Start Your Online Business Like A Pro

Are you an entrepreneur? Or maybe thinking about opening a start-up? Worried about how you will manage everything? Or maybe how you will meet the checklist without any mistake? Of course, starting an online business out of scratch might be hectic. Introducing a new business is nothing less than a war for entrepreneurs. The market is competitive and fierce. And one wrong decision might affect everything you have put at stake!

But no worries, we are here to support you in your new journey with some secret professional tips that successful brands follow but will never disclose. Here, we will discuss everything in detail with a good number of extra secondary sources that will make the things further clear. So here we go, 12 pro tips you need to know about starting a business. Without much anticipation, let us jump to the point-

1. Product choosing

Product choosing is one of the crucial decisions you have to take as an entrepreneur. There are numerous products and numerous businesses in the market. Before brainstorming and deciding, the first thing you must do is market research. Look out for products that are in trend. Trending products tend to go out of interest once the trend is over. Niche products tend to serve only a specific group of people. You might need to consider choosing products that require high manufacturing costs. Instead, start with high demand products regardless of time and people. Start with products that are innovative and in here to solve everyday problems. For example, if you are into the female hygiene business, you can bring menstrual cups. They are sustainable, innovative and still a new business in the market. Unlike other temporarily trendy products, it is a commodity product that will always be in demand.

Next, you must decide the type of your product. Do you want to start a business with your beautifully and carefully made handicrafts? Or maybe you want to resell products? Handicraft is an excellent idea with a great customer base. People who are into handicrafts tend to love innovative products. So no matter which products you desire to sell, make sure they are creative enough to grab attention and make their place in this demanding visionary market.

Furthermore, you need to keep open to a bunch of different products. Having a combination and variety of products will contribute to your profit margin in a good way. When customers have various options to choose from, they won’t hesitate to trust your page out for the first time.

However, please keep in mind that choosing what type of product you want to sell is also integrally connected to how you want to do it. That means your product choosing needs to consider a few other matters that we will discuss later today.

2. How to Sell

The next thing you must decide is how you will work your ideas. You can bring exclusive products to only your page, or you can work as a reseller. Third-party can also be found beneficial if you are looking for wholesaling. The wholesale market is quite appealing. But as a new start-up, you might need to reconsider storing a lot of products right from the beginning. Because the market is competitive, your business might not start with a kick. So, start buying in bulk only when you have a reliable customer base.

Reselling is a business strategy where you have to work as a mediator between your customers and brands. You can take this strategy in two ways- either on a pre-order basis or spot basis. Spot purchase is a technique where you store products from different brands in your possession. Customers can order them any time they want. The spot purchase system is a good decision if you don’t want to keep the inconveniences of third party distributors.

Taking pre-orders for overseas brands is one of the most incredible business ideas you might want to put to use. The idea is simple. Take orders from your customers for their preferred brands’ products place the order on the leading brand websites. The next step will be having them shipped to your house through a third party, cargo, or airway, meanwhile work as a mediator yourself, and then send the products to their respective owners. This system is prevalent and high on demand since individual orders cost much more shipping than bringing in a bulk amount. One important point to note here is if you are new in business, you might want to count the service charge, weight charge, and estimated delivery time correctly and give a fixed rate for foreign currency before taking the orders. This calculation will save you a lot of hassles and keep your business professional simultaneously.

3. Name selection

Name selection might sound the easiest, but it is one of the most consequential decisions you need to make now. Your name must reflect your vision, your products and your values. Many businesses do not get the attention they deserve only because of their names. If names are not relevant to your business, it will take more than usual time for people to recognize them. The name must be innovative yet simple, easy to use. It is often better to stick with one or two words, at best three. The more appealing it is to ears, the more people will be interested in your business. Do not overemphasize complex vocabulary for your business name. People tend to lose interest if the name is not known to them or is too difficult to pronounce. Keep something that can be pronounced and used without any lingual issue.

Pro tip – just keep it short and straightforward.

4. Logo selection & Branding

After deciding on the basic ideas and name selection, you need to prepare your business for the visual competition. Apart from names, business logos tend to attract attention more quickly. Your logos have to be simple yet elegant. A relevant logo for your business will elevate the interest of people. Eye-catching and creative logos will surely get the job done for you. Tensed how to create one? No worries. You can either get one done with your preferences from many professionals available in the field. Or, if you are on a low budget or don’t want to spend much on a logo, just create one yourself using the free graphics app you can find online. Many apps offer limited free features that are actually quite good for any beginner. Apps like Adobe and Canva are a few of the most popular apps in this regard in the market right now.

As a business entrepreneur, you need to understand that your logo is a brand itself. So how should you make your business a renowned brand? Branding your products might seem a bit difficult, but not as much as you think.

