How Choosing the Right eCommerce Platform is Critical To Your Success

A lot more goes into building a successful e-commerce business than you might think.

 

The way some people talk about e-commerce, you might think it’s a fully automated business model that doesn't suffer the same pains as, say, a brick-and-mortar storefront, or a creative agency that’s taken up shop at a local We Work.

But that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, e-commerce can be just as challenging as any other type of business. And in some cases, even more challenging than a more conventional company, simply because it is so reliant upon one single variable: a third-party platform.

 

In order to build an e-commerce business, you need to leverage a third-party platform like 

BigCommerce

,
Shopify

,
WooCommerce
,
Volusion
or
Magento
 
. Sure, you can sell products independently through a custom-built website, but in order to really scale your operation, at a certain point you’re going to need one of these platforms.

But any e-commerce entrepreneur will tell you that the biggest challenge in e-commerce is dealing with the limitations of these platforms. This is exactly what Colton Chorpenning, the marketing lead at 

Veppo

 

, faced as he migrated his site from BigCommerce to Shopify Plus – and then back again to BigCommerce.

“It was a $30,000 mistake for us to realize that the Shopify Plus e-commerce platform wasn’t right for us,” he said. “They rely heavily on third-party apps to provide many essential functions, forcing vendors to install dozens of monthly subscription apps and then figure out how to make them all work together. We eventually moved back to BigCommerce, where at least we had more control over our business.”

When you look at the data, it’s easy to see the war raging between the various eCommerce Platforms vying for a piece of the explosive market.

 

, online sales exceeded $100 billion, up 16.3% from this same quarter a year ago. And if that’s not enough to make your jaw drop, Amazon’s total sales on Prime Day in 2017 exceeded
$2 billion
.

The eCommerce Business Model is incredibly profitable, not just for the vendors but for the platforms that help these vendors scale from modest up to even nine-figure businesses.

 

So, before you make the same mistake as Veppo, here are four things you should consider when selecting the right e-commerce platform for your business.

 

1. Calculate the Costs. All of Them.

All platforms have costs associated with them. Which means, if you’re coming out the gate with a new business or product, make sure you can support the cost of an e-commerce platform before you spend the money.

 

“This was one of the reasons we actually ended up leaving BigCommerce originally,” said Chorpenning. “They increased their prices, and at the time we didn’t understand why. Of course, it wasn’t until after we made the move away from them that we realized why those costs were justified. So, my suggestion to other e-commerce entrepreneurs is to work in this cost from the beginning, and pad it heavily." The platform is one thing you shouldn’t skimp on; it's an investment for your business, and an important one.

 

Another thing to keep in mind is whether you’ll be paying a flat monthly fee or if you should expect to pay more for transactions, bandwidth, server storage, apps and plug-ins down the road. All of these costs need to be considered in your decision, to ensure they fit well within your business model and existing cash flow.

 

2. Don’t Believe the Hype. Do Your Research.

 

Just like anything else in business, don’t base your purchase solely off the marketing associated with the brand.

 

Take the time to do your homework on each of the platforms you’re considering. Get on the phone with a sales rep and ask as many questions as you need to. Make sure you fully understand what you’re signing up for, and confirm that the functionality that’s required for your business to operate successfully is included in what you’re paying for. 

 

Determine whether the platform serves all the functions your business requires, and even ask about things that seem basic, such as editing orders or automating emails to customers. E-commerce platform companies have their own marketing strategies and it can be easy to believe the hype and read positive testimonials that make you believe it’s the next big thing out there. But that isn’t always the case; make sure you do your homework. Not every platform is right for every business.

3. Make Sure Your Team Can Use It

 

It’s amazing how different a product experience can be based on its user interface.

 

Before you sign up for a specific platform, make sure you think hard about who on your team is going to be managing it—and see which interface they like better. Remember, you’re going to be spending a lot of time in there managing your business, so if the interface is clunky or confusing to you (or someone on your team), that’s going to pose problems and inefficiencies.

 

The truth is, e-commerce platforms are supposed to make it easier for businesses to sell products and services to their customers—and to make the customer happier by streamlining the transaction process. So, unless those primary goals are being accomplished, it’s the wrong fit for your company.

 

And you’re much better off learning those hard lessons before you build your entire business on a platform that isn’t the right fit.

 

4. Select The Right Hosting Company 

 

The same due diligence applies to selecting your hosting company. The last thing you would want is to go through all the effort of selecting the right e-commerce platform, only to have problems with your servers. Not to mention, a poor web hosting platform can have a negative impact on your search rankings because it can cause your site loading times to be slow, or worst-case scenario, cause site downtimes. 

