Identify your market

For us it was always important to be in a sector where there was a genuine interest, something that would help to maintain enthusiasm levels during the inevitable hard days of beginning life in e-commerce. As with the majority of males the inevitable answer was…..Football. As football fans we had oft moaned the lack of access to genuinely good football related products. Particularly I remember one occasion where a former colleague's birthday was near and the office collection doing the rounds, however it was difficult, no correct that, it was near impossible to find some good quality products emblazoned in his teams badge and colours that could proudly live on his desk. And so, the Football Merchandise Store was born.

In identifying our market the most important aspect was to put in the correct research. Was there a real need for football products? Luckily for us we found there was through survey's of football fans, questions posed on football forum website's and through a study of key word searches on various web search engine's, no matter how much we wanted our business to be a Football Merchandise site, if there was no customer base out there it would not have been a viable venture.

Keys to Success

For us we firmly believe it is our ability to offer a significant range of varied products (currently over 1400) at low prices. We constantly study which of our products sell and which don't and crucially the success rate of converting views to sales, if that rate is not working then either the pricing is wrong or the picture/description is not doing the product justice!!

The right Website

We are all e-commerce website users and therefore in theory, we all know what kind of website we like to use. The layout and coherence of your site is vital if you are to turn a "web browser" into a customer. Explore known successful site's and try to incorporate their best features into your site, after that it may be a case of trial and error when your site is in it's infancy. Do not under estimate the value of spending money on the design of a quality site. You wouldn't go shopping somewhere that was messy, dirty or worse falling apart, so don't expect others to do that on a poorly designed website.

Finding and Keeping your Customers

It is not new news to announce that web promotion is the key to an e-commerce site, the continuing work for our site is promote within web search engine's and to announce ourselves to as many potential customers as we can. Don't forget that after sale work can make the difference in whether a customer returns to your site or not. Why not introduce a customer newsletter or invite them to join your social networking group?

And finally…..don't give up

It may be difficult, particularly in the early days when sales are low but don't give up, any work done in the initial few months is the most important and the quality of your first steps sets the foundations for you to build upon. Trust that if you are promoting the right products, at the right prices then the sales will come.

Good luck with your e-commerce venture from all at The Football Merchandise Store.