Whether you are a solo entrepreneur or a brick-and-mortar business looking to expand your business online, the competition out there is tough. The only way to succeed is to learn and master essential business skills. A good entrepreneur needs a myriad of technical, operational, analytical and soft skills that are explained below in detail.
Technical skills
All or at least a part of online business requires the use of a blog or website, therefore it is essential to have a good grasp over the following:
1. Hosting & domain information
3. Search engines & SEO
4. Online communities/Social Networks
Take the time to learn these technical aspects and you will save a lot of time and money in the long run. Many online tools make it easier to learn and develop a simple website, use those instead of expensive web designers. However, at the end of the day professional help is required to be able to actually beat competition.
Analytical skills
In order to grow your business and move forward you need to understand where the potential for growth lies. You need to analyze what factors work and what fails to work. For an online business this usually means analyzing the traffic arriving at your site.Use tools such as TruConversion to understand user traffic flow patterns, time spent on the website, get heat maps of mouse clicks,
Developing an understanding of this can help you to:
1. Maximize your conversion rate
2. Increase Return on Investment
3. Refine marketing techniques
4. Improve content
5. Improve web design
Competitive monitoring is also very important as it lets you know exactly what your competition is doing. This helps take important decisions.
Managerial skills
In order to actually operate the business, your managerial skills come into play. Day to day tasks have to be monitored and completed, employees have to be managed and kept motivated. The tasks of daily accounting, marketing have to be completed in a swift manner for everything to work smoothly.
When the business grows these administrative tasks become more complex, as the leader you should focus on growing business and delegate administrative activities to other people. However, make sure to delegate to the proper person and on time and to also keep an eye on updates.
Even services like social media handling can be outsourced. We can handle your social media (Twitter, Facebook etc.) for you and also manage content production.
Soft skills
Skills that deal with social interaction and communication are termed as soft skills. Most online businesses underestimate the importance of these qualities and hence are not able to utilize their full potential.
As a business you cannot afford to overlook the human aspect of business just because there is a wider degree of separation between you and the customer. This makes it even more important to focus on building trust.
Here are 10 skills that are essential if you want to learn the ropes of operating an online business.
1. Create a Business Plan
If you want to be a digital mogul, and wish to implement the great ideas in your mind, then you need to think things out and create a detailed business plan. A business plan is a traditionally used tool that outlines your basic business concept. It has detailed information about the market potential that you have explored, the strategies you will use to grow your business, the evaluation of potential risks and capital needs.
It is important to take an organized and disciplined approach to your online venture. A viable business model cannot exist without proper planning. Because when your new idea actually takes off and meets success, then improper planning will hurt you in the long run. You will end up having no ideas about how to scale up your operations and end up losing the amazing market opportunity that you had achieved.
Writing the plan is not as complicated as it sounds, do not be overwhelmed by the details, the plans should focus on overall goals. The plan acts as a blueprint for success, if you are at a loss regarding where to start, then follow the step-by-step guide found on the U.S SBA (Small Business Administration) website.
2. Raising Funds
Every business needs capital to get started. Cash will be needed to cover the costs of purchasing inventory, acquiring raw materials, online ads, marketing, etc. Estimate how much money you will need until the business becomes profitable. You can save up during your day job, and start once you have accumulated enough capital to launch. You can also use crowd-funding websites such as Fundable, Kickstarter to pitch your idea and gather funds. Write persuasive pitches and get the support of many people online. You can also apply to banks for startup loans.
3. Design a Website
Just like a brick and mortar store needs an attractive window display to pull in customer’s attention, online businesses also need to think of their website as a mean to display and showcase their products. According to surveys people who visit your website have very short attention spans, they will linger on a webpage for about five seconds before moving away, it is your job to present them with enough incentive to stick around long enough to make a purchase.
Once you can understand HTML and CSS, you will be able to design a website from scratch. Or another quick trick is to use a template and simply customize it. However, as mentioned earlier, professional help is almost always the best option.
Consumers are increasingly using devices such as smartphones to access websites, so make sure that your business website has a “responsive design”, this simply means that the design automatically adjusts to the screen size of the viewing device. If you have an existing site that you want to make responsive, use a tool like MoFuse.
4. Product Sourcing
A business needs products to sell, unless you operate a purely service based consultancy, or are an artisan who makes their own products, you will need to find and purchase inventory. You can purchase already designed products and sell them or you can use a manufacturer to create your customized product using a site such as Alibaba.
5. Gather Business Intelligence
This has nothing to do with espionage or stealing trade secrets. It just means doing research to understand what challenges you face in your target market, what your competition is doing and what tactics work and what tactics fail. This enables you to devise ways to become successful. You can refine the business formula to suit current market demands.