 

Researching the different hosting options upfront is also key because switching hosting companies isn’t an easy feat. In some cases, you will need the help of a developer to back up the entire site and help you move it over to a new host, which can take days. 

 

Some important questions to ask of any hosting company before signing on are:

• Do they provide 24/7 support?
• Do they provide daily backups of your site?
• Will your site will be on a shared server? If so, how many other sites are on one server at any given time?
• What are the security precautions that need to be taken when you are sharing a server with other companies?
• Will the shared server impact your outgoing emails to customers in the event that one of the other companies on the server gets
  blacklisted as spam?

Bottom line is this: after all the time, money, and effort companies put into designing a site that will convert traffic into sales, it’s of utmost importance to ensure the site is up and running all of the time. The host is where your site will live, and that should be on the most reliable and effective service you can get. 

Originally Published at https://www.forbes.com/

Boost Your eCommerce Sale : 2019 Ultimate Guide

You did the math. It might just work, this last-ditch effort to Boost eCommerce Sales by slashing your prices, practically giving your products away. Just this once. Maybe your customers will come back and buy more. Maybe they’ll leave you some glowing reviews and that’ll be the spark you need to finally get some traction.

At least, that’s the hope. Maybe your last hope for making this whole ecommerce business work, if you’re brutally honest with yourself.

If selling stuff were as easy as everyone says, why do 37,700,000 results come back for searches like, “How can I increase my sales quickly?” Skim through the articles on the first page, and you’ll find a whole lot of tactical advice – and some of it will work.
You could certainly chase after the tactic of the month to generate more sales, just hoping to keep your cash flow in the black, of course. But what if you could step back, get off that roller coaster, and go after what probably enticed you into this business in the first place?

What if…

• You could build the kind of sellable asset that would set you and your family up for life?
• You never spent another night tossing and turning, worrying about how you’ll keep your store afloat?
• Your business became invulnerable – to imitators, platform evolutions, bargain basement competitors?

Our Promise: We’ll get into tactics you can use, including how social media can increase online sales. But if you’re serious about scaling your business, building strong, and winning loyal customers for the long-term, we need to start by addressing a hard reality.

Want to Boost Ecommerce Sales? It’s Going to Take Time or Money

I know what you’re thinking…

It’s a chicken and egg thing. If you had “extra” money lying around, you wouldn’t be searching for advice on how to Grow eCommerce sales. You’d just hire an advertising whiz to do it for you. If you already had “extra” time, it would probably be because your business was generating so many sales that you could finally come up for air and enjoy some of that freedom that drew you into ecomm in the first place.

Besides, many ecommerce owners have their money tied up in inventory. Over and over, they’ve heard, “Debt is bad. Debt is dangerous. Debt will cripple your business and leave you ruing the day you took such a foolish risk by borrowing.”
And this is where people run into trouble.

Actually, It’s Funding Your Own Inventory That’s Stupid

Let me clarify. Funding your own inventory after you’ve got proof that people will buy your products is stupid. Many brand owners in the Capitalism.com community have grown seven- to eight-figure businesses – starting with less than $5,000. They bootstrap, putting their own money at risk to start, often seeing that investment turn into monthly revenue of $100,000 or more.

A safe way to generate a nice ROI, right?
On the surface, sure. But it’s also a sure way to hit the kind of plateau that’ll paralyze you, a state that’s anything but safe. Why? Because it’s like going into a fight with one hand tied behind your back. Without margin, you can’t make good moves, jump on opportunities, or recover from failed tests.

It’s this stubborn determination to self-fund that leaves business owners puzzled, lamenting, “I’m selling $200K a month – but I’m STILL strapped. I can’t even afford to hire people to help me… in fact I can’t even pay myself.”

Huge mistake.
The worst part of having your money tied up in inventory – a consistent, predictable expense – is that you can’t invest it in multipliers that could deliver an exponentially higher ROI. That’ll leave you scraping by, desperate to increase your sales, stuck with perpetual cash flow problems.

Originally Published at https://www.capitalism.com

20 eCommerce Forums and Communities You Need to Join

Online sellers/merchants often work alone, particularly when starting out.
Forums are perfect places to connect with like the minded, ask for help and provide help for others, discuss each other’s problems, share experience, make new business contacts or simply have a cozy chat.

Whether you’re trying to expand your biz to another country or learn the best payment processors to connect with your online store, it all comes down to the advice that you receive from people who have played around with tactics and tools in the past.

