Carl Sagan, one of the greatest American astronomers and astrophysicists, once said that if one wishes to make an apple pie from scratch, one must first invent the universe. One has to start from the Big Bang, create the suns and the moons, fire, bring water, need men to milk cows, fertile soil, and industrial revolution. To make a thing as simple as an apple pie, one has to create the whole world. Building your own Shopify E-commerce store in Dubai is no different.  

One must put conscious efforts, take constructive actions, fathom their constellation of ideas into rigid strategies. However, on the face value, steps seem simple: researching, launching, and then growing a successful business in any specific country. For our constructive blueprint, we will analyze the parlance of operating business on Shopify in UAE.  

The journey of establishing your E-commerce business starts with you selecting a product or number of products to deal in. Therefore, we will first discuss this primary step for your entity. 

1. Choose a product

Find a product to sell 

The first and foremost step in starting a business is deciding what products you wish to sell online, wholesale, or direct-to-consumer. Though it is the most challenging part of the whole journey of setting up a business, especially a Shopify store, it is also obviously the most important. However, you can use the following strategies to find product opportunities on Shopify.

You can find products to sell online on Shopify with Oberlo. It aids one in finding products that they wish to sell. Then, they can directly add them to their Shopify store and start selling right away.

To find a product to sell, idealize a product that can: 

1. Meeting a demand – The world of business is all about fulfilling people’s wants. Either you target an existing want or create one, i.e. make people conscious about want they inherently had but were not consciously aware of, for ex- body wash, intimate wash, protein supplements etc. 
2. Appeal enthusiastic hobbyists – People tend to spend on something they are passionate about continually. For example- golf enthusiasts will continue to spend on golf clubs, irrespective of a slight change in the price range in the market, as long as they get the best quality clubs. 
3. Something in which you are interested – When you are personally invested or possess knowledge about a particular product that you wish to sell, you know your service in and out. You can innovate more or address an aspect that you realized as a consumer but did not fulfill accordingly. 
4. Professional experience – If you have been part of a particular industry and are well adept at the nuances of the domain, you can start your online business in that particular paradigm. Your years of experience will help you evaluate your business well. 
5. Address trends – This is more like making hay while the sun shines. Recognising a trend and capitalizing on it can be rewarding to great lengths. For example- pharmaceutical companies were quick to take note of the pandemic. They, therefore, escalated the production of sanitisers and other disinfectants. 

Other methods that can also help one in getting a fair idea of the market related to a particular product are:

• Reading customer reviews on an existing product.
• Browsing on other online stores and looking out for what’s trending there. You can check the best sellers and frequently bought sections and what customers have bought with similar products. 

Evaluating the idea 

The planning for success begins beforehand, before the launch. Therefore once you have made up your mind regarding which product you want to sell, you need to check its saleability. You can adopt the following approaches to validate your product ideas and potential market.

1. Honest assessment is when money changes hands – Beta testing tells you a lot about your product and whether people are ready to pay for it or not. Until you get proper feedback regarding your product from people you know, like friends and family and people you don’t like shoppers at a random store, all you have regarding your product are assumptions. Only when strangers are ready to buy your product and pay for it, you know that you are meeting a genuine demand. 
2. Competitive analysis – Evaluate the market for the product you wish to sell, as it stands today. You shall look into your direct competition, assess what they are doing and compare your plan with theirs. People generally look for a market with no competitors, but that can be a flaw because you can not confirm an existing demand. Therefore you do not know the viability of your business. Having a competitor not only tells you that the demand for a particular product exists but also the more extended the competitor has survived, tells you whether the demand is ever-growing and sustainable or not. 

Obtaining the product

Now that you have decided on your product and have done the primary market research for its viability, you must ascertain the procurement. This entirely depends on your business model. That is whether you would like to manufacture, retail or dropship.

The primary difference among the three lies that:

• A manufacturer produces their product idea.
• A supplier (also could be a manufacturer), wholesaler or retailer, purchases existing brands and products. 
• A dropshipping business owner supplies products and fulfills the orders of already-existing brands and products. 

Whether you wish to manufacture or wholesale, you will have to supply goods or raw materials, which you can do from a domestic or an overseas source. Any location abroad will be considered overseas for you. Generally, business owners secure two domestic and overseas manufacturers, using the domestic one as a backup. So that in case the order from overseas delays or is not in proper shape then due to numerous reasons, then your local supplier has your back. Once you have decided on your supplier, all you have to do is:

• Assess a random sample of goods to determine the quality of both the goods and service.
• Negotiate the right price for the order and terms of payment. 
• Place your order.

At this juncture, you have planned specifically for your product. However, it is only the first step. The next step involves planning other aspects of your E-commerce business, like operations, marketing and management etc. 

II. Plan 

A quick SWOT analysis always gives you a fair picture of your business. It tells you about Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that your business experiences or will experience in the future. So you always have an accurate picture regarding your business’s potential and future propensities. 

Once you are done with a comprehensive SWOT analysis, you have to prepare a business analysis. It streamlines your clutter of thoughts into concrete, constructive actions. With this, you will be able to determine your priorities, avoid common mistakes, and how to pitch in and reach out to new customers. 