Identify the key competitors in your niche and look up their websites, this helps you learn how you might stack up to them, see what kind of prices they offer, shipping options, how they communicate with customers, try ordering something from them, check out the reviews of the competitors. Negative reviews will help you identify what the business is doing wrong and give you a list of things to avoid.
If you want more details try our service to study the competitor’s use of keywords and SEO.This intelligence gathering can give you the competitive edge and set your business apart.
6. Marketing and Advertising
No business can succeed without a well-planned marketing strategy. You may have a fantastic idea, might be able manage to develop an amazing product and design a stunning website, but if people do not find it then you will not turn a profit.A successful online business will need to communicate with buyers and persuade them to make a purchase. Branding your product and creating a unique identity will bring in more sales. Advertise using suitable channels, getting the word out is easy these days, online communication is free. If you decide to go the route of paid advertising make sure you set the target demographics properly.
Try investing in paid advertising such as Google AdWords. This service only charges a fee when people click the ad and land on your website. These ads must be worded effectively, conversion rate depend on how good you ad copywriting is.Be persuasive and write clearly, avoid technical jargon and promote a positive message.
Figure out your brand name and think about what your brand vision will be. Your brand is what sets you apart and must send a clear message to your customers.
7. Generate Social Media Buzz
Free social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, can turn out to be a goldmine for business promotion efforts. The number of active users on these sites is in millions, this means you have access to millions of potential customers. Since access is free, promoting your product on these social networks is easy and gives you an ideal platform to build your brand’s identity. You can interact directly with customers and attract new customers, the main advantage of direct communication is that you will be able to understand the customer better through honest feedback.
Learn to build an effective presence on social media, this is not an easy task, every platform is different when it comes to user base and demographics, the methods and rules of interaction are different, the type of content allowed also differs. You will need content that is both informative and engaging, people will keep coming back to your site if they consider the information trustworthy and accurate. Do not compromise the quality of your content, and do not fall into the trap of thinking that more content equals more customers.
Learn to develop targeted content that offers something unique. This content has to include a little promotion of your own products as well, but try not to make it too obvious or too advertisement-like. Your customer will not appreciate if you try to oversell via content. Think of content as a way of communicating with the customer, and the promotion of products as a secondary target. Engage people in conversations, ask questions, give away free samples or discount codes, etc. to drive traffic to your social network page.
8. Complete Orders
In the traditional selling model, the customer would visit your store in person, pick up whatever they wanted, make the required payment, take the product and leave. With an online business this is transaction everything drastically different. The customer pays for the product first, now the seller has to arrange the shipment of the product to the customer, this part is called fulfillment, most small businesses have to use the postal service or UPS for deliveries.
If operations get bigger, the online business will need to outsource the order fulfillment. There are manufacturers who offer drop shipping services, this basically means that the manufacturer who makes your product will ship the required product from their warehouse directly to your customer. Another option is to outsource the fulfillment completely to a service such as Ship wire. It is possible to send your entire inventory to Ship wire, they store it in their warehouse and then ship them once you communicate the customer requirements to them. This also helps keep your inventory costs low.
9. Customer Service
This might not seem very intuitive at first glance, since you do not interact with the customer face to face, however this is of huge importance. The charm and attentiveness required in physical stores is just as important in online stores. Good service will make the customer come back for more and will build customer loyalty. Offer refunds and returns if the customer demand is legitimate. Ask them for their feedback in non-intrusive ways.
Let them dictate the terms and frequency of communication. Give them options to fill out short surveys or maybe subscribe to your email newsletter for regular updates.
10. Knowing when to branch out into physical market
E-commerce might be touted as something of a revolution that will stomp out traditional brick and mortar stores, but that is not happening any time soon. Statistics show that about 90% of retail sales are happening inside physical stores. And the sales from stores with both online and physical outlets, this number jumps up to 95%, so do not write off physical outlets just yet.
Because of this, some famous retailers who started out with online-only stores, such as the beauty products seller Birchbox and the online eyeglass boutique Warby Parker, have opted to open opened physical stores. Amazon has also experimented temporary stores that “pop-up” where customers have the option to try out things before buying them. This is a trend that has just started, you might need to keep a close eye on market trends and see if becoming an omni-channel retailer is in your interest.
Amp up your Skills by Using These Online Learning Resources
Online education programs geared specifically towards new business owners are offered for free and the ones that you have to pay for also offer good value for money. Check out this list of the most useful resources that will help you learn the top ten skills.
1. Coursera
2. edX.org
3. Hello Fearless (geared towards female entrepreneurs)
4. HP LIFE
5. NovoEd
6. OpenLearn
7. Udacity
Not everyone who starts out has a firm grasp on all the aspects of business knowledge, you don’t need to master them all, just know enough to launch your business, then learn as you go along. Along with these skills you will need patience, perseverance and determination in order to succeed in the online or offline world of business.
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