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With more people shopping online, it’s important for merchants to focus on: 1. Adopting an omnichannel model that allows them to sell to anyone, anywhere across different channels, whether offline in their store, or online on social media and e-commerce marketplaces among others. 2. Creating and sustaining their unique customer experience to more effectively engage consumers across all those different channels. The services which their customers need during the current COVID-19 situation, such as offering both in-store pickup and home delivery, in addition to browsing at the actual retail outlet. 3. Identifying changing customer needs and expanding their offerings to meet such new requirements. Throughout this year, demand for basic food items, groceries, masks and hand sanitisers rose sharply and they continue to remain higher than usual.
We are seeing significant demand in many categories including food, beverage and tobacco, safety essentials like masks, fashion and apparel, and consumer electronics. Another key factor for buyers is high safety and hygiene standards. These have become a top priority for consumers as we continue to cope with the coronavirus. Moreover, consumers are demanding convenience more than ever before. As a result, being able to offer in-store pick-up and fast delivery are now important competitive differentiators for businesses.
Some of the main things you need to think about when starting your store: 1. Brand Identity: Your logo, preferred fonts and more 2. Product details such as names, available inventory quantity and price 3. (Optional) Short product descriptions that describe your products and why people should buy. 4. (Optional) Product photos to showcase your catalogue. You can take quality photos with most new phones. 5. Credit card/debit card to link with the store. 6. Payment Gateway Account to start accepting online payments. At Shopify, we have tied up with partners like PayTM who can help you get Payment gateway accounts activated in no time. 7. Finally, driving your customers to your store with marketing tactics is crucial, building trust with your visitors is equally imperative to go a long way toward gaining traction.
Becoming an entrepreneur doesn’t require money, luck, or a background in business. All it takes is vision, drive and passion, while we provide the e-commerce expertise. Shopify’s mission is to help merchants survive, adapt and thrive through challenging times, by making it easy to build and manage an online store. We are helping aspiring Indian entrepreneurs, male and female, delve into business with the necessary tools, applications and resources.
Every business needs a great support system while setting up and running. Shopify is one such platform which helps entrepreneurs and established businesses grow by removing the barriers that exist to selling online. We create an environment conducive to being entrepreneurial. It doesn’t require any coding or tech skills to get started and offers 24/7 customer support by phone, email and live chat. Merchants are provided with a variety of resources to solve any issue faster. We have experts, partner designers, developers and marketers to hold the hands of the businesses as they build their online store, boost engagement and grow their customer base.
Apart from patronising their stores by shopping, customers can also be of great help to small businesses by sharing reviews about them on social media platforms. Most of the time small scale businesses do not possess sufficient capital for large scale marketing. Promoting them on respective platforms as customers will help the business reach a greater scale of audience effectively.
To be a successful e-commerce entrepreneur, male or female, the first step is to know what products you want to sell. This is often the most challenging part of starting a new online business. You could decide to go with your personal passion or consider your professional experience. Perhaps you decided to start a business because you were frustrated at not being able to find a suitable product, or you might just want to sell something that’s currently trending. For example, some of the top trending products sold by Shopify merchants this year include nail polish, blankets, yoga and pilates mats!
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