Your Guide to the E-commerce Website Bare Minimum for Your First Sale

I have been in the hair business for more than a decade, and over this time, I helped many entrepreneurs to get their businesses on their feet.

I encountered rookie mistakes to mistakes that sound illogically out of place.

Building an e-commerce website from scratch is massive work, and even perfectionists are going to miss something.

This something can be fatal or benign, but your audience makes split-second and depends heavily on first impressions. So, detail can be quite risky.

First impressions are tricky, you can’t know what makes them or what erases them.

It can’t be controlled but it can be minimized.

In today’s article, I help you to meet the bare minimum of website building without it being quickly cooked by a platform.

Every function matters in your way to break the ice with sales.

The Branding

Your hair business branding is your how.

You need to communicate your hair business to the world as a person with clear goals, a classy style, and obvious duties.

Positioning your company right is the product of a good branding strategy.

It’s the single statement you share with the audience repeatedly until you convince them of your place in the market.

If your localism is your bond to becoming global, embrace it.

If your material and quality are what distinguish your brand, embrace that.

The next thing is your visual identity, your logo is significant to this extent.

Visual identity should leak to every touchpoint, your website, your social media channels, and your packages.

On Private Label Branding, you can customize your logo, at the same price it was put on back in 2017 when we first launched this service.

Along with that, you can customize satin hair extensions packaging bags, bonnets, and scarves.

You will dropship your products with customized branding assets without even needing to touch them.

The Communication

There is an Eastern wise old saying that goes like this: from your name comes your fortune.

It’s true.

The founder of McDonald's admitted that the American name and the Golden Arch were a big part of its success.

Your business name is going to stick for years to come.

Make sure you hair business legal name is the same as the domain name and the social media handles.

You have to pick a good catchy name, test it first on social media and GoDaddy, make sure of its availability then move on with it.

You can check out the whole process right here.

Setting up social media channels then tying them up to the website and using the same creative assets all across is essential.

Not forgetting about your professional email.

Ever got an email from walmart@gmail.com?

Part of e-commerce is sounding like you’re one of the big fishes without actually being.

Setting a professional email address is a bare minimum.

Google has been increasing the cost continuously, it’s around $15 right now.

You can use business emails like Wix or GoDaddy at half that price, but honestly, Google Workspace will be worth it.

The Value

An optimized variety of products at an adequate value is the skeleton of your e- commerce website.

The flesh is free value.

Without this free value, your website will be ignored by customers and search engines.

You will just be another salesman with a good website.

You have to launch your hair business website with at least 3 blog posts at the length of 1000 words, supported with links, pictures, and anything that makes them valuable.

This can be guides, infographics, or tutorials.

Know more about my hair blogging strategy.

Any picture included in your website should be supported with descriptive Alt text and a common file format like JPG except for the logo which should be transparent PNG.

The pictures should be saved under a specific name, not random characters.

I.E: body-wave-frontal.jpg

For your blog inspiration, you can write about the most 3 topics you know everything about.

The Tech

You have gone in depth before about choosing your ideal e-commerce platform.

I recommend Shopify, for its flexibility and e-commerce integrations.

Once you sign up and activate your subscription, your monthly clock will tick.

Shopify is going to have plenty of apps to use like Shopify Audiences and Shopify Markets.

You can also support your website with apps for reviews like Judge.Me and CRM apps (Customer Relationships Management) like Groove.

In our little contest, you can earn a 3-month subscription to the Dropship Beauty App. So, keep reading to know how to win that.

Choosing a hair dropshipping app for your website is like picking up a motor for your car.

The ideal app should facilitate importing high-quality products quickly and at an affordable cost so that when you multiply to get your margins, the price wouldn’t sound ridiculous.

The UI and UX design of your website is an important factor in your success too.

Your branding color scheme should align with that.

You can generate a color palette from Adobe Color for free.

Just make sure to not be monotonous about it or use glitter and flashy graphics that slow down your website.

The Marketing

The strategy is to reach out to a targeted audience with distinctive demographic and psychological qualities with crafted messages and branded visuals on a set budget stretched over a specific period of time benchmarked against certain achievable KPIs.

That can be in the shape of creating scripted videos on YouTube.

Publishing and promoting on Facebook and repromotion to the audience who interacted.

Creating content on Instagram and TikTok, enriched with user-generated content from your customers or influencer partnerships.

Driving traffic to your website using consistent blog writing.

Publishing email marketing flows for abandonment carts and browsing.

And upselling to previous customers.

The channels and the frequency are all yours.

You should be up-to-date with the hair marketing trends in 2024.

Do what is in your capacity and resources.

The bare minimum would be setting up the social media channels.

Along with writing a minimum of 300 words ‘’About Us” page on your website.

Supported with pictures and video if possible.

Your brand story is your most important marketing material.

The Resources

On our Hair Business Blueprint Facebook Group, you will find a form to attach your website to it.

If you meet the bare minimum requirements stated above, you will be selected for a free website review on the Hair Business Blueprint channel.

That can be your way to win a 3-month free subscription to the Dropship Beauty App.

And to solve all the problems that have been giving you a hard sleep.

If you’re about to launch your hair business, you can know the budget and it can be done in under 2 weeks.

Don’t forget to check out our Hair Business Masterclass at the cost of a cup of coffee, to earn entrepreneurial wisdom to elevate your hair business.