In 2019, worldwide eCommerce sales surpassed 3.5 trillion U.S. dollars. This figure covers approximately 1.92 billion consumers who favored purchasing goods from online resellers instead of buying from a brick-and-mortar shop. To say that eCommerce is a lucrative business would be an understatement. In fact, the industry is projected to see exponential growth in the future.
Now is the best time to start your eCommerce business. Or if you already have one, now is the best time to ensure that you are running a foolproof business. Here are strategies we recommend that will ensure you the utmost protection from all possible glitches that could derail the growth of your business.
Work with a legal team
Even if your business has yet to grow into its fullest potential, you need the help and advice of legal experts. Consider this particular scenario. Your up-and-coming eCommerce brand is doing great, getting rave reviews. Then one day you receive a negative review from a customer that you know is a work of sabotage. Unfortunately, it gains traction and it affects your sales.
With the help of a legal team, you can solve this problem. One available recourse is for your counsel to deploy the right to be forgotten law. If applied properly, this law can have the defamatory content permanently removed from Google searches pertaining to your brand.
A legal counsel can also help you draft contracts, privacy terms and policies, and sales and services terms among others. Most small online businesses copy existing terms online, which should not be the case. Such can now be penalized, with many countries augmenting their consumer protection laws.
Trademark your brand
Your brand’s most identifiable aspects are your name and logo. You need to have these trademarked, even if you’re just starting out. The last thing you want to happen is for your eCommerce business to grow and just when you feel the need to trademark your brand, you find out that someone else has already copyrighted your business name or logo. Also, remember that an available domain name does not always mean an available trademark.
It’s also crucial to trademark your products. Yes, this might be an added item to your overhead expenses but it will be worth it. If you believe in your products enough, you must protect them from counterfeiters. If you can, trademark your advertising and promotional collateral as well.
Choose a reliable eCommerce platform
eCommerce platforms are a dime a dozen. You want to pick only the best online markets to sell your products. You know that an eCommerce platform is reliable if they have systems in place to protect their sellers/stores from security issues that might come up.
It also does not hurt to choose an eCommerce platform with a user-friendly interface. You want your customers to have the easiest experience when shopping for your products. Remember that online shoppers shop online for, above all else, convenience. If that’s not delivered, they might look the other way and the online cart with your products might not reach the checkout.
Make your site hacker-proof
eCommerce sites attract hackers because the latter know that’s where the money is. It is in your best interest to enlist the help of a professional IT service provider to ensure that your site is hacker-proof.
You can also educate yourself on the basics of online security. For example, HTTP won’t cut it. For added security, a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) is crucial. And lastly, you must keep your site updated. Hackers target websites with unpatched applications, which can easily be mitigated by a scheduled checkup and update.
eCommerce spending grows every year, by at least 44.5 percent. You can take a substantial piece of this pie and eat it too if you do things right. For starters, your business will require a strong foundation.
You must offer a creative product or service proposition to your target market, one that can really disrupt existing competition. Do not try to fit into a certain business mold. Make your own mark and zero in on what sets you apart from the rest.
Also, you need to assemble a winning team that can competently rally behind your brand. Take it from former General Electric COO, Lawrence Bossidy, who said that “Nothing we do is more important than hiring and developing people. At the end of the day, you bet on people, not on strategies.”
Lastly, target the right audience. You must know your product enough to discern which market share you need to tap. Once you got this down pat, the rest will follow.
