Online business is indeed a challenge that presents a number of important considerations and first steps for beginners.

Enter the world of online business, and you’ll find yourself at a crossroads that requires decisions about choosing the products you’ll sell, in-depth knowledge of who your target market is, and which platforms are best suited to market your products.

But that’s just the beginning of a long list of considerations, efficiently managing inventory, coping with shipping complexities, as well as ensuring that your customer service is maintained at the highest level are also integral components on the road to success in online business.

1. Determine the products to be sold

Quoted
Instead, start
by looking for prospective products through market research, the following are steps that can be followed to attract buyers:
Product research:

Decide on the product you want to sell, if you have an electronic goods supplier acquaintance, note down the capital price of the item.
Do research on various marketplaces such as Tokopedia, Shopee, Blibli, and Lazada to find out the selling price of the product.
Pay attention to the number of items sold to identify market demand.

Profit margin analysis
Pricing:

Determine whether the profit margin is profitable enough.
If you want to sell your products at a higher price, learn effective branding, marketing and selling techniques.

2. Increasing sales (Selling)

After determining the product, the next step is how the product can attract buyers, one of the biggest challenges in selling online is getting testimonials or reviews. Here are some strategies that can be used:

Get an early review:

The Unethical Way: Buying your own items to get reviews, while it can be done, is unethical and costly because of the admin fees.

The Right Way: Direct friends or customers from social media to buy through e-commerce and provide incentives such as discount vouchers or free shipping promos, this will help increase the number of products sold and reviews.

3. Store optimization

The third step is to optimize the online store to make it attractive and trusted by consumers, here are some ways to optimize the store:

Product Display:

Make product names, descriptions, and photos as attractive as possible and different from other stores.
Add clickbait elements such as the word “free” and provide small attractive bonuses, such as free packing bubbles or cute bags.

Using ads:

Utilize the advertising features in the marketplace, focus on search ads with specific product names to avoid unserious clicks and save advertising budget.
Take advantage of promotional features provided by the marketplace, such as free broadcast or chat to customers who have purchased.
Increase traffic, use promotional features and chat to upsell products to customers who have already bought.

By following the steps above, beginners can get a clear picture of what needs to be done to start and optimize an online business.