5. Channel

After you have generated the business idea, you need to make it visible to people and reach them. Business pages are one of the most utilized ideas right now. Renting a place for business purposes is both problematic and expensive. Especially if you’re just starting a business, it can really take much off your entire budget. On the contrary, online business pages can be operated through social media sites and from home. You can not afford to suffer a loss from a physical store or office. Hence, it might be the best choice to use the global village and continue your work on the internet. Going for e-commerce as a business method can be really promising, and convenient too!

6. Page management

Social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Telegram are currently being used for business purposes by many entrepreneurs. While WhatsApp and Telegram are more suitable for taking orders and giving updates, Facebook and Instagram are more compatible for product marketing. WhatsApp and Telegram are messaging apps that hide previous conversations unless you opt to find them by scrolling or searching bar. Hence they are a bit troublesome. On the other hand, Facebook and Instagram offer you a platform where you can post the images, sizes, pricing and the further necessary details in one place. They tend to keep them in your page profile, for which any customer can gain access to them anytime they want.

Another great initiative taken by Facebook and Instagram is their marketplace service. You can put up your product on sale there with the pricing and contact details. Whenever a potential customer tries to look out for products similar to your business, your products on the marketplace will be suggested to them. The search engine of Meta allows efficiency in reaching customers. The icing on the top is that all three- Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp are Meta products that will enable you to sync them and use them simultaneously. Of course, that might not be the easiest for you when you are just starting in the field, but guess what? LazyChat is here for you to take off the burden for you. We offer services to take care of the page management dynamics for you while you only need to give us the details. To learn more about how to see it here.

7. Website Development

Thinking of making your business more accessible and reachable? Getting a website for your business is a great idea. Studies have shown that people tend to put on more trust in companies that have their own websites. Having a website will help you keep track of orders and customer profiles. Websites automatically update your stock details on their own. Customers also feel comfortable placing an order anytime they want without having to wait for any personal assistance. It is, in fact, convenient for customers to put desired products in a cart and place an order on a digital channel.

Do not know how to build a website? You can use the Single-page Website from LazyChat. All you need is to upload your products, and your website will be build automatically! Of course you can do some modifications on your own, but you do not need to be a tech expert to do so!

8. Authorization and Legal Implications

Now that you have a start-up page and a website. The next thing you need to do is get authorization for your business. You may consider consulting an attorney before starting if your product line requires it. You have to be careful about everything, from your name to page or website content, that they do not violate any kind of law or sensitive issues. Another important thing is to make sure your name and logo do not match with any existing company on the market. Attorneys can prove to be really useful for any kind of paperwork you need as well.

Employment law is one of the core issues businesses must follow, but unfortunately, a lot of people might overlook it. As your business grows, you will need to recruit more people and to do so, you have to be very clear with the law from the very beginning. Of course, this might not seem that important if you are just beginning the journey on a limited sphere or online. Still, you need to comply with this segment nevertheless.

Now, many businesses do not wish to go through legal processes. But if you are opting to make your business a pleading brand, you must start with legal matters now. First, contact the local governmental agencies regarding their laws and orders concerning your business types. They will provide you with the requirements in detail. Next, you need permission from the zoning officer of your area to do a business, even if it is e-commerce or a home business.

Furthermore, you need to focus on the tax details and requirements. Even e-commerce start-ups need to become taxpayers based on nature, location, and other business variables. Fulfilling all legal requirements will not only keep you off the bay of any unwanted legal issues, but it will also ensure a reasonable basis for your business. Customers are nowadays cautious and show more interest in legally authorized businesses.

9. Addressing target audience

Now that you have a start-up, how to reach potential customers? Addressing the target audience can be a real deal. But with proper knowledge and guidance, it won’t be a tough job either. First, you need to understand who your target audience is. Your approach has to be based on what age and social group your potential customers are. For example, if you are selling baby products, your target audience should be men and women aged 20 to 40. Or, in cases where you are into the skincare business, you have to consider every age group as your potential customer since it is a highly increasing trend.

Now that you have understood your target audience through market and product research, you need to find a way to address them in a proper and friendly manner. Today, many businesses address their customers through fictive kin terms, which help them elevate their seller-buyer relationships. But this also depends on what kind of business you are into. Just like an elderly woman would not want you to call her by her name, a teenager might not feel comfortable if you address her as “Ma’am”. Even though this seems like a very trivial issue, this has a more significant impact that might not be visible at first.