Here is a list of helpful online seller forums for merchants. There are eCommerce Forums, small business forums, social media forums and UX forums which are useful for online merchants. All of the forums are active. Most of the forums are free, though some offer additional private groups.

eCommerce Forums

Forums that Focus on eCommerce

1. eCommerce Fuel Forum

It’s a private community for experienced store owners. All members are required to own or work for a 6 or 7 figure store to join.
The private community is made up of approximately 1,000 store owners and professionals.
The community was started by Andrew Youderian, an experienced eCommerce entrepreneur who has founded and grown numerous online businesses.
No newbies are allowed in this forum.

2. Shopify eCommerce University – online seller forum

If you are a Shopify store owner, this is a forum you must sign up for.
Having said that, it’s still not a bad idea to bookmark this forum if you’re using a different platform.
Some of the threads include information for eCommerce Marketing, drop shipping, crowdfunding and manufacturing.

3. Digital Point eCommerce forum

Digital Point is one of the biggest forums in the world, the eCommerce section is filled with threads for chatting with folks on what your next step should be when scaling up your store.
You should check some of the hot topics like “What is the best eCommerce site for online selling” or “Is it Worth Advertising on Bing Ads and Google Adwords?”
Everyone on the page will give an honest opinion on how you should move a certain way to help create more sales.
It’s a good forum where you can learn everything from eCommerce to SEO to social media.

4. Ecommerce bytes

Ecommerce Bytes has tons of content in terms of the blog, podcast links and other information to guide you through your eCommerce journey.
You’ll also be able to post your own questions and suggestions. Ecommerce bytes covers almost everything on earth.

5. BigCommerce forum

BigCommerce has a very extensive forum profile that shows things on a more question and answer kind of basis.
The forum has separate sections for Announcements & Introductions, “How To” Questions, Marketing + Ideas, and Bigcommerce University Discussions.
Your single destination to find answers, stay informed, and make connections to scale your business. Be sure to log in so you can ask questions, join discussions, submit ideas, review events and more!

6. The Web Retailer Forum

Web Retailer is a free community for businesses who sell through online marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon, with over 12,000 members globally.
It helps them find the best software for their needs, discuss the latest issues and trends, build their knowledge of the industry, and learn to become more effective sellers.
Web Retailer Forum Members receive a weekly newsletter covering the latest eCommerce news, discussions and reviews, and profiles of innovative new software.

Business – Online Seller Forums

7. Small Business Forum

Small Business Forum is a forum for entrepreneurs — newbies and experienced.
Board categories are Your Small Business, Financial & Legal, Marketing, Your Website, Community Talk, and Forum Business.

Originally Published at https://emergeapp.net

Email Copywriting : 19 Formulas to Use on Your Next Campaign

When you improve your Email Copywriting Skills, you gain access to a whole new tool set. Sure, Email marketing can work even if you’re a lousy copywriter, but I wouldn’t want to take that chance.
You can either hire a copywriter to handle your email campaigns or you can learn email copywriting skills yourself. Either way, you need to know the basics so you can recognize good and bad examples of the form.

What Is Email Copywriting?

Email copywriting is the actual copy — the words — in your Email Subject Lines and body content. It’s how you express an idea to convince prospective customers to convert.
In theory, it’s no different from any other form of copywriting. However, it has a few unique qualities that deserve serious consideration:

• Brevity
• High level of persuasiveness
• Emphasis on the connection between the subject line and CTA
• No fluff, filler, or tangents

The best email copywriting convinces the reader to not only consume the entire email, but to engage with it. In most cases, that means clicking a link in the email — your CTA — and arriving at your desired page to convert on an offer.

How to Write Email Copy

When you write email copy, you must start with a specific goal. What do you want your subscribers to do after opening and reading the email?
Maybe you’re promoting a flash sale, launching a product, driving traffic to your latest blog posts, or inspiring subscribers to submit user-generated content.
Whatever the case, every word in your email should drive subscribers toward fulfilling your goal.
For instance, if you want them to buy your newest product, focus on touting its benefits for the reader. What problem can it solve? How can it help them achieve their goals?
Most importantly, why should they act right now?
Don’t worry, we’re going to get into the nuts and bolts of this process in a minute. First, though, I need you to understand how powerful email marketing can be.

Interesting Facts You Need to Know About Email Marketing Copywriting

Every single day, 270 billion emails fly from outbox to inbox. That’s a ton of communication.

