Preparing for Ecommerce After Kickstarter or Indiegogo

Congratulations! You’ve launched a successful crowdfunding campaign. So successful, in fact, that you are ready to take the leap from crowdfunding to independently selling your product online. While setting up ecommerce after Kickstarter may seem daunting, it shouldn’t be. Pick the right platform, create a solid strategy, and leverage the momentum of your crowdfunding campaign for a successful ecommerce launch.

Start Early

While your crowdfunding campaign is still underway, begin to design and develop your ecommerce site. By this point you’ve likely developed a distinct color palette and style for your products, so make sure that your new e-commerce website follows those styles and highlights your brand. You won’t want to lose the momentum that you have built through the crowdfunding phase; take that upward swing and translate it into a continual stream of profit.

Pick Your Platform

There are many different options for setting up your ecommerce store. You can go the self-hosted way, in which you pay for hosting (such as Bluehost) and set everything up yourself. WordPress is another self-hosted option that has an ecommerce plugin called WooCommerce, which contains many of the building blocks for creating a beautiful website.

A second option is an online store builder. Three of the market leaders are Shopify, Squarespace and Wix. With a store builder, you never have to worry about updating plugins, themes are easy to try and discard, and technical issues are always handled by the platform. If you are looking for a more “drag and drop” approach, a store builder is the best option for you.

Another option is Amazon Launchpad or Fulfillment By Amazon (FBA). Amazon has several great features, including:

• Onboarding support for vendors and sellers
• Marketing support
• A robust community

Create a Strategy

Running a successful ecommerce store requires many components to work perfectly in tandem, including social media, advertising, manufacturing and more, to support sales goals. To develop an ecommerce strategy, you’ll need to:

• Identify your corporate goals and success benchmarks
• Identify your unique value proposition
• Begin market research to understand your audience
• Decide which platform to use and build your online store
• Create an advertising and marketing plan (Making sure to include content marketing, paid search, social media advertising, email marketing and other types of awareness-building campaigns)
• Keep your backers in the loop and develop a loyalty program to keep them as customers

What If You Are Not Ready?

Whether your crowdfunding campaign is still underway or has already concluded and you are still not ready to launch your site, switching to Indiegogo InDemand can be beneficial to your business. InDemand lets you offer pre-sales, as well as helps you continue raising money to help launch your business. This enables you to stay in the loop with your backers, and keep them updated on new developments – all while maintaining the momentum that you have created during the original crowdfunding phase!

Whether you have successfully launched your crowdfunding campaign or are just looking to begin, Enventys Partners can guide you through every step. From social advertising prior to your crowdfunding launch to ecommerce planning and developing, Enventys Partners is your trusted team in the ecommerce marketplace. Contact us today to learn more!