If you are one of the dreamers who has been thinking since eternity to start his/her venture, ecommerce is a striking opportunity for you. Don’t worry about the development of your web store; ecommerce platforms have guarded you on that front.
But do you have your business plan ready?
If yes, we recommend you to take a break from your dreamland and get a reality check. Even if you have been selling by now without any plans, you will not be able to strike anything huge. You can’t keep going for long without any decided business plan. Thus, your business is on the verge of failing.
The reason behind this is very simple; you don’t know where you are heading. Thus, your efforts for short-term goals that you set are more like shooting arrows in random directions. By luck, you may get success once or twice, but when you face the failures, you will not be able to figure out the things. When your business is not planned, you will not be able to optimize and explain your business model, ideas, and plans. With a blurred vision, it will be critical to hire resources for your venture, and you likely end up burdening the resource or yourself.
That’s why creating a business plan is a must for any business. When it comes to designing your store with an ecommerce platform, you have all your freedom to sell on your terms & conditions. You can set your business standards and make your brand stand out.
Now, we will be guiding you through the creation of a business plan. You must cover below-listed points:
- Problem & solution:
You might think of selling a certain category of products in the market, but there must be a reason for it. That same vary reason will be listed as the problem in the market. Maybe you want to streamline the supply chain, or you felt that there is a specific category of products that are in low demand. The reason can be anything, and you will be the one offering solution to that problem.
By making the list of problems and solutions, you will be able to create your business’s vision and mission. This will shape your ideas, and you have to keep in mind that your offering must match your vision. This further adds clarity and helps you set goals.
Let’s say you start a business of paper bags. Your mission is to have eco-friendly products only, and your vision can be a leading brand of paper bags in your region.
- Market analysis:
Whether you plan to target local audiences or global, market research is a necessity for every business. On deciding the business niche, you firstly perform industry analysis and then seek for competitor analysis.
While selling online, your competitors will be selling online and other offline businesses providing on-demand delivery of the products via online platforms. The competitor analysis helps you understand the type of products that are already in demand and the strategies which are working well for them. You will also get an estimate of the product price range to stay competitive in the market.
During the market analysis, it is better to list your local competitors as well as national and international ones. With wider research options, you will get good ideas about the product’s ideas with the changing cultural values and economic variations.
- Organizational hierarchy:
In this section, you will be discussing the type of business establishment you are thinking of. Decide the name of your business and list all of your team members. Whether you will be managing different fronts of your ecommerce store on your own, or like to divide the responsibilities. Decide if you will be running this business as a firm or registering it with other partners.
If you have decided to assign your business responsibilities to the team of resources you’ve hired, mention the hierarchy in which the workflow will be there. This will help you streamline the operations of your ecommerce store.
- Business model:
The business model is the heart of your business plan. You will be listing your target audience over here and decide how you will be marketing your products. You can opt for a B2C business model to directly sell products to consumers, B2B exposure will allow you to sell to the businesses. O2O business model can help you take your offline business online; marketplace model will let you sell your offerings with that of other businesses on-board.
If you have a limited budget to start with, dropshipping business model or affiliate marketing will be a more favorable option for your business. You can also take the franchise of any renowned brand and partner with a few brands to sell their products across your ecommerce store.
- Financial breakdown:
You want to start a business, sell your products to earn a profit, and reinvest it to keep the cycle running. That’s all a good thought, but how will you manage if there are no sales.
How much money are you planning to invest initially? Do you have the recurring investment options to keep your business running and managing operational costs? Are you taking investment and cash flow distinctly? How are you planning to manage your expenses, platform charges, employees, and everything else? How much is the percentage of profit on each of your products?
There are so many questions about the finances, and you have to mention all of them here. This will give you clarity about the funds you have and more what will be required. Further, you will be able to create a budget for different segments of your business and plan your marketing strategies accordingly.
- Quarter-wise division of goals:
If you have already crossed a mile of a journey as an unplanned business, you likely know different stages that need planning. Even if you are starting, you have to list your goals and divide them into quarters.
We know that you want to touch the sky and make your business a multi-million dollar brand, but let’s be realistic here!
Your goals can be as small as creating a social media engagement of 100 followers every month, or it can be getting business of INR 2 lakh in a year. You can hit that goal and even cross it when you plan to sell INR 50000 in a quarter. Breaking your bigger goals into chunks will make the major goal look more achievable. Now, you have to plan monthly business activities in a manner that you will be able to hit the goal.
Surplus Benefits Of Business Plan
- Improves business understanding: While creating the business plan, you have to do a lot of research about the association, businesses, competitors, and so on. This will add to your knowledge about your business niche. The more you will understand your customers, the easier it will be for you to deliver the right products to the right set of audience.
- Timely attainment of goals: A well-planned idea will make it easier for you to implement your strategies and attain your goals in the time. As an ecommerce seller, you have to be very particular about the trends. If you lose track of time, the offer that you planned to start will turn useless.
- Eases communication for partnership: You might have started this journey all on your own, but you like to connect with the like minds later. If you have the business plan ready, you can use it to communicate your business idea better rather than verbally explaining things.
- Help in creating a sales pitch: You may need the loan, market your shares, or like to partner with a certain brand, a business plan will help you create a healthy sales pitch. By drafting your ideas, growth opportunities, market share, competitor, plans, and other necessary details, you will talk about your business’s foresight. With SWOT analysis, when you will talk about your business’s potential, you will likely get success with your sales pitch.
- Aids in predictive analysis: Based on your research, sales reports, analytics, and financial backend, you can plan your goals and predict the year-on-year growth of your venture. Without a planned idea, it will seem vague. People listen to the figures, and it will be more convincing if facts are supporting those figures.
If you haven’t created your business plan yet, now is the time to create one. Remember that a business plan is not just some document created for fancy; you must keep checking and tweaking it time-to-time. You will likely add more product categories to your store every year; this implies that you will address more problems. It will widen your audience and strategies. Your business plan will turn mature with time, and that’s how it is supposed to work.
Once you have your business plan ready, you can register your business with Builderfly and start designing your dream store without any technicalities. Sign up today and start exploring all the functionalities that can shape your business for free within the trial period.