10. Customer support

One of the business requirements that entrepreneurs worry about the most is customer support. Customer services can be tricky since it needs a proper understanding of the market and customers. A business might attract new customers through its range of products and other variables, but it will continue to keep its customers for a long time through its continuous service. Starting a business will give you the experience of meeting different people. Some customers might be rude to you for no reason, some might want to bargain with you despite having fixed pricing, or some might just cancel their orders at the last moment. But what you need to do is keep calm. Always behave nicely with your customers and the potential ones as well, help them with any kind of assistance they need, make their experience with you exciting. Customers tend to shop from businesses either where they have bought stuff from before or companies that offer good customer support. Extend your support to them after the delivery of the products as well. If they receive proper help from your business, they will never be hesitant to shop from you in future, even if the first experience of the products were not up to their expectations. Many people are reluctant to buy quality products from famous businesses because they lack timely and proper services. As a business owner, you must ensure timely response and adequate solutions to the problems and queries of your customers.

Frequently asked questions or FAQs is also a great initiative in a start-up. Customers often have specific basic and similar questions, like the policy of ordering from your business or the delivery charges around the country, whether you deliver outside local areas or as such. Suppose you have an online platform for your business. In that case, you can quickly establish a FAQ platform with the help of LazyChat.

Of course, maintaining relationship with customers is a tough job. But why are you worrying when LazyChat is here to give you the experience of hundreds of workers providing the customer support people need? LazyChat will handle everything, from assisting your customers by replying to their queries to taking their orders. It will also allow you to get every detail documented for you. All you need to do is just sit there and maintain the state and delivery of the products. Want to know more about how LazyChat can sort out customer issues? Visit here.

11. Logistics support

Logistics is still one area that lacks proper attention from many business owners. As a result, many fail to survive in the highly competitive market. After putting so much time, effort and money into this business, if you do not get proper logistics to support, you eventually will not flourish. A lot of companies suffer from losses only due to their incompetent logistics support. So what do we understand by logistics support? Logistics support consists of the flow of things and ensuring the availability of products needed for the dispatching of a business’s products. It includes delivery service as well.

You can have two options in this regard- handle the deliveries on your own or use a third-party agency. Third-party delivery services will register you as a merchant. Whenever you place a pickup request, they will receive the parcels from your warehouse and deliver them to your customers. There are several delivery agencies that you sign up to. RedEx, Pathao, Steadfast, and Paperfly are examples of the most popular delivery agencies in Bangladesh. These agencies provide detailed information about the whereabouts of your parcels. Some of them also offer customer profiles that allow you to check if any new customer has ever been related to any fraud scenario or cancelled the orders without valid reasons. This delivery success rate profiling is an excellent initiative by these agencies.

Another dynamic you need to consider is the delivery areas you want to cover. If you are in the food business, you have to understand the range of spaces you can cover. Suppose the products do not reach the customers in due time and in proper condition. In that case, you will suffer a loss eventually, be that financially or to the image of your business. Also, keep the delivery charges and service fees in mind before deciding on a third party delivery service. Even if you handle the delivery on your own, you will need to calculate the costs of transportation, packaging, goods, service charges. As a start-up, you need to find one that will offer reasonable delivery charges with minimal service charges. Even customers sometimes prefer to choose brands that provide lower delivery costs compared to other competitive similar brands. Hence, selecting a good- efficient to your business- delivery service is a must.

12. Promoting Business

Now that you have launched a business, or maybe about ready to do so, how do you promote it? Reaching audiences is a crucial part of maintaining a business. Promoting your business will bring many new potential customers. Today, you can use some creative ways for that. For instance, if you have a social media page or website for your business, the product photography is a necessity. Suppose your product photographs are attractive and appealing enough. In that case, they will have the highest potential of selling out the products in no time. Product photography needs more attention than other types of photographs. Thinking why? Because customers make their shopping decisions online based on what they see. If your products are photographed in bad lighting, have an inadequate or inappropriate background, blur, imbalance proportions, or any such inaccuracies, they will fail to keep old customers and attract new customers. Need a few tips for product photography? View this.

Next, now that we have nicely photographed products to put up on the internet, whether a page or a website, you need to spread it among as many people as you can. Page boosting is a good option you can use here. Facebook and Instagram offer page expanding facilities like websites. Through this boost, you can reach many people as sponsored posts. However, choosing which page to grow and how can be tricky. But guess what! We already have a few beneficial tips ready for you.

Another efficient way to promote your business is through customer reviews. Ask your customers who are satisfied with your products and services to give you ratings and judgments based on their experiences. New potential customers will find it more assuring to put their trust in your business if they hear the experience of other buyers. You can also promote your business through various entrepreneur groups or general relevant groups.

Conclusion

Now that we have discussed the professional tips for your start-ups, it seems a bit easy, right? Even if it looks a bit tricky, don’t worry. LazyChat will eventually lessen your workload and make maintaining a business more accessible than ever. Because we believe in making your business visions ours. So what are you waiting for? Get ready and start your new business totally like a PRO.