Originally Published at https://www.hellobar.com/

 

SEO for Ecommerce Store - A 30+ Points to Optimize Your Online Business

With a well-structured ecommerce SEO plan, you can successfully optimize your online store to increase website traffic, attract more shoppers, and generate more sales.
To help you learn how to optimize ecommerce websites and reap these benefits, we created this step-by-step guide and ecommerce SEO checklist.
The guide and checklist offer step-by-step directions to:

• Lay the foundation for strong eCommerce SEO
• Get to know your industry and audience
• Conduct keyword research
• Optimize each page of your on-site content
• Build authority for your site and brand
• Check your site for SEO problems and errors

SEO For eCommerce

Lay the Foundation for Strong Ecommerce SEO

A successful ecommerce SEO strategy starts by laying a strong foundation that will support all of your other SEO efforts. When you launch your store or work to improve your current online shop, go through the following steps to improve technical SEO and make your website more appealing to search engines.
A successful ecommerce SEO strategy starts by laying a strong foundation that will support all of your other SEO efforts.

• Use a mobile-friendly, responsive website design. With more and more online traffic coming from mobile and tablet devices, it’s imperative to use a mobile-friendly, responsive design for your website. It provides a better experience for users, and it also helps your website rank higher in search. 

• Install an SSL certificate. On an ecommerce site, users may enter sensitive information such as their contact and payment details. It’s essential that you have an SSL certificate on your site to add an extra layer of security. An SSL certificate is also a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm, making it an important detail for both user security and helping your site show up in search results.

• Check your site loading speed. Users are quick to leave a website if it takes too long to load. Search engines are also more likely to give better rankings to a website that loads quickly, so ensure that your site is set up and optimized to load quickly.

• Install Google Analytics. Understanding how users engage with your site will help you create more strategic plans for improvements related to site design, keyword use, content, and site structure. Install Google Analytics so you can start collecting data and getting insights right away.

• Create a Google Webmaster account. A Google Webmaster account will give you access to tools that help you learn about your site as well as manage things such as crawler access, sitemaps, and URL preferences. Create a Google Webmaster account as soon as you set up your site so you can configure these settings.

• Create a sitemap and submit it to Google and Bing. A sitemap is an outline of your website. Its primary purpose is to help search engines review and understand the content on your site. Create a sitemap and submit it to Bing and Google so the search engines can view and begin to rank your site.

Get to Know Your Industry and Target Audience

To create a strong ecommerce SEO strategy, you need to know about your industry and your target audience. Understanding your industry and target audience allows you to conduct better research and identify the best marketing opportunities.

• Create a buyer persona. Begin to get to know your audience by creating a buyer persona that dives deep into the demographic and psychographic details of your ideal audience. Knowing these details will help you identify the keywords most likely to attract your target buyers.

Understanding your industry and audience allows you to conduct better research and identify the best marketing opportunities.
 
How to Create a Buyer Persona: Use this buyer persona template to create a comprehensive profile of your ideal customer.

• Outline the buyer’s journey. Once you create a detailed description of your ideal buyer, outline the path they take on their way to buy from your ecommerce shop. When you understand what your ideal buyer is going through during the awareness, consideration, and decision phases, you’ll be able to identify the keywords they use at each step of the journey. You’ll also have a clear understanding of their questions, aspirations, and needs.

How to Outline the Buyer’s Journey: Use this customer journey mapping template to lay out your ideal buyer’s journey from start to finish.

• Create a list of competitors. Assessing your competitive landscape helps you get insights to create a better ecommerce SEO When you know your competitors, you can perform better keyword research. You can see how competitors attract audiences and discover where you can compete, where you can’t, and where there are opportunities to outperform others in your industry.

How to Create a List of Competitors: Use Alexa’s Audience Overlap Tool to find competitors in your industry who share your target audience. Use the information to analyze successful traffic sources, keywords, or backlinks for your closest competitors.

Original Published: https://blog.alexa.com

Professional and Inpirational eCommerce Website Designs for Your Business

Ecommerce Website Design is big business, and as more brands shift their focus away from the high street and onto the internet, the pressure is on to stand out with your site. As a result, we're seeing some impressively innovative, immersive and beautiful eCommerce website designs appearing. These sites don't just provide somewhere to buy a product, they offer a complete brand experience. 

eCommerce Website
Design

For e-commerce websites, the design and layout of the site can have a huge impact on sales because of usability, in addition to just the importance of making a good first impression with new visitors. A well-designed e-commerce site will provide the user with a much more pleasant experience and will make it easier for them to browse, search, and complete the checkout process. Every business demands inspiration to kick-start and brings in more clients. There are tons of e-commerce websites with

Read on for our pick of the best eCommerce website designs – these are the sites that make online shopping a joy.

