Last updated - July 8, 2021
There are over 12 million eCommerce stores out there. Out of all these stores, only 650,000 of them generate annual sales of more than a $1000. Most eCommerce stores struggle to make decent revenue because they don’t set rules in place when they launch. They haphazardly do whatever they want to.
This is why I have made a list of the 5 commandments you must follow. Follow them strictly and you will launch and run a successful eCommerce store…
#1 Only sell products your audience wants:
As a business owner it is important to sell products you are passionate about. Your eCommerce store will only be a long term success if you love what you do. But in order to be a success, you should also be selling products your audience wants. There should be an intersection between the products you want to sell and the products your audience wants.
Most eCommerce store owners sell products they ‘think’ their audience wants. They like the product so they automatically believe their audience will too. This assumption leads to failure. This is why before you launch your store, you need conduct plenty of research to figure out what products your audience wants. Then you need to create and sell only these products.
#2 Create a funnel that maximizes profits:
Another important factor that will determine how well your eCommerce store performs is the funnel. Most eCommerce store owners create a funnel whimsically. They don’t plan it out first. They just keep going along by creating a landing page, an email sequence, the ad, etc. They don’t strategize the whole thing to make sure that all the elements of the funnel fit perfectly together.
This is why if you build a funnel that is properly organised you will beat out this competition. You need design a funnel that includes good traffic sources, a well designed landing page, a thank you page, cross-sell and upsell elements, email sequences and retargeting ads. All these elements will ensure you make maximum profit from your efforts.
#3 Test before you launch:
If you want to launch a successful eCommerce from the get-go, you need to conduct a lot of tests. When entrepreneurs launch a new eCommerce store, they usually don’t conduct any tests. This is why they either fail or take a while to become profitable.
It’s like running a startup. This strategy will only work if you have a healthy investment.
This is why if you want to be successful from the beginning itself, you need to conduct plenty of tests before you launch. For this I recommended that you dropship products created by another manufacturer instead of selling your own. This is because if you lose money, it will be of a minimal amount as you won’t spend money for the manufacturing, storage and delivery.
There are many dropshipping manufacturers out there who have products similar to yours. You can easily experiment with these. If the experiment works you can simply replace the landing pages with your own products, but if it doesn’t you can abandon the idea while losing very little money.
#4 Use multiple traffic generating methods:
Another important commandment you need to keep in mind while running your eCommerce store is to have multiple traffic generating methods. It is good to start with one or two methods like ads and influencer marketing as they provide quick results. But while they bring in customers, it is important that you invest the profits into more long term traffic generating methods like blogging and organic social media marketing.
Diversifying traffic sources will give you more options in the future if one of the sources stops working. It’s not good to put all your eggs in one basket.
#5 Track metrics closely:
The top eCommerce stores track their metrics very closely. They know everything from which traffic sources get them the most customers to which landing page styles convert best to when is the best time to upsell and more.
This is because they track their metrics every single day. This ensures they get maximum leads and sales from the traffic they generate.
So, pay close attention to your metrics. Most eCommerce platforms these days offer detailed analytics and insights. Getting this information shouldn’t be a problem.
Conclusion:
These are the 5 commandments for a successful eCommerce store. Follow them and you will launch a successful eCommerce store that generates maximum ROI.
