You’ve meticulously strategized how starting your new eCommerce business will unfold; you’ve chosen the best software solution, considered the best user experience, and utilized all of the resources available to you. Or so you think.
Seeing your once tiny idea through from a scribble on a post-it note into a fully-formed, actionable plan is exciting, and the urge to jump headfirst into making that plan come to life is huge. But as a new start-up, it’s often easy to miss out on the resources that are free, trustworthy, and invaluable to making those crucial decisions during the first stages of your new online business.
Taking this into account, we’ve compiled a list of what we think are the best online resources for you to check out in the early stages of your eCommerce journey. Free, insightful, and crammed with expertise, we’ve put together a directory of the most useful eCommerce voices out there.
eCommerce blogs to read
Richard Lazazzera’s A Better Lemonade Stand is not your average sales-focused website with an added blog for good measure. In fact, he describes it as an ‘eCommerce incubator’, which exists as a resource and, most importantly, as a supportive community for entrepreneurs. Easy to read and aesthetically pleasing, it’s also a treasure trove of free advice. From marketing tips, to branding expertise, and inspiring case studies, Richard’s expertise can guide you from your start-up days through to expanding your business.
Helpful blog post: How to Cheat at eCommerce
The Future of Commerce is updated daily with trends and tips for eCommerce business owners. Concise, easy to navigate, and loaded with practical information, this blog is a great resource for new eCommerce stores.
Helpful blog post: Get Big Impact from Bite-Sized Content
Referral Candy has a general focus on eCommerce referral marketing, however, it also produces helpful case study-type articles loaded with lessons and informed advice on increasing search traffic, conversion rates, and much more.
Helpful blog post: The Ultimate Guide to eCommerce Mistakes
Prisync publishes a weekly eCommerce news round-up which is excellent for keeping ahead of the curve with handy snippets of newly released data and reports. It also has a wealth of tips and how-to articles.
Helpful blog post: The Checklist: 20 Tips to Lower Your eCommerce Cart Abandonment
With intelligent and informed advice on everything from pricing to email marketing, digital agency Pixel Union delivers content from a merchant perspective, ideal for eCommerce start-ups.
Helpful blog post: The Right Price: How Much Are Your Products Worth?
Providing marketing, security, and user experience knowledge, Paymill is a blog perfect for navigating the tricky world of online payments.
Helpful blog post: 11 Tactics to Maximize Your eCommerce Social Marketing
Neil Patel is arguably one of the most experienced and authoritative voices in the eCommerce community. Lauded by Forbes as one of the top 10 online marketers, his QuickSprout blog is a veritable hub of information covering quite possibly everything you could need to know about online marketing.
Helpful blog post: 10 Tools That You Need to Use Before You Start Your Next Business
For podcast enthusiasts, Build My Online Store is an eCommerce blog which is populated with valuable podcasts, informed by the experiences and lessons of eCommerce store owners Terry Lin and Travis Marziani. Light on jargon but heavy on credible sources of advice and guidance, BMOS is a great source of content for new eCommerce business startups.
Helpful blog post: 6 Creative Ways To Build Links For Your Store
ECWID makes the task of navigating the world of eCommerce a little easier with its straightforward approach to advice and helpful categorization of posts, including ‘Preparing to Launch’. Cute animated graphics are always a plus too, right?
Helpful blog post: Ecwid eCommerce Business Blueprint: Build Your Successful Online Store
Shopify’s own blog is another goldmine of eCommerce guidance and expertise. With case studies, advice straight from the experts, forums, video guides and more, Shopify is a highly authoritative source of information for those in the early stages of their eCommerce business.
Helpful blog post: 34 Time Management Tips for Busy Entrepreneurs (by Experts)
Highly readable, up-to-date, and reliable, BigCommerce’s blog is another outlet not to be missed. Reflecting on its own client success stories, the content is insightful and inspiring for all types of new eCommerce ventures.
Helpful blog post: How to Master Product Photography on a Tight Budget
eCommerce Twitter accounts to follow
Matthew Barby is the Global Head of Growth and SEO at Hubspot and an expert on content strategy and SEO. Check out his feed for insightful articles from a variety of great sources.
Tweets by @matthewbarby
Under the ‘eCommerceboy’ alias, Armando Roggio is an eCommerce professional, marketer and writer, tweeting regularly about content marketing and the must-haves for any eCommerce business.
Tweets by @ecommerceboy
Ann Handley is Head of Content at MarketingProfs, and has proclaimed an all out ‘war on mediocrity in content marketing’. An author of a Wall Street Journal bestseller, and cited by Forbes as one of the most influential woman in Social Media and one of the top 20 women bloggers, Ann’s Twitter feed is not to be ignored by anyone in the eCommerce world.
Tweets by @MarketingProfs
The principal at eCommerce Growth Consultancy 2X eCommerce, Kunle helps online retailers prosper through his knowledge of customer acquisition, conversion rate optimization, and much more.
Tweets by @KunleTCampbell
Writer of the aforementioned blog Quick Sprout, Neil is an entrepreneur, known for creating Crazy Egg and Hello Bar. He also helps companies like Amazon grow their revenue, and is a columnist for Forbes. Basically, his feed is not to be missed.
Tweets by @neilpatel
Paul is an eCommerce consultant and specializes in customer acquisition marketing and customer experience. Tweeting useful links and insights regularly, check out Paul’s feed for some inspiration.
Tweets by @paulnrogers
Peep is the founder of ConversionXL, spending his days identifying where ‘websites are leaking money’, and is a self-professed ‘conversion optimization champion’. Peep’s feed is full of useful links and comments.
Tweets by @peeplaja
Run by @JamesGurd, this account hosts the #eComChat on Mondays 8am-9am EST – an early start due to it being hosted from the UK. The chat hosts discussions on topics ranging from supply and demand, ROI in digital marketing, and link building. It’s great for real-time discussion and networking.
Tweets by @ecomchat
eCommerce LinkedIn communities to join
With over 90,000 members, the eCommerce and Online Marketing Experts group acts as an open forum for discussion on everything eCommerce, from SEO, to web analytics, to email marketing and more.
eCommerce UK has over 10,000 members including some major UK and international brands.
The eCommerce Executive Network has almost 12,000 members and, as their group name suggests, is host to discussions related to all aspects of the broad church of the eCommerce industry.
eCommerce Network has a whopping 169,000 members from across the globe, and covers everything from strategy, KPIs, and SEM, to user experience.
What next?
Once you’ve delved into the abundance of expertise here, you should be more than equipped to deal with the world of eCommerce. However, if you’re looking for even more resources:
Check out our handy checklist on how to choose the right eCommerce software.
If you’ve already taken the plunge into online selling, check out these 10 tips to successfully promote your eCommerce store.
Take a look at our eCommerce software listings to see what might work for your business.
What eCommerce resources do you recommend? Share your favorites in the comments!
The post The best online resources for starting a new eCommerce business appeared first on GetApp Lab.