New to e-commerce? Discover our tips for newbies!

Inspired by the E-Commerce Xpo in Kortrijk7 & 8 November 2016

Florence Dierick

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As a newbie to e-commerce, starting a webshop can prove itself as quite a challenge. You might be surprised by all the elements that go into the organization of an online business.

• Visiting an e-commerce fair allows you to learn about all the different facets of selling online.

• Look at best practices and learn from their success. Decide what kind of webshop you want to be.

• Inform yourself about the different possibilities and learn what is out there on the market.

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#1E-Commerce dummies, be prepared to be amazed!

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#2A webshop is a great place to start your business

Rosette la Vedette, a brand producing headwear for women and men going through chemo therapy, started out online only. The brand was able to gain awareness and reputation through its online channel and was afterwards approached by offline stores that were interested in selling their products. Meanwhile, they are widely available in offline channels as well.

A webshop is a great way to build your brand and to validate that you actually have a market, before investing in offline solutions.

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#3Sometimes, a webshop is merely a marketing driver

Duvel Moortgat started webshops for several of their brands (Vedett, Duvel & La Chouffe have their own webshop). The main goal of their ecommerce channel is to spread the love for their brands and to deliver excellent customer experience.

Conversion and sales is not the main goal, rather, they want to extend their brand experience.

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#4There’s more to logistics than you might expect

When deciding upon the right partner for the logistics of your webshop, there’s many ways you can go. A quick taste of some of the (lesser known) possibilities:

Sendcloud is a platform that allows you to quickly create send-labels with track- and trace code for different carriers.

Kariboo! is a parcel service that with an already existing (& widely developed) network of pick-up points to deliver your parcel to, thus not creating any extra traffic.

Bubble Post is an urban parcel delivery service, operating by bike delivery. They receive your orders outside of the city in their warehouse and then distribute further into the city.

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#5

User-generated content will make people more likely to buy your product

Engaging your users as brand ambassadors is a smart (and cheap) way of creating buzz around your product and webshop. Asking for product reviews is a good way of getting user-generated content. Afraid of bad reviews? Don’t be! Users will be more likely to buy a product with some bad reviews than a product with only positive comments. Including testimonials in your newsletters will allow you to leverage them even more.

Let your customers speak for you, instead of trying to convince everyone yourself.

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#6

A good webshop takes time, budget and constant optimization

Once your webshop is live, the work is not done yet. The following are topics to keep in mind after having developed your webshop.

• Drive traffic to your webshop. Think about possible affiliates leading to your website.

• Decide on your marketing efforts and do not forget to track ROI.

• Be aware of fraud and inform yourself about the best prevention.

• Keep in mind the legal implications.

Be sure to save a considerable amount of your ecommerce budget to optimization. Take the time to (re-)evaluate and have a critical look at your results.

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#7Finally, keep yourself informed & up-to-date!

E-Commerce is here to stay and develops further every year. Be sure to follow-up on the innovations and look what might be the right fit for your webshop. Going to the E-Commerce Xpo is a great way of doing so.

This year, as usual, all prominent players were present, just as a nice selection of start-ups in the e-commerce field.

Have you missed this edition? No worries, there’s another edition in March 2017 in Liege Expo.