How To Start An E-Commerce Business



– One of the companies I used to ownis actually E-commerce business.It's one of the most successful venturesthat I have done in my career.And, we were doing millions and millionsof dollars every year and actually wonthe Online Retailer of the
Year Award by Canada Post.So, when it comes to E-commercemaybe you're thinking about startingan e-commerce business, you
don't know where to start.Today I wanna give you three
keys, kinda three lessonsI've learned during that time
before I sold the company.Number one, when it comesto E-commerce conversion matters a lot.Conversion matters a lot.So, you should be constantly measuringyour conversion rate on different pages.Your bounce rate, meaning
people hit your homepage.Where are you seeing people
exiting from your site?Where are you losing people?Now, one of the things that we noticewhen I was running an E-commerce businessthat we were losing a big chunkof the customers at the checkout, right?At the checkout page, we're losing a big,so they like the product,
they click the product,they add to cart by the
time they get to buy,we lose a whole lot of people.So, I was saying to myself,
okay, this is not good.What could we do?So, then we added a lot
of different things.Example, we added actually testimonialsduring the checkout process.We streamlined it and
simplified the checkout process.So, in the beginning,
back then I didn't know,we had a multi-step process.And then, we changed all of thatto make it much shorter, right.They see the product, they click,if they are add in the cart,
they continue as a guest,that's fine, all right,
credit card information.Instead of that many steps,we shorten it to this many steps.And, we noticed sales
dramatically increased.So, conversion matters.You have to measure everything.You're looking at data,
you're looking at your pages.You have to know exactly what is going on.It is not so much just about the product.It's about your customers,
visitors behavior, right.And when you have got some
products that are selling well,make sure you feature
those on your homepage.That's key number one.Key number two, you need
to have a content strategyas well as a paid strategy.So, we were running a
lot of ads on Google,Pay-Per-Click, we were
spending a lot of money, right.But, in the beginning
especially no one knowswhy they should come to
our store, online store.So, we were just doing a lot of that.But then, later on, we also
spent quite a bit of moneyoptimizing our website
for search engine traffic,just organic traffic.So, we were creating a lot of pagesand rank certain key words in Googleso people could find us just organically.So, in the beginning what's interestingis 90-somewhat percent of our
sales were coming from paid.Pay-Per-Click, we were
spending a ton of money, right,To get some traction. But later on,actually later, a few years afterwardswithin the company, the
revenue, then it's almost 60-40.60% of our sales were coming
from organic, free traffic.Well, I wouldn't say they're
entirely free because wedo invest time and money
creating content for them.But, only 40% comes from paid.So, to do E-commerce I believeif you have your own store,
meaning you're not sellingthrough Amazon 'cause Amazon
already has all the traffic.But let's say you're not
selling through Amazon,you have your own E-commerce store.I believe you need to have
a very good organic strategyas well as a paid strategy.And, last lesson I wanna share with youwhen it comes to E-commerce
is, inventory kills.Inventory kills.What would kill you the most is youhave way too much inventory of
products that you don't sell.Depends on what kinda products
you sell, do they expire?Assuming your products don't expireyou're gonna sit on a lot
of products that don't sell.And, you're sitting in
a lot of cash, right?So, you've gotta be very, very carefulwhen it comes to inventory management.Now, before I sold the E-commerce company,we were sitting on millions,millions of dollars worth of inventory.Now, I'm glad I could
sell all of that, right.And get all that money back, otherwiseif there's any problem,we would have been sitting
on a bunch of dead inventory.So, be very, very careful,very mindful when it comes to inventory.I would rather you have fewer
products in the beginning.Test it out to see what your customer,your marketplace likes, right,
whoever your audience is.See what they like first,
before you go crazyand have so many skew, have
so many units and products.Oh, I'm gonna buy 1000
of these, 2000 of thesebecause you'll be tempted.Wow you know, if I order way more,my cost per unit goes way down.But, what you don't think
about, you don't consider,factor in is, what if it doesn't sell?Now, you're sitting on
thousands of somethingthat it doesn't sell.It becomes a big problem,
so inventory kills.And, this is also why I
stress if you're thinkingof earning more money,
before you go out thereand start an E-commerce business, I talkabout that through my wealth triangle.You should develop your
high income skill first.You can go watch my
high income skill video.I talk about why it's so criticalto develop your high income skill firstbefore you go out there and
start that scalable business,before you start that E-commerce business.So, go watch that video.

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