Hundreds of new online businesses go from idea to reality every day. While statistically, most of these businesses are destined to go belly up, some will grow and ultimately become very successful. Everybody who learns how to start an online business hopes to be in that select category of success stories.
The question is how to start an online business that will beat the odds and succeed.
3 Essential Steps to Start an Online Business
Here’re the steps to starting an online business that will bring you success:
1. Becoming the Master of ‘ONE’ Trade
Most successful online businesses are the master of one trade. And that’s why beginning with a niche is always a good idea.
A niche market is a focused segment within a larger market. Imagine a men’s shoe market and handcrafted brown Italian leather shoes for men. While the previous one is a bigger market, the latter is simply a more focused segment within that market.
Knowing the niche helps a lot to start an online business, and if you are feeling a bit lost, here are some self-queries that will act as a perfect guide:
What Speaks to Your Heart?
This first way of discovering the niche is perfect for those who want to do what they love. Working in a market, you love will ensure that constant excitement and drive to do better, eventually leading to ultimate prosperity.
Decisions Based on Knowledge
The second way is perfect for those with a lot of untapped knowledge about a specific industry. Utilizing insights into a particular industry is a great way to find a niche. This way, you’ll already know all the ins and outs of the industry and can quickly get ahead of all the competitors.
Undiscovered Potential
Lastly, researching various industries and finding an untapped segment is another fantastic way of finding the right niche. This practice will require you to come up with a new and unique solution for uncatered audiences.
2. When Is Your Idea Valid?
All the great ideas for starting an online business need to be valid. And once you have found the niche, this validation process is what comes next.
Proving the soundness of the idea is not at all complicated. A detailed industry examination is all you need initially to understand the value of the concept and recalibrate it to turn into a great online business.
Market research is a systematic unraveling of the target market. This research will include all the information on the product/service you are about to sell, the target audience, and how the competitors are operating in this crowded market.
This in-depth research will give you the initial idea of how the products can make an impact in the outside world. And once the small online business ideas are validated, it will be time to move on and craft a plan and start working on establishing the business.
3. Crafting the Map to Success
Having a proper plan for an online business is like having a map when you travel to an unknown city. This document includes all the factual information on the company and crucial business data.
To help you out, here’s a list of all the information online business plans must include:
- An idea of objective – The best online business plans always clearly outline the business goals and intentions. Having this clear outline will increase the efficiency of business functions later on. The target demographic, business model—all kinds of information must be part of this document.
- Taking stock of available resources – A startup needs to utilize all the resources it has, and that’s why the plan needs to have an in-depth outline of the financial resources in use and the employees and their expertise. Starting an online business will be a more straightforward process with a better idea of all the resources.
The design is paramount for those who have decided to create their own site. With a great design, you can engage and interact with the visitors better and encourage them to make a purchase.
Determination and hard work, of course, are the coal that fuels the engine, but that engine will have trouble staying on the tracks if the correct tools aren’t used to keep it moving.
10 Effective Tools For Starting an Online Business
There are plenty of tools out there that can help your online business perform more efficiently to save you time. Thankfully, many of them offer a range of plans that are affordable for business owners just starting out.
The goal is to shoot for tools that get the job done in the best way possible and won’t put your online business in the red before it’s up and running.
1. LivePlan for Business Planning
A good idea for an online business is the first step to launching your career as an online entrepreneur. Making a solid business plan for that killer idea is second. Several great tools can help you make a business plan and lay out the blueprint to turn your idea into a profitable venture.
For example, LivePlan starts at $11.66 per month, walks users through each step of the business planning process, and has over 500 different business templates to ensure that users find the perfect one for their business venture.
2. Siteground or InMotion for Web Hosting
Establishing a website will be one of the first steps when starting an online business. You can get free web hosting, but it’s often lower-quality, and you’ll probably find that spending even a couple of bucks a month makes a difference. Regarding web hosting, it’s essential to look at your business needs.
A shared hosting plan like Siteground is probably your best bet for a small business. You’ll be sharing a server with other websites, but it’s affordable at less than $12 a month and easy to use.
A dedicated hosting site such as InMotion may be a better choice if you expect a lot of traffic. This type of web hosting will be more expensive, but it is highly secured and won’t get bogged down easily by many visitors.
