — can be an effective way to target audiences and drive traffic to your site. But don't count out sites and networks such as Pinterest, Instagram, and tumblr - smaller (comparatively) than Facebook or Twitter, but with a more focused audience. Social is also a great way to get word-of-mouth momentum started, which is perhaps the most important method of launching a new site or platform to success.

Create a User-Oriented Experience

When customers can't see the concrete products you're offering online, convincing them to bust out their credit cards can be difficult. Pricing products appropriately and providing them with a user-friendly experience is a good way to encourage customers to fill up their carts.

Don’t Forget SkuVault!

As the online marketplace evolves, so must businesses that want to stay a step ahead of the competition. By applying our advanced reporting and inventory management features to your SKUs, you can make better sourcing decisions and happier customers.

Experiment with new tools and make tweaks in real-time to improve the experience for your users and the bottom line for yourself!