There comes a time in almost every stay-at-home mom’s life when all of her kids will be in school full-time, and she will have more time on her hands. What can they do with this extra time? Perhaps, they will decide to use that time to earn income for their family. Instead of updating their resume to launch themselves back into the corporate world, they may want to pursue their passion and open an online store.
Online or e-commerce stores are booming, and there are many moms out there experiencing success and making a nice little passive income. Some stay-at-home moms have even grown their e-commerce stores into full-blown companies. This trend is likely to continue.
The growth of online retail sales is exponential. The total sales this year in the US alone is estimated to hit a half trillion dollars. By 2022, e-commerce sales in the US could reach over $700 billion. Why not get your piece of those online sales profits?
If you are considering a stay-at-home mom career in e-commerce, the following 4 steps to launch your online store can be your quick start guide to success.
1. Brainstorm Your e-commerce Niche
Your e-commerce niche is an essential element to online success. Before you begin searching Google for the most profitable niches for online sales, you should consider the products you are interested in and/or purchase. For example, stay-at-home moms may lean a bit more toward products that help moms or children’s products.
Why would you go about finding a niche for your e-commerce store like this? One of the most important aspects of creating and launching an online store that grows, is encompassing your passion or interests. This allows you to stay motivated and to keep at it during those early stages after launch.
2. Selecting Your Online Products
Once you have a niche in mind, it’s time to choose your e-commerce products. This can be slightly challenging depending on your niche, but with a bit of due diligence, you will come up with a nice list of initial products for your online store.
Do you want to have an inventory on hand or dropship products? This is an important question. For example, having inventory is great, but you will need to think about storage space, packaging, shipping costs, having enough inventory, and more. Dropshipping on the other hand, requires you to think about shipping time and price points for each item.
After you choose inventory or dropshipping, you can choose your products. The general rule of thumb, is to net four to five times profit, including shipping, packaging, and marketing costs. So, if you want to offer a product that costs you $5, you should sell it for $20 on your e-commerce website.
3. Time to Create Your Website and Branding Guidelines
Once you have your niche, products and pricing set, it is time to begin creating your online presence. This of course, is one of the most critical aspects of any e-commerce store, since your marketplace is entirely online.
The good news is, that it is fairly easy to set up and launch a WordPress website and develop your branding guidelines. Let’s start with branding. This will require you to choose a primary color for your website and marketing materials, and two secondary colors.
Next it’s time to think about your logo. To create a logo, you definitely don’t need to be a professional designer. You can use online design platforms like Canva to design a logo and other essential marketing material.
When you have chosen your color pallette and created your logo, it’s time to create your website. First, you need to think about hosting. It is best to choose a hosting provider that offers WooCommerce hosting. This ensures you are ready to go in the e-commerce space. Then, select a WordPress theme that is tailored for e-commerce from online sites like Themeforest or StudioPress.
4. Optimize Your Website
Last, but certainly not least, think website optimization. More than just a buzzword, optimizing your website incorporates multiple facets of digital marketing like SEO, content marketing, site navigation, and more.
Start building a great user experience by making your website easy for visitors to navigate. Incorporate product categories into your main menu, install prominent call to action buttons and make sure your site speed is optimized. Now, you need to think about product engagement.
To convert visitors to customers, your product web pages need to be engaging. For example, be sure to have dynamic product images and videos on your website, don’t rely on stock images.
Every product should have a detailed and unique description. Do not just copy and paste the product description from the manufacturer. Lastly, make sure you have a way for customers to review and rate the products. Reviews and product testimonials are the bedrock of online sales these days.
To Sum It Up
If you are a stay-at-home mom who is ready to launch an online store, the above tips may be very useful to getting started. After you launch your website, the real work begins, as your business grows, all of the effort will be well worth it. Your online e-commerce website could be your answer to financial freedom. What are your top tips for online retail domination?
This is a collaborative guest post. The ideas expressed do not necessarily represent those of Mommy Ramblings.
Thank you for sharing. I am actually making notes and keeping a journal right now to start my own blog and hopefully a boutique type store of crocheted and repurposed items into home decor. Victorian, vintage, and farmhouse styles. This article will be very helpful.