1. Research your niche

Before jumping into the world of Starting an Online Business, you need to research your niche and determine who your target audience will be. Too many new merchants make the mistake of launching a store before finding out if their product or service is needed in their marketplace. There are two ways to do this:

Customer Research

It’s also important to find out everything you can about the people who will be using your products. You’ll want to know what they like, hate and need. My favorite way to do this is through Amazon reviews. All you have to do is simply search the product you would like to sell or a similar product on Amazon and go to the review section and see what people like and dislike about a product. Find out what their common  pain point is and help them solve it. Be sure to read the top rated reviews as well, often times you will see helpful suggestions that others have not thought of yet.

Past Experience

If you have used and dealt with your product or service in the past, then you probably already know what people think about it. If not, then go to forums and social media for insight on how to improve your products going forward.

How To Research Your Niche Quickly And Easily: As a beginner, I recommend that you do the bulk of your niche research through free channels. Why? Because you want to get a sense for how many people are searching for information on that topic, and if this is an area of interest to them. There are lots of great ways to do this:

Google Trends Google search is the main weapon we use to gather keyword data. Not only does Google Trends provide you with information about the popularity of your keywords, it also gives you insight into how people are searching for them. Take a look at related search terms and see what else people look for addition to the problem you are looking to solve. If you can target a customer intersect of two niches you give yourself to design a brand that customers feel comfortable purchasing from because it seems like you truly know them and their quirky behaviors.

2. Find a domain name and social media outlets for your store.

Next you want to make sure that the domain name you choose for your store either make sense or is a completely different word that you can own. Starting an online business may seem harder to do than in the past but that isn’t the case if you find a name that is easy to remember and have a product or service that is useful there is still a lot of gaps to fill.

When coming up with a name I tried to stick to words below eight letters if possible and things that are easy to spell. If you can’t find a word that is easy to spell try to make a rhyme or slogan that makes it easy to remember the domain name. It is also preferred to make sure that the domain name can match the social media Outlets as well so do research and check to make sure that the name you want to use is available.

3. Get Reviews from your product

When starting a new store it is important to have reviews on your product, so you want to make sure that they are the right ones. Make sure that on your website or in the description for products if there are any good customer reviews leave a link back to their review so others can easily find them as well. It  is also recommend to try and get a review from the blog of someone who is an authority in your niche you can ask them for feedback on your product as well. These reviews can also be used to make your products better. Add an FAQ section to your website to answer any common questions people may have and use it as a resource to reduce returns.

Take real life pictures of the product being used to increase conversion rates. If you are unsure of how to source real life photos check our pinterest for ideas.

4. Set up an email address with the same domain as your website, so people can contact you easily.

Getting a response to customer queries or questions should be one of your top priorities. Make sure that you have an email account set up with the same domain as your website and add your contact information on every page so people find it easy to connect with you, whether they are customers or not. Set up an autoresponder to make sure that you are able to respond to customer queries quickly. For actual website setup we prefer WordPress.

5. Launch your store, and continue improving it over time with the information you have gathered.

Once everything is set up, you can now press launch! You are on your way to starting an online business. From here on out gather all of the feedback that you can from your customers, whether they are happy or not about a certain product or your services. This will help you improve your store and assist you with the winning combination of products that sell well and give your customers a great experience!