Many people are curious about how to start an online business, especially in Nigeria.
Starting a business online is not like the way you start any other conventional business out there. There are rules to doing business online, and it requires specific skills to keep your business visible and profitable online.
Some online businesses are even location-specific; for example, the requirements to successfully run an online business in Nigeria differ from the requirements to run a business online in the United States of America.
Every day in Nigeria, new businesses are built with sole dependence on the internet. From small businesses to big ones like Paystack, which was recently acquired by Stripe for a mouth-watery fee of $200 million, businesses spring up daily online from entrepreneurs.
There are, however, rules to successfully running a business online. This article gives you a comprehensive guide on how to build your business empire online successfully.
If you want to learn how to start an online business, then read this and thank me with a comment.
Must Read: 7 Online Business Models That Are Similar, Better Than, or Alternative to Dropshipping
Contents
9 Steps to Start a Profitable Online Business
1. Find a problem you can solve (Decide on a Profitable Business Idea)
The success of any business, online or offline, depends on one crucial factor – The business’s ability to offer value by solving at least a problem that clients are willing to pay for.
This might sound like a no-brainer, but you would be shocked at how many entrepreneurs jump into business because they love the idea of owning a business; maybe it suits their passion, or they have seen others making money from the business idea.
Your ability to understand how to decide on a business idea to settle for out of the many available to you is a major skill that unfortunately eludes most entrepreneurs.
And problems abound; you only have to pay attention. Determine your niche and business idea
You may also like: Solved: How To Understand And Solve Your Customers’ Problems
Ask yourself the following questions, and be sure to be sincere with yourself:
- Why are you doing this? You may wish to read – Why Did You Start That Business for an insight into why businesses are started.
- Do you have the capabilities needed to execute your chosen business idea?
- Are you solving a major customer problem?
- Can the business be managed successfully online?
- how to start an online business with no money?
2. Do your research (product and market research) To Validate Your Business Plan.
One other major step to starting an online business is to conduct product and market. Get to understand how your prospective customers would react and interact with your product or service.
Also, you need to talk to potential customers to get their opinions on your product. Start with friends and family to know their honest opinion of the solution you are coming up with.
From there, reach out to more people and get their honest feedback. Tools like survey monkey and Google forms will come in handy for this.
In order words, you need to validate your business against the market and read this article completely to know how to start an online business.
A Recommended Video on Idea Validation
3. Define the business brand
What should your potential customers expect of you? If there are competitors, what would distinguish you from them? Your unique value proposition (UVP)? Who is your target audience, and where are they?
The answers to all of these are what will help you build a strong, identifiable brand. Your logo and the rest will be constructed on this strong foundation.
4. Get a domain name
Of course, you need a website. That’s why it’s an online business.
Sometimes, you need to be sure of the availability of a domain name before naming your online business. Yes, it’s that serious.
Think of different URL ideas in line with your type of business and check if they have not been taken already.
Before this, you need to decide which web host platform you want to use. There are so many of them out there, and choosing may be the beginning of your business failure.
Several factors are to be considered before choosing a web hosting company. Forbes highlights 7 factors you should consider before selecting a web hosting company
- Cost of registration and maintenance
- Site backups availability
- Reliability of server, security and uptime scores
- Customer service
- Email and e-commerce options
- Ability to add domains
- What are the account limitations?
So, after considering these factors and deciding which hosting company you are cool with, you can then check for domain name availability.
For instance, you can check domain name availability on Whogohost here
5. Develop an easy-to-use website
You know the problem you want to solve, you have conducted the necessary market and product research, and now, you have a domain name ready.
Next is to build your shop…your online shop.
If you want to learn how to start an online business, you must also learn how to develop a small website at least.
These tips from Entrepreneur will help you build a user-friendly website for your business
- Ensure your navigation is simple and clear
- Choose a maximum of two plain fonts on a white background
- Graphics, audio or video files should only be used if they carry an important message(s)
- Checkout should not be more than two clicks away from the homepage or landing page
- Use a lead magnet to get leads for email marketing
6. Drive traffic through the search engine
Your lovely, user-friendly website will need to be seen by potential customers if all your efforts will count as anything. You need traffic.
There are several options before you when it comes to bringing traffic to your newly built website. Email marketing, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, social media marketing and so on.
Since it’s a new website, it may take a while before your potential customers start seeing you on the search engine. Especially if there are many competitors.
Therefore, search engine optimization may not be the best option here. Search engine marketing should do the magic.
A correctly done search engine marketing guarantees almost an immediate result. It’s an ad, so that means you are paying. But the good part is you pay based on results or performance.
7. Establish yourself as an expert in your field through content marketing
Your target audience has questions that they need answers to, and your ability to establish yourself as an expert in your chosen area is important.
Still working with the cooking gas business example, below are popular searches by your potential target audience.
What do you do with this information? Well, you provide answers, and you’re rewarded with expert status.
While this is more effective through blogging on your website (oh, make sure your website makes provision for a blog), you can do it through social media as well.
Once your target audience can trust you as an expert, they won’t have a problem patronizing you.
A Recommended Video on How To Write A Blogpost
8. Design your sales funnel
Of course, you know a funnel and what it does. Yeah, it would help if you had a model that works like a funnel for your online business.
We call the buyer’s journey, which begins from Awareness down to Conversion/Sales.
You need to have a strategy that effectively helps your customers move through these different phases.
A customer may hear about your business today but may not need your product or service. How do you ensure that such customers come back to you and not your competitors when they finally need you. This is one of the many scenarios where the funnel is highly essential.
Here are a few tips for you on sales funnel design
- Use an email autoresponder and chatbot
- Design an email newsletter series (more on this shortly)
- Lead magnet!
- Design a landing page for the lead magnet with a clear call to action (CTA)
9. Groom your leads to loyal customers through email marketing
Email marketing does not only help you convert leads to customers; it also helps to turn customers into repeating/loyal customers.
It all begins with a lead magnet. The lead magnet could be in several forms – discount, free product, free value-added service, free trials, free ebook, free tutorial and so on.
This goes with the theory of permission marketing as made famous by Seth Godin in his book, Permission Marketing. Without a doubt, he is a master of how to start an online business.
Once you can generate a reasonable amount of leads through your lead magnet, the next is to design a newsletter series to reach each customer at the various stages of the buyers’ journey.
For instance, the email you’d send to a customer who already bought from you may be different from what you’d send to a first-time visitor.
Mailchimp is a very popular email marketing tool that will be useful here.
Examples of Lucrative Online Businesses Models
- Google Adsense
- Amazon Affiliate
- Affiliate Marketing
- Dropshipping
- Amazon FBA
- Ecommerce
- Software as a Service (SaaS)
- Infoproducts
- Online Courses
- Lead Gen for commissions
- Apps development and sales
- Website Flipping
Conclusion
There you have all the nine critical steps you need to take to understand how to start an online business.
Follow the recommended steps and be sure to have a solid online business idea with a high potential for success.
For a list of some online business examples and what kind of online business is most profitable, please click here.
I hope you now know how to start an online business.
Please let me have your thoughts on this beautiful article on how to start an online business by saying a thing or two in the comment section.
