7 Traits of Successful E-Commerce Venture

Looking to venture into E-commerce business? It’s a fairy tale to business owners. Imagine a business that operates 24 X 7, automated, without their presence and keep generating passive income to them. All they need is capital to get the website up, do some advertising and a fantastic idea (or copy others fantastic idea).

This is where the fairy tale turns into nightmare. They will be wondering with all the money they put in (and the fantastic idea they copied), it is absolutely no where near what they hoping. The dream business venture turns into a disaster.

Yes, it is not easy to build a successful e-commerce venture, but it is possible. Throughout my own consulting and ‘online shopping’ experience, here are some of the ‘traits’ that required to have a successful e-commerce website.

1. Dedicated Owner
There are nothing more important than having the owner that dedicated to run the e-commerce site. The owner must spend time to learn about the business, outsourcing, doing and supervising yourselves. Many people have the false perception that e-commerce business is something that you setup and forget, which is a fatal first step.

2. Intuitive Design and Navigation
The internet users now have very low tolerance against ‘unusable’ website. If the website makes the visitors a struggle to navigate, they wouldn’t make the effort to spend more than 30 seconds on your page. And pre-used templates don’t cut it too.

3. Search Engine Results Page Domination
Natural Search engine optimization still is the most inexpensive and ultra-targeted source of the best customers for you. If you dominate most of the results page ( where most of the people that look for the products will end up at your website), half of the battle is almost won.

4. Well-executed PPC Campaign
Dominating the search engine results page takes time and a hell lot of effort. If you wish to see instant result, search engine advertising (or Pay Per Click) is the way. But don’t forget this is also the fastest way to burn your money. The campaign has to be very well-executed especially ensuring on the positive return on investment using analytics and tracking.

5. Effective Customer Relationship Management
In other words, keeping your existing customer informed and happy. The support email should be answered within hours (not days); have a platform (such as a blog or forum) to find a way to communicate to your customers - finding out their complaints and needs;

6. Attractive Affiliate Program
Or you can call the power to turn customers (or even non-customers) into your most effective sales person. With the floods of affiliates program on the internet, your offer needs to be really attractive (such as dreamhost’ USD$97 offer) in order to stand out the crowd.

7. Offline Support
The online world is cold. You can’t see your sales person face to face and the actual product is selling. Any offline methods are a significant advantage. Phone support and physical shop presence is a definite big plus.