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Ecommerce SEO Guide : Why SEO Matters for eCommerce Websites

If you want to get more traffic and sales to your ecommerce website, then on-page SEO is a critical first step.

There’s a multitude of how-to articles and tutorials on the web offering general SEO advice, but far fewer that specifically address the needs of ecommerce entrepreneurs.
Today, we’d like to give you a basic understanding of on-site search engine optimization for ecommerce. It will be enough to get you started, make sure you’re sending all the right signals to Google, and set you up for SEO success.

Let’s dive in.

eCommerce SEO

What is Ecommerce SEO? Definition
Ecommerce SEO is the process of making your online store more visible in the search engine results pages (SERPs). When people search for products that you sell, you want to rank as highly as possible so you get more traffic.

You can get traffic from paid search, but SEO costs much less. Plus, ad blockers and ad blindness can reduce the effectiveness of paid search, so you’ll want to optimize for search regardless.

Ecommerce SEO usually involves optimizing your headlines, product descriptions, meta data, internal link structure, and navigational structure for search and user experience. Each product you sell should have a dedicated page designed to draw traffic from search engines.
However, you don’t want to forget about static, non-product-oriented pages on your site, such as the following:

• Homepage
• About page
• F.A.Q. page
• Blog articles
• Help center answers
• Contact page

Create a list of keywords for those pages as well as related keywords. Tools like Ubersuggest make it easy to search for one long-tail keyword and find semantic keywords that go well with it.

Read Original Article at https://www.crazyegg.com/

Volusion VS Shopify - The Key Aspect You Should Consider

If you’ve been looking to build yourself an online store, chances are you’ll have come across both Shopify VS Volusion.
 
Both Shopify and Volusion are dedicated eCommerce platforms, but there are still some major differences between them. For one, Shopify has much more advanced sales features than Volusion, whereas Volusion’s strengths lie in its analytics and data tools. Volusion is much harder to get to grips with than Shopify.

When it comes to choosing between these two ecommerce website builders, there’s a lot to consider: who provides the best tools? Who offers the deepest customer insights? And who charges the least?

Volusion VS Shopify

Well, you’ll be glad to hear we’ve saved you the headache, comparing the two builders in all the key areas.

Shopify is the strongest eCommerce website Builder on the market. 

 It has the most comprehensive set of sales tools, features, and third party integrations, and really helps your business flourish.

While Shopify is the best overall, it is, of course, not for everyone. It may not have the right inbuilt features for your store, or it may not suit your taste or budget. Whatever the reason, there are other options.

Volusion is another ecommerce-specific website builder, providing lots of payment options while focusing on analytics and customer insights. Yes, these two features are great, but the builder lacks in other departments.

We’ve researched and tested each builder, and even got people just like you to test them too. So without further ado, let’s see the results of Shopify vs Volusion…

You can also see our full reviews on Shopify and Volusion here.

Read More...

Intresting eCommerce Forums and Communities for Your Business Growth

There are some great resources out there that will make your ecommerce journey a lot easier. Depending on your particular niche, you’ll be able to get great advice on how to further explore your brand. You won’t need to beat around the bush or search out online to find a good source that can help you along your social media awareness, viral content, or anything else you believe that can aid in developing your online business. Here are eCommerce Forums and communities you should join.

eCommerce Forums

Forums and Communities Geared Toward Ecommerce

1. SEO Chat

On top of having a great social media presence, this is a great forum that will enable you to create a good foundation for your ecommerce concepts. You’ll get solid information on how to build exposure for your products on a social, local, and worldwide level. The chats are very interactive and stay updated to the latest topics. Also, you’ll find good people to give the right feedback on suggestions for your products or anything else you require. 

2. The Digital Point 

This is another great online forum for your ecommerce brand. Here you can freely promote yourself and find out what things work and what doesn’t. Go to some of the topics like “What is the best ecommerce site for online selling” or “Is it Worth Advertising on Bing Ads and Google Adwords?” Everyone on the page will give an honest opinion on how you should move a certain way to help create more sales. 

3. Web Design Forums

Even though this is more focused on a design perspective, it’s still an important aspect to your brand. Why? You need a stellar design that will set yourself apart from the pack. They pay attention to detail regarding any coding issues or concerns you have that will make your site outstanding. If you have your own agency that does design work, they will give you the right tools to show to market this entity. Take a look at what’s offered on the forums.

