How to Sell Online: Your One-Stop Resource for Long-Term Success

Whether you’re just beginning to sell online or looking to grow your brand beyond your previous all-time highs, ecommerce is not always easy.

Product sourcing and inventory management can make even a successful campaign go awry. Can you imagine too many sales being a bad thing?.

Conversion rate optimization and site UX is constantly changing in an online world where customer expectations vary by individual, and much more so by cohort.

To say success is an art in ecommerce is an understatement.

But the best artists in the world are thieves. Not in the traditional sense of the word, but thieves in the sense of stealing and subsequent iterating on others’ ideas.

To that end, ecommerce success stories and best practices and expert tips help businesses of all sizes optimize their strategies and learn from those who have come before.

This article is here to curate those stories and how-tos. Here, you’ll find a plethora of knowledge spanning every aspect of business stage and growth. There are how-tos. There are success stories. There are downloadable spreadsheets. All of which can save you time, money and mistakes.

Dive on in.

How to Start Selling Online (Successfully)

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” – Benjamin Franklin

As a budding online entrepreneur, there’s quite a bit of homework and first steps to take before you begin making money.

Each of the articles in these sections will walk you through how to set yourself up for long term online selling success. For a more in-depth curation of helpful tips for companies in the ideation stage, visit our guide on How to Start an Online Business.

Successful Ecommerce Business Basics

• Find a Product Niche and Start Selling Online
• How to Master Product Photography on a Tight Budget (We Did it With Less Than $50)
• How to Write a Returns and Exchanges Policy That Grows Sales
• The Complete Guide to Writing Product Copy That Sells Itself

Designing Your Store

• 78 Best Ecommerce Website Designs
• Meet the 10 Most Innovative Ecommerce Brands of 2016

Accepting Payments

• Know What Your Credit Card Payment Options Are as a Merchant
• 21 Apple Pay Tips & Why It’s the Future of Mobile Payments

Configuring Shipping

• The Complete Guide to Shipping as a Success Strategy

Protecting Customer Data

• Everything You Need to Know About PCI Compliance and How to Achieve It

Make Your First Sale

Once you have your site set up for success, it’s time to start driving traffic and converting visitors into customers. Here’s everything you need to increase your brand’s visibility and then stay top of mind (and wallet) with customers.

Driving Traffic

• 30 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Ecommerce Store
• How to Create Ecommerce Product Videos That Drive Traffic

Converting Shoppers

• How to Use Psychology and Sales Triggers to Double Your Conversion Rate
• The Science of Emotional Buying and What Marketers Can Do About It
• How to Remove Friction From Your Buyer Journey
• 3 Ways to Use Customer Data Right Now to Increase Conversions
• 31 Email Marketing Tips to 5x Conversion

Retaining Customers With Marketing

• How to Set Up an Ecommerce Loyalty Program
• We Spent a Year Building an Ecommerce Email Automation Platform: Here’s What We Learned
• The 3 Phases of Ecommerce Personalization

Measuring Success

• 55 Ecommerce Metrics and KPIs You Need to Measure to Drive 10x Growth
• Why Conversion Rate is the One Metric That Determines Your Success

Sell Everywhere

The fastest growing business on the BigCommerce platform view themselves similarly to a stock portfolio: diversification is key to success.

Smart brands have multiple revenue streams. Better yet, modern consumers are agnostic to their final purchase destination. This means that a customer has no preference on whether they shop on Amazon or your webstore. A consumer’s only preference is convenience. So, if you aren’t selling across channels, you could lose the sale to a competitor who has better diversified.

Here’s all the information you need to know to expand your revenue portfolio and 10x sales.

Selling on Amazon

• The Definitive Guide to Selling on Amazon
• The Amazon Seller Solution Provider Guide

Selling on eBay

• How Selling on eBay Can Future-Proof Your Business

Selling on Google

• 15 Google Shopping Tips to Make More While Spending Less
• How Google Recommends You Manage Google AdWords

Selling on Facebook

• The Complete Guide to Advertising on Facebook

Selling on Pinterest

• How to Grow an Engaged, Ready-to-Buy Community on Pinterest

Selling on Twitter

• The Complete Ecommerce Guide to Twitter Advertising

13 Ecommerce Success Stories to Motivate You in 2017

The best how-to articles come right from the source –– those business owners who have been knee deep in the day-in and day-out activities of success. Learn below from 13 businesses who grew exponentially in 2016 –– and read what they have in store for the year ahead.

1. How a Gift Box Brand Selling Jerky and Nuts Grew 4,000% in 4 Years to $21M in Revenue
2. How Classified T-Shirts Secretly Became the Fastest Growing Retailer in the U.S.
3. How Pappy + Co Nurtures Customers and Turn Every Email into $4,162 in Revenue
4. How Vivino Went from Store Launch to Profitability in 2 Months
5. How to Build an Organic Baby Formula Empire in 2 Years or Less
6. One Business’s Humble Attempt to Undo the Impact of Fast Fashion and Loose Labor Laws
7. What Happens When Olympic Athletes Set Their Sights on Abolishing a Monopoly
8. The Economics of Direct to Consumer Selling
9. A Beauty Experiment for Beards Goes Viral – And It’s Badass
10. Oh the Places Your Purchase Will Go –– and the 10,000 Girls It Will Educate
11. The Significance of Sneakers and the Definitive End to Toe Creases
12. A (Nursing) Bra of a Different Comfort
13. The Adult Coloring Book Craze is Coming to a T-Shirt Near You

The new year is the perfect time to start a new business or sell more through your current one. What are you waiting for?