What separates the successful e-commerce stores from the unsuccessful ones? While one store’s branding may differ from another’s, online stores sell pretty much the same things. When the goods on offer are inherently the same, the differentiating factors are often the e-commerce website building strategies employed by the stores and how well they execute those strategies.

Strategy and execution is the backbone of every successful business endeavor. Without a sound strategy, you will be playing a hit-and-miss game with no clear path or destination in mind. Without execution, the best business idea would struggle to beat a mediocre business idea with superior execution.

If you are new to e-commerce and you are wondering what to do, you don’t need to worry. There’s absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel. There are people who came before you and they saw tremendous success selling goods online. All you have to do is figure out what they did and do those things.

This article will show you some of the e-commerce website building strategies successful merchants have used to build hugely successful stores. I won’t bother covering the mundane stuff such as how to choose web hosting and how to decide if Shopify or Bigcommerce is good for you. There are lots of articles on the net already that cover those topics. I will only focus on the big picture ideas that separate the hugely successful merchants from the ones just getting by.

1.     Branding the Domain Name

The first big mistake many online merchants make is naming their store after the product they intend to list on the store. If they are planning on selling a juicer, they might register a domain name with the word ‘juicer’ in it.

This is small thinking and is actually a big mistake. It is very likely that the first product you sell is a flop. If it fails, you will be forced to change your domain name and most of the recognition you may have gained from marketing the domain name will be lost. One other reason this is a case of small thinking is that such a domain name limits your ability to expand your store and sell other products besides juicers.

What you want to do is build a general brand that can allow you to sell several things. Instead of calling your store Pruxxyjuicers.com just call it Pruxxy.com. Such a domain name will allow you to sell other things people interested in juicers may be interested in. Besides Pruxxy Juicer, you can sell Pruxxy Protein Powder, Pruxxy Vitamin D Supplement, and other lifestyle products. Thinking long-term and allowing for room for failure are some of the free e-commerce website building strategies anyone can use.

2.     Starting Search Engine Marketing Before the Store Is Officially Launched

You should never wait until everything is ready to start search engine marketing. Getting good search engine rankings takes time. If you wait till the website is fully built and all the products are listed, you will have a very slow first few months.

It is always a good idea to build an e-commerce website and start building links to it even before you have the products you intend to sell ready. If you know the products you are going to sell, you can guess what your general site architecture is going to look like. Just create the pages you think you are going to need and have text announcing the dates the products will be available for sale.

The most effective way to get links to an e-commerce site that does not yet have products ready is content marketing. You can write articles covering topics in your niche and have them posted on other people’s blogs and sites. The articles should always have a link or two pointing back to your site. You should also have a blog section on your e-commerce site so as to increase your chances of excelling at SEO.

This marketing strategy is one of the powerful e-commerce website building strategies out there. It gives you a chance to start collecting some domain authority and online brand recognition before you officially launch your store. It is very important that you have a store that is googlable from the day you launch. Online buyers will find it hard to trust you if all the information they can find on the net about your store is on no other site buy yours.

It is even more important to become googlable from the first day if you plan to use affiliates. Affiliate marketers are very aggressive at SEO and they will outrank you for your own branded keywords if you don’t have a head start. When you have affiliate marketers outranking you for your own branded keywords, you will end up paying commissions for sales you shouldn’t pay a commission for.

3.     Proactively Seeking out Reviews

For a new e-commerce store, product reviews are very important. 88% of online shoppers consider product reviews very influential when they are making a purchase from a brand they are not familiar with. An interesting statistic is that 97% of these shoppers say that they can tell if a review is not credible.

When honest reviews are this important, it is in your best interests to proactively seek out reviews from real customers who have used your product. The ideal situation is to have lots of reviews from verified buyers. Nonetheless, having a few reviews is always better than having no reviews at all.

If you already have an audience, you can get reviews even before you officially launch a product on your e-commerce store. All you have to do is send samples to a select group of fans and ask them to report what their experience was with the product. You need an email list to do this effectively.

4.     Building an Email List

Email marketing remains one of the most effective online marketing channels. For a small e-commerce store, email marketing will give you a chance to build a relationship with your buyers and so make repeat purchases possible.

Below are some of the ways you can get people to sign up for your email list:

1. If you have a new product coming up, ask your users to leave their email address so that they can be notified when the product is finally available for sale.
2. If a listed product is out of stock, collect email addresses of interested users who may want to be notified when the product is available again.
3. Have users sign up for an account before they can add an item to a shopping cart. A great number of shoppers abandon shopping carts. If you have their email address, it will be much easier to follow up with them and remind them of their abandoned shopping carts.
4. Run a blog and encourage people to sign up for your newsletter.

5.     Pricing and Shipping

Do not niglect pricing and shipping considerations when drawing your e-ecommerce website building strategies. Nearly half of online shoppers will abandon your site on finding out that your store doesn’t offer free shipping. With many e-commerce stores now offering free shipping to continental buyers, being the exception can harm your sales.

If you are offering a clearly differentiated product, you can include the average shipping cost into the price of the product and then offer free shipping. Differentiation can be as simple as a different name or a different packaging. Just make sure that your competitors aren’t offering the very same product – including name and packaging – at a significantly lower price.

If you have a product with high-profit margins, you can absorb the shipping costs yourself and benefit from more people purchasing the product. Moving a lot of units is always good as you will end up with more people to up-sell or cross-sell.

6.     Data Gathering and A/B Testing

The most successful e-commerce stores gather as much data about their customers as they legally and ethically can. Having and knowing how to interpret and use comprehensive user data is like digging through a vein of pure gold.

At a basic level, you should know:

1. Where your users are coming from
2. The terms they use to search for your products
3. Their age and gender breakdown
4. The products your users check the most
5. The products bought the most relative to product page traffic
6. The products bought the least relative to product page traffic
7. The products repeat buyers tend to come back to the store to buy
8. The number of visitors each of your paid marketing channels brings in

With enough data, you can get accurate insights into what your users actually want and run tests to confirm this.

7.     Draining the Pipeline

If you use paid marketing, what happens when you find a source of traffic that converts well? Most marketers will just coast and not step up their efforts to maximize the said traffic source.  If you want to maximize a traffic source, you should throw as much money as possible as fast as possible to a highly converting source until you reach the breakeven point.

The amount of money you spend on getting traffic really doesn’t matter. What matters is the profit margin. You cease making profits at the breakeven point. It is the point all your revenues cover all costs and no profits or losses are made. If you have a reliable traffic source, you should pour as much money as fast as possible at that traffic source until you reach the breakeven point. At that point, you shall have drained the pipeline.