4. Designers Talk

Overall, you want to take a look at the advice given from all perspective. From the design perspective of using certain applications to even the marketing and promoting, there’s a lot to gain on this forum. Some of the main topics they touch in the forum include: gaining more traffic, catering to your target audience, and even great email marketing solutions to help you build your store in a more inclusive realm. 

5. Small Business Forum

A straightforward approach to marketing the right way for your small business. If you need to find solid ways to market your business, this is certainly the way to go. Learn what’s the best route to take such as Paypal vs Google Checkout, cross-marketing on Ebay and other sites, etc. There’s a lot of good people on there that can guide you in the right direction in order to create a better site. If you have a small business, take heed to the advice given here. 

6. Envato Forum

If you are looking for tough love, this is the place. Any ecommerce/design project you have in mind, you’ll get critiqued here from some of the best. Sometimes this criticism can help you develop a much better product or service. This kind of rude awakening is for the better to help you take your brand to another level. Maybe there’s a way to view things a lot more efficiently than what you previously thought. 

Read Original Article at https://www.osiaffiliate.com

20+ Inpirational eCommerce Product Page Designs

For an online store, the design of product pages is important to get right. The eCommerce Product Page Design is the place where a purchase is likely to happen, and so its form and function can dictate the success of an eCommerce site.

For inspiration and ideas, check out these excellent product page designs from a variety of eCommerce sites.

Product Page Design

The Product Page can be difficult to get right. It’s typically a ‘template' reused for every single product on the site (despite the individual products varying greatly in style and popularity), while at the same time any vendor-supplied product data and images often vary greatly in amount and quality. On top of this, it’s often on the product page where users make up their mind on purchasing the item or not. Hence, we’ve observed that even small UX issues in a site’s product page implementation will often cause direct site abandonment. 

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Most Inspire and Successfull Shopify Store

Starting an online business can be intimidating. There are so many things you have to deal with, like how not to go broke, how to optimize your landing pages, or what to name your business. But, let’s put that aside for now. Let’s look for some inspiration.

We’ve gathered a list of 65 online Best Shopify Stores for you to take inspiration from.

Shopify Store

All of them are successful eCommerce businesses. Each of these businesses carved their own way to success. And, for each of them, success meant different things. Their successes vary from having high-end clients like Ben Affleck to earning multi million-dollar investments and six-figure revenues. Hopefully they’ll get you inspired about your own online business.

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Best Free Shopify Themes for Your Online Store

Hundreds of thousands of online stores use Shopify as their back-end eCommerce platform. Managing an independent eCommerce platform on your own can be a hideous task, especially when your store begins to take off, and the activity starts to increase. All that leads to more maintenance required, and more investment needed to help maintain a healthy status of the store. This is why so many have opted for Shopify, an all-in-one solution for running an eCommerce store, for corporate, brand, individual, and freelance needs. Everyone can benefit from the services that Shopify Theme Store provides.

Shopify Theme Store

Though Shopify does take care of a lot of things at once, there are still essential design aspects that you will need to take care of yourself. Managing the look and feel of the homepage, generating meta descriptions and author information for products, activating external tools for deeper analytics, adding new content for the purpose of generating organic traffic, and other tiny edits that make a huge difference. Shopify designs are by no means in short stock. However, free Shopify themes market hasn’t really picked up over the years, with only a handful of themes being available for free; comparing the availability to platforms such as WordPress or Ghost, but we put in the work to collect pretty much ALL of the free Shopify themes that you can find, we say pretty much because it’s possible we left some out, but if so — they’re very hard to find.

There will be a few extras at the bottom part of the list to help you expand the horizons of the availability of Shopify themes, but we will let you find that part yourselves, as for now — we begin the countdown of the best free Shopify themes that are available for instant download.

Read Original Article at https://colorlib.com

Inspiring eCommerce Email Template Designs and Examples

The strength of eCommerce emails grows as online shopping and mobile internet consumption reach new highs every year. Internet retailer reported that U.S. e-commerce grew 14.6% in 2015, reaching $341.7 billion in online sales. Mobile internet, on another hand, allows your customer to stay online wherever they are. So, what would be a quicker and easier approach to contact them with your most recent ideas than sending an email?

eCommerce Email Template

There are so many elements to get right. You’ve got to get across different campaigns, automation, work with designers, deploy integrations and events tracking, write copy, make sure emails are mobile responsive and optimized across all email clients… and more.

Find Awesome eCommerce Email Template Examples.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just get a blueprint to all the email campaigns you requirement for your eCommerce business? Consider the possibility that you could, inside seconds, get all the email layouts you need, prepared to go.