A divested business plan comprises of: 

• Executive Summary
• Company Description
• Market Analysis 
• Management and Organization
• Products and Services
• Customer Segmentation
• Plan for Marketing 
• Plan for Logistics and Operations
• Plan for Finance 

Once you have met all the pointers in your business plan checklist, you move forward with the crux of setting your business on the physical and digital (SEO) interface. 

III. Setting up the E-commerce business

Name your business

Now that you have decided to start your E-commerce business, you have to ascertain a brand name and a domain name.

Now several name generator tools can give you the perfect moniker for your online shop like Shopify, Oberlo, Namesmith, Namelix, Businessnamegenerator.com, among many others. 

The name that you choose for your business must be:

• Short and simple
• Different
• Online Presence (.com is the most preferred domain name)
• Creative
• Original 

Logo 

After adopting a unique name and registering on a corresponding domain, you must craft a vibrant logo. You can use free logo makers like Shopify’s logo maker Hatchful or Canva. You can also use other online paid logo makers like Looka, Designhill, Placeit, etc. The logo develops your brand’s identity, and therefore it must reflect colors that reflect your brand. 

SEO

Every business owner wants to fetch as much traffic on their E-commerce store as possible since the entire business runs on the digital interface. Therefore they must rank high on the SERP. For the same, the idea of mastering E-commerce SEO crosses the mind of every business owner to generate more organic; non paid traffic from sites like Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engines for their online stores.

Well, it all starts with Keyword research. Knowing and using the right keyword in your content is the most crucial way to grab the attention of the search engine’s algorithm. Take note of the keywords you think a user would search with, moreover do address the suggestion the search engine gives as per frequently asked questions and suggested search results. Furthermore, a keyword should be such which is used by users a lot, that is it must have higher search volume, and be relevant. 

Now the prima facie roles of building the products and their operations are done. But a major job awaits, and that is to build your online store. As SEO is complex, you may choose to engage a reputable e-commerce SEO service such as https://theleadingsolution.com/services/ecommerce-seo/.

Building the store 

The layout of your E-commerce store is critically important. It must comprise captivating product descriptions, beautiful product images, have the right E-commerce color palette, and much more.  

A saleable product description:

• Focuses on the ideal buyer.
• Has enticing benefits.
• Justifies the superlatives used.
• Appeals to the reader’s imagination.
• Tempt’s with social testimony.
• Scannable, short and simple.

It would be best if you optimized the speed of the page in loading so that users don’t leave your website getting frustrated over time. However, you have to be very cautious about it since, in today’s fast-paced world, a viewer will not even wait for extra 3-4 seconds taken by your webpage to load. 

Choosing the sales channel 

Once you have developed how to commence your E-commerce business, you will have to look for the points where a customer will shop your products. Again this depends on the product and the target audience; however, numerous options can be coupled to support a self-hosted store like yours. For example, you are selling on Etsy, Shopify, Amazon, eBay, Instagram, Facebook Shop, Pinterest, Google Shopping and many more. 

Congratulations for making it halfway through. Now your E-commerce business is all set to launch. 

IV. Launch

This is the point where you make a detailed checklist of things to assure that you have not missed any point of concern. Your E-commerce business checklist before the launch will comprise of:

• Added your preferred sales channel
• Added a custom domain
• Reviewed the checkout experience and payment gateway settings
• Prepared the standard pages
• Reviewed the email notification settings
• Conducted a content audit
• Optimized all images on the website
• Installed an analytics tool
• Pre Launch marketing plan ready
• Adjusted tax and shipping settings
• Made your contact pathway easy for shoppers
• Installed all the essential applications
• Set the billing information 

Now that your E-commerce entity is out in the world, your pivotal job has just begun. 

V. Post Launch

Getting the first customer is a hard nut to crack, but you know you have set your path straight when you do. However, the intense marketing grind starts post-launch, and it never stops after that. Therefore, to make sure that you leave no stone unturned at such a vital juncture, you must initiate a marketing checklist which comprises of: 

• Spending the initial 30 days entirely driving the targeted traffic to the store. 
• Consider accessible traffic sources, like offering a discount code, adding the store URL on your profile since the first-hand promotion starts at home.
• Join online communities.
• Paid advertising on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest etc. 
• Google Advertisement.
• Outreach or connect with the existing audience.
• Seeking strategic partnerships. 
• Collaborating with bloggers and influencers.

You can even take the marketing offline and spread the word personally at retail stores, malls and other public spheres. 

You must know at this point that you have to go all out there in the world to grow up. 

At this juncture, we come to the end of this basic roadmap for you to build your E-commerce entity from scratch. However, only by adopting the aforementioned practices correctly, you will be able to successfully establish your Shopify E-commerce business. 

Running an E-commerce business is exciting, challenging and if the foundations are set right, then very fruitful. All you have to do is choose the right product to sell after adept research, evaluate the viability, ascertain the supply, devise an efficient store, build a brand name and logo, exercise intense marketing techniques and have faith in yourself. This blueprint is merely a roadmap for the thrilling voyage of the E-commerce business.