5 things to remember before launching your eCommerce store!

We have all heard about how the pandemic has been accelerator for Digital services in general and Ecommerce in particular. 

The world was locked down, so the mouse or the thumb became our most potent weapon and it was click, click, click with even grandmothers learning Google pay and ordering via online apps. Every business from FMCG to Auto saw this channel grow, in some cases FMCG brands doubled their minuscule share of 4% of sales in the last few quarters.

Now since every traditional brand wants to start riding and hopefully succeeding in building a cash generating online channel, I am just putting down a few key points basis my experience and understanding of this business. This article is written primarily from the point of bringing consumer brands that are low priced online, if you are Tata Steel, then you use eCommerce largely as another important sales channel of your existing brands.

1.   Do you really have a strong value proposition in a large under penetrated category?

While this is a bit basic, most brands miss the wood for the trees. While one can be successful selling Rs 10-20  packs with little differentiation in an under-penetrated category by using a strong offline distribution network and trade incentives, however in the online world, you just cannot afford to be another cookie in order to succeed.

What makes you special? Let’s take a brand like Mama Earth, very clear value proposition with a chemical-free product that started off by being a brand for young children and then diversified to adults.  A brand like Slurp Farms created healthy foods for 2-14-year-olds with pancake mixes and waffle mixes. The question to ask is whether your brand has any sizable benefit to the consumer? If not, then can you launch a product that fulfils a greater need than an impulse buy.

2. Build a distinctive “digital friendly “brand identity  and don’t forget that your brand will finally drive sales

Most brands get the brand identity bit. They hire a good design firm, develop distinctive packaging and then forget about that fact in 2021, consumers will discover your brand and purchase online. A brand’s packaging, fonts, colours; graphic elements need to be easily visible on a mobile screen during a fast scroll. We live in an era of doom scrolling and therefore the “brand” should make you stop.

In this case, I like the Sugar Cosmetics brand identity, clear and black with a simple logo, can’t miss it at all on an Instagram feed. Think of how the designs that will look on a small android mobile screen, can you read the fonts on your packaging? If not, then you need to do it again.

2.   Don’t try and scrimp on your Website!

I don’t know how many times I have had conversations with clients who wanted to spend abysmal budgets on their website. Your website is your storefront, it is the single biggest Capex in an online business, it represents your brand, it is the place where your customers will know and understand you, please don’t pinch pennies and say that you want it done in a few thousand rupees. Your tech stack needs to be on point, whether it is a Shopify or Magento backend along with strong security layers, a robust database and a design that reflects your brand voice and a well-defined customer journey based on sound UX principles. Also, please note that a corporate website is different from an eCommerce website, the job here to convert a visitor and not tell him or her about your latest production process.  While one may sell on market places like Amazon or Flipkart, your website gives you an insight into your customers, who are they? What do they like? It will be a future goldmine to create a database of customers.

3.   Get your Social Media, Influencer and Content marketing fixed

Your early customers will discover you via Social media channels. Get your Instagram, Facebook game on track. Hire a sound team of design, content and a social media manager to build a content pipeline. Learn to communicate in squares (default post design), use all tools available from stories to reels and respond to queries fast. 

Facebook and Instagram advertising will drive awareness and help build demographics to target. Influencers will be helpful with their large audience base and a blog on your website will aid in SEO. These fundamentals need to be in place.

4.   The Performance game! The Acquisition game

Everybody wants sales in the first week, it can happen but patience is the name of the game. You need to build an audience, so start with the top of the funnel advertising ads on social media and then re-target the same customers with your “buy now” ads. Consumers need to understand you first, it is a bit like dating. Also some basic principles, Google search ads is for intent (I need healthy foods so I search for healthy foods and you show me your ad) and Facebook is for a guy who likes football and healthy foods. Google Analytics is a fairly simple dashboard, one needs to focus on a few basics when starting out, hire teams that understand this part quite well

5.   Relationships are for the long haul! Lifetime value

You have started to get a few customers, an email database has been built, don’t forget to use Email marketing. Email marketing is probably the most effective digital marketing channel today for a captive customer base. Use it wisely. Don’t spam every few days, an emailer once a fortnight is good enough. The retention game needs to be as strong as your acquisition game, while I will not go into metrics of trying to build a ratio of CAC (cost of customer acquisition) to LTV (lifetime value), suffice to say, some data analytics within a year of business will get you to verify your assumptions on the lifetime value of cohorts that will most likely to remain with you.

The Ecommerce business is now like a shiny new object that most brands are discovering for the first time. We will live in an omnichannel world. For existing brands, with large sales numbers (say 500 crores plus), the intent would be to hit at least 10% in the next 5 years (caveat, your product is more important than hiring Google ads expert)

For online brands, they are discovering offline touchpoints will lead to increased penetration in any market, Xiaomi was an online-only brand and now gets close to 50% of its sales from offline channels. India is a vast country, consumer preferences change in every street and growth will only be driven by an offline+online play, I would like to see more brands that solve customer needs via eCommerce emerge rather than another aggregator. That is how India will grow.