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The Best eCommerce Conferences and Events to Attend in 2019

For any eCommerce professional, skill development and networking are profitable devices worth having in your back pocket. Knowing the latest trends and updates in the eCommerce space guarantees that you'll be decidedly ready to take on difficulties in your work environment.

eCommerce Conferences

One of the best ways to keep current with trends in the market is by attending eCommerce Conferences. Not only are they great for listening to motivational speeches by executives from the world’s largest retailers, these occasions give great systems administration openings that can enable your business to develop.

In this post, you’ll find some of the top eCommerce expos worldwide and what you can expect from attending them, and you’ll also learn how to effectively prepare to for a conference.

Here’s some of the top eCommerce Conferences and Events in 2019:

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Common Concerns About Starting Your Own eCommerce Store

Starting a business is always a scary prospect. There are uncertainties, doubts, concerns and, dare we say, excuses that hold you back from starting. 

These are all valid feelings, but if you dig deeper, you are going to see the counter arguments that make your doubts seem pretty small. Soon, you’ll even see the multiple compelling reasons for you to start an online store—today.

Let’s address some common concerns about starting your own online store.

“I’m not tech savvy.” Or, “I don’t know where to start.”

You don’t need to be that tech savvy to get started. E-commerce platforms are very intuitive, and the learning curve isn’t steep. Think of starting an e-commerce store the way you would think about starting a brick-and-mortar business. The only difference is that your store is placed online. 

With a physical store, you learn about business practices,  the process of getting your product into the hands of your customers, the equipment and the building itself. Having an online store requires the same initial knowledge gathering, only you’re learning about it through the lens of the internet. 

Fortunately, there are many free articles that address how to set up your online store, like our beginner’s guide to Shopify. You’ll probably want to read each article in full, but here are the basics of how to get started:

1. Before you start, do your due diligence and try to research as much as you can. 
   This will not only give you the know-how, but it will also make you more comfortable and confident about your decision. Preparation brings you close to perfection.
   
2. Choose your web hosting platform. There are many easy platforms to choose from, but we recommend the most popular two because there are the most user-friendly for beginners: Shopify and Bigcommerce. 
   Plus, both of these platforms have a 14-day free trial so you can get the feel of operating your store before you commit.
   
3. Proceed with the design/theme of your online store. Don’t worry. You don’t have to be a graphic artist or an art major to do this. There are templates or themes that you can choose from which are pretty intuitive and easy to use. 

But not everyone learns in the same way. We know that it can be challenging for many people to learn by just reading articles.

So we’ve also compiled some helpful resources that are more interactive:  

• There are step-by-step videos that detail everything you need to know to launch your e-commerce business Here are the ones we’d watch first:

• Shopify Tutorial For Beginners 2019 - How To Create A Profitable Shopify Store From Scratch
  
• 2019 Shopify Tutorial & Demo For Beginners - Complete Easy Guide From Start To Finish 2019!

• There are even courses/tutorials that you can enroll to. Some are paid like this one on Skillshare or some are free and are supported by the e-commerce platform itself, like this one from Shopify. 

Alternately, you can save time and outsource the aspects that you're not familiar with. The internet is not only a resource, it’s a means of communication and sharing. You can get other people to collaborate with you and share their skills to help you with the other tasks of running your online store.

You can even have experts weigh in and point you in the right direction.

“I don’t have any business ideas.”

We got you covered. Here are some of the ideas for a lucrative e-commerce business. (Hint, you may want to start with these for brainstorming and then make them your own.)

1. Try selling special clothes. According to Shopify’s research, the top product to sell in 2019 is “shapewear.” These are undergarments usually worn by women to enhance their shape, kind of like modern-day corsets (but way more comfortable).
   
   It might be surprising, but shapewear is considered one of the best evergreen niches. An evergreen niche is a focus on a product that caters to a specific buyer while never going out of style. There will always be someone who wants to look like they’re in better shape.
2. Consider hygienic products, especially those that are subscription based. There are multiple companies with this business model such as The Dollar Shave Club and FabFitFun. This is another interesting evergreen niche, as hygiene is considered a basic need (and therefore won’t ever go out of style).
3. Also think about Cannabis products. This industry is booming this year. If you’ve already thought of riding the cannabis high (pun intended), better start now.
   
   E-commerce cannabis is perfect since it’s a focused niche, but it still has a very large audience of Gen-Z consumers. And Shopify is the best platform for cannabis brands, thanks to its explicit and vocal support for the industry.