3. WordPress or Squarespace for Content Management
Now that your web hosting is in place, it’s time to choose a content management tool to build and maintain your online presence. WordPress is the best-known, and for a good reason. It’s incredibly customizable and comes with an array of free resources, tools, and plug-ins that can be applied as your business grows.
Squarespace is another popular website content management platform that many newbies will probably find more straightforward than WordPress. No coding is required! Both products have several pricing levels, with Squarespace starting at $12 a month and WordPress at $8 per month. You can’t go wrong with either one.
4. Weave, Mailchimp, or MailMunch for Customer Communication
There are far more ways to communicate with your customers today than there were even 15 years ago. The online businesses that excel at customer communication are the ones that are going to succeed. Online companies’ communication needs to be streamlined and natural, which makes Weave such a great tool that allows you to automate your customer communication with texting, appointment scheduling, and payment reminders.
For email, Mailchimp and MailMunch are two excellent and affordable online business tools for growing and maintaining your email list. Both have customizable features, such as allowing for custom landing pages and automatic syncing of email and newsletter campaigns.
5. Hootsuite or Zoho Social for Social Media Management
Social media management is customer communication, but it’s its own animal, too. We all know about Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc., but how about tools that utilize those social media platforms in the easiest way possible?
Hootsuite is one of the most popular tools for businesses concerning social media management. From scheduling online posts to tracking the customer engagement of those posts, the tool is well worth the $29 a month subscription fee. Zoho Social is an even cheaper option with good reviews for being easy-to-use with similar functions, starting at just $10 a month.
6. Upwork for Outsourcing Tasks
There will be parts of your online business that you’re just too busy to dedicate the required time to or aren’t quite skilled enough to handle. Hiring a full-time employee to handle those tasks might not be feasible.
Whether it’s logo design, copywriting, software development, or SEO strategy, you can probably find a skilled freelancer to tackle the job on Upwork. The platform guides business owners through the freelancer hiring process through job payment and has qualified candidates around the globe.
7. Trello or CoSchedule for Project Management
Regardless of your online business size, keeping projects on track and proper calendar management will be critical. Two valuable online tools in this category are Trello and CoSchedule.
Both products utilize bulletin board format with lists and cards for projects that make for easy team collaboration and communication. Trello is cheaper at $10 a month, but CoSchedule may offer quicker troubleshooting should any issues pop up.
8. Shopify or Stripe for Shopping Cart Software
If you’re selling any goods or services through your online business, you’ll need a way of accepting payment from customers. This is one area of your online business where making things as easy as possible for your customers will pay off.
The second customers run into a glitch while trying to make a payment; you can expect a loss of sale. If your online business is going to be something in the retail sector, you can’t go wrong with Shopify. At just $29 a month, it will provide tools to cover everything from social media management to website design and payment processing.
Other sorts of online businesses may want to look into Stripe. It has a strong reputation for making payment processing easy and secure, with a flat rate of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction, and it doesn’t saddle business owners or their customers with a bunch of hidden fees.
9. ShippingEasy or AfterShip for Product Shipping
While eCommerce isn’t going to apply to all online businesses, smooth delivery of the product is crucial for those who fall under this category. Two tools that online business entrepreneurs should consider using are ShippingEasy and AfterShip.
Both services help business owners find the best shipping rates, manage inventory fulfillment deadlines, and provide customer reassurance like automated tracking and SMS notifications about order updates. Even better, for businesses with fewer than 50 shipments a month, both tools are free.
10. Freshbooks for Bookkeeping
Your online business is up and running like clockwork, and it’s starting to make some real money. Now time for the fun part — bookkeeping. Accounting might not be as exciting as launching an inventive email campaign, but it’s still essential if you want to stay in business.
Freshbooks is an all-in-one online business accounting tool that will handle everything from payment acceptance to invoices and expense reports. With plans as low as $6 a month, it’s one of the most affordable bookkeeping tools when starting an online business.
Conclusion
Because every business is unique, not all these tools will apply to your online business. As your business grows, you’ll likely find that the tools needed to do the job will change. For starting an online business, the above categories and their respective tools are a great place to start.
