5+1 Things to do before even starting to think of an online store

I see many people launching online stores without thinking. I get requests to develop websites for online stores and in 99.99% of the cases I say NO. You may think that I’m refusing good money but in my opinion I’m protecting my business. I got burned with websites that weren’t meant to sell products/services directly. In what sense I mean that: the owner of the website didn’t understood that a website is not a brochure. He didn’t understood that a website it’s like an office that you have to keep open every day to succeed. I had some clients that came back to me asking why they don’t make money with their websites: so I don’t even want to think about online stores.

Here are, in my opinion, 5 things that you should consider before even starting to think of an online store:

1. Check to see the monthly search volume for keywords that describe your business/products/services. Don’t search for single words. Look for keywords formed from 2 or 3 words. Also check to see some long tail keywords.
2. Analyze the competition. See how they’re doing: for how long are they running their website, what’s their traffic status on Alexa, how they’re targeting the keywords, what categories do they have, how the products are organized, what testimonials they have, what reviews they have, what are the weak points and ask yourself if you could do it better (and also what it would take to do it better – in some cases it’s not profitable).
3. Check to see how active is the community on Twitter(how many tweets per hour or per day), Facebook, YouTube(how many videos and how many views/interactions/ratings/comments/video responses), Linkedin
4. Get a blog going and build a community around your business/services/products. Find an affiliate program for similar products and see if you can sell before you go investing your money. If there isn’t an affiliate program for your products ask yourself if it’s worth the trouble.
5. To sell at a minimum level you need at least 1500 – 2000 unique visitors/day to your blog. See if you can achieve that level.

And the +1:

1. Make sure you have the financial resources to do it. Many people will say: I don’t need big money. I can do it myself. No you can’t. You have to have a minimum team to run an online store: at least one programmer, someone to negotiate the prices with the dealers, someone to answer the phone, someone to take the orders and schedule the shipment. And this is the minimum, I think, besides a place from where to run your business.

Tell me what you think of all this and maybe share your opinion in comments. Thanks!