Even if you don’t choose one of these ideas, here’s what you need to keep in mind to help you choose the best business idea for your online store:

• Start with your passion. “Do something you love and you will never work a day in your life.” If you’re passionate about something, it will radiate through what you are selling, and customers will pick up on your passion.

• Start with something you are good at. “If you’re good at something, never do it for free.” Earn from your skills. If you’re already good at something and you produce it, quality control will always be easy. Customers love a quality and skillfully made product.

• Step out of your comfort zone. This is kind of scary, but try. You never know, you may be good at something you’d never considered before.
  
  Think of Harrison Ford. He was a carpenter for George Lucas (of Star Wars fame). He did an impromptu reading for Lucas, got discovered by Stephen Spielberg and got the role of Han Solo. Acting was very far from his original career, but he became successful anyway.

• Offer services through your store. Online stores don’t just offer physical products, they also offer services, software, digital art and much more.

• If you can’t think of any customer pain points, start with your own. All people are consumers. Chances are that your pain points are also other people’s pain points. Is there anything about the current product offerings that you wish was better? 

If you’re really struggling to come up with a good idea, there is even a software that can help you look for profitable products for your online store. Just last February, Intelligynce was developed to help online sellers find products that are currently in demand.

“My business idea is not popular.”

Although you might think that to start a business you have to aim big and try to target as many customers as possible, it’s simply not true. 

We mentioned niches in an earlier section. This is where you target a certain type of customer. The more specific your product or service is, the better. Chances are, you will find a group of people that will love your niche product because it solves their unique pain points—and they won’t be able to find it anywhere else.

Think of YouTube. Several years ago, when the internet was not as big as it is now, Youtube founders just wanted a simple solution to share videos. Believe it or not, that was a specific niche back in 2005. And by just focusing on that one pain point, they became bigger and bigger until eventually, they weeded out any competition.

The secret to the success of niche businesses is the community. If a niche creates a community, it becomes a super strong force, stronger than just a group of customers.

“I’m too late to the party.”

There is a Ted Talk by psychologist and New York Times best-selling author Adam Grant in which he states that he had a failed opportunity to invest in a startup that became really successful and influential, Warby Parker.

We’re talking about a startup that was valued at $1.2 billion last year and is always the comparison or benchmark when it comes to e-commerce startups.

One of the reasons Adam didn’t back them was because the idea had already been done. But even though Warby Parker may not have been the very first of its type, they outshone their competition by being much better.

Think of why you buy one product over another one. It’s not because one company was “first.” It’s because one of the products was better. You are never too late ‘cause the party keeps going.

“I already have a job.”

Every decision has its pros and cons, including the decision of whether to leave your full-time job to start your own online business.

You might say that having a job is more financially secure than having a business. However,  having your own business can potentially lead to more financial success than would ever be possible as an employee. The more sources of income you have, the more failsafes you have if an emergency happens. 

There’s nothing wrong with having a 9 to 5. But the fact that you’re thinking about starting a business is a good sign that you want more. Whether it’s experience, control, financial success or an outlet for your passion, you want more. 

Plus, consider that running an e-commerce business isn’t always full time. You might not have to choose between your job and your business. You can have your online store on the side and still keep your job. 

Finally, remember outsourcing. You don’t have to do it all on your own. Other people can do some of the tasks for you. 

“It’s kind of risky.”

It seems overwhelming and really uncertain to start a business online because the digital world can feel volatile. 

Yet, all businesses are started on a gamble. You can’t change the external factors that could affect the success of your store, but you can prepare for these possibilities and make your likelihood to succeed higher. 

Risks are always there and struggles will come, but smart businesses will last through proper preparation and relying on the right mindset.

“I’m not sure if it will work.” Or, “I’m not sure if it will pay off.”

This is the story of MVMT watches: They started with two broke college dropouts, Jake Kassan and Kramer LaPlante. These guys  founded a watch company even though they would be competing against thousands of already established watch brands.

The odds of them succeeding were so low even adventurous investors didn’t support them. But they persisted.

Now it’s the fastest growing watch brand in the world, and last year, it was bought by Movado for $100 million. If that isn’t e-commerce success, I don’t know what is. Some might even say that profits for e-commerce are inevitable.

Still not satisfied? Look at these other stories to get inspired.

1. 10 Best Free Shopify Themes of 2019
2. Top 40 Best Shopify Stores To Learn From In 2019

“I don’t have time.”

Running an e-commerce store, like anything else, is all about proper time management. If you look at what you really need to focus on and what you actually spend your time doing, you might be surprised at how much time you could redirect to your priorities.

Originaly Published At electriceye.io