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How to Start an Online Retail Business

This is the age of online business. The online retail business has great potential. It’s a must-have for any retailer. In 2021, all e-commerce sales increased by 13.2%. Surprisingly, in 2023, e-commerce sales are expected to reach 22%. That’s a huge growth, isn’t it?

Many retail business owners have realized the need for online businesses in the context of the Corona Pandemic. from small businesses to large organizations expanding their business online. No matter what you sell, online business is a great opportunity to increase sales and expand your retail business.

The buying behavior of customers is changing day by day. Today, customers are more likely to purchase online. 95% of all purchases projected this year were done via e-commerce. Here’s a checklist that will make you a professional online retail business owner…

Top 09 e-commerce platforms

Various e-commerce platforms are available such as Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce.

  • Shopify
  • WooCommerce
  • BigCommerce
  • 3DCart
  • Wix
  • Squarespace
  • Volusion
  • Quick e selling
  • Prestashop

Let’s get started with the online retail business

Step by step to become an online retail business owner.

Business plan and model

The first step to build a business is to plan what you are going to sell, your target market, competition, etc. The e-commerce business will not succeed unless you have a strong plan like your brick-and-mortar store.

Choose your product

What type of product category are you planning to sell? does your targeted location have enough customers? their lifestyle, their buying behavior, and more. You need to know everything about your product, including the price also.

For example, if you are selling a seasonal product, the sales will fluctuate in seasonal and nonseasonal times. So you can choose the products in a way that makes the sale all the time.

Choose a medium to sell

You need a platform to sell your products. You can do this through your website or e-commerce platforms like WooCommerce and Shopify.

Consider this when choosing an e-commerce platform

  • Pricing and payment
  • SEO Friendliness
  • Integrations
  • User friendly
  • Customer support
  • Security
  • Scalable

Upload your product and start selling

Once you have selected your e-Commerce platform, you can add each product and its details to it.

moreover marketing is essential for an eCommerce business to thrive. identify your customer journey, what are they searching on google, which social media they are using, and what kind of content they like, their engagements on social media, and their comments below your competitor’s post.

in addition Sales can be increased through several marketing activities such as social media, paid advertising, and SEO.

Manage eCommerce, brick-and-mortar stores

Managing your physical retail store and online store can be very difficult. Of course, you can only focus on one business. especially inventory, order management, reporting, analytics, etc

That’s where the need for integrated point of sale (POS) software comes in. by integrating POS with e-commerce platforms, you can easily manage your entire business.

LithosPOS with WooCommerce integration

Lithospos with WooCommerce integration

Are you using the WooCommerce platform – by integrating with LithosPOS software you can manage your whole business using one software. it helps you to manage inventory, reporting, analytics, etc.

If you have e-commerce and physical retail stores. when a purchase happens in your physical store, you also need to manually change the stock on the e-commerce platform as well.

It’s hard, right?

Let’s get it automated. Using lithosPOS software, when a purchase happens in your WooCommerce store, that stock automatically reduces from store inventory. So you don’t want to make any manual stock adjustments. Because everything is automated your efforts and time can be saved and you can focus on business growth.

Other benefits of using LithosPOS – WooCommerce integration

Faster shipping

You can offer speedy delivery option to your customers. when a customer places an order, the order oprtations will be automatically process. payments, invoice and other inventory operations will be simple and fast.

Better customer experience

Customer satisfaction is really important in businesses. you can ensure premium customer experience by automating your delivery transactions.

The LithosPOS tracks all your product on inventory. you can identify your top selling items by analyzing your inventory reports.

The biggest advantage is that you can distinguish between offline and online sales and data. This will help you understand the performance of your brick-and-mortar and e-Commerce store.

Identify your loyal customers and use loyalty techniques

Identifying your loyal customers is very important. Keeping track of each customer’s purchase history helps you identify your loyal customers.

LithosPOS creates a profile for each customer, records each customer’s purchases, and helps identify your loyal customers.

You can use loyalty techniques for both online and offline purchases such as offers, coupons, and gift cards to target your loyal customers.

Better reporting and analytics

It is important to be able to distinguish between offline and online businesses. you will have to make many decisions in the business based on the data of each day, month, and year.

After multiple purchases, you can assume the purchase frequency of each customer. You can market them more personalized.

For example, a customer purchased peanut butter from your online store on 23-January. after one month on 24-February, the same customer again purchased the same product. You can assume that his purchase frequency is one month.

You can target and remind him when it’s time to next purchase (March-22) using various platforms such as google ads, social media ads, or push notifications.

lastly, Integration with LithosPOS-WooCommerce makes it easy to get profit data for your brick & mortar store and e-Commerce Store, as well as purchase reports, sales reports, tax reports, Etc.

Conclusion

It is difficult to run both online stores and brick-and-mortar shops at the same time. But with lithosPOS, it is much easier. You can handle both platforms equally and utilize online business opportunities. Start your online retail business now. To get started with e-commerce integrated POS

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