This is an outline I developed for small businesses launching their first ecommerce operations.

Products

• Category
• Features
• Benefits
• Key Differentiators
• Variations
• Cost Information

Market Research

• Customers / Buyers
  • Demographics
    • Age
    • Gender
    • Location
  • Consumer Behavior
    • Lifestyle
    • What they like about these products
    • What they don’t like about these products
    • Use cases / Why they purchase these products
  • Online Shopping Behavior
    • Where they shop for these products
    • Time to purchase
    • Quantities
    • Frequency
    • Seasonality
    • Pricing
    • Questions & Concerns
• Competitors
  • Key brands
  • Pricing
  • Reviews / Rating
  • Product Listing Content
• Search Terms & Keywords

Sales Channels

• Direct-to-consumer
  • Branded ecommerce website
• First-party vendor
  • Selling your products as a vendor for an ecommerce website
    • Amazon as Amazon.com in the buy box
    • Home Depot, etc.
• Third-party marketplace seller
  • Selling your products as an alternate seller using an existing ecommerce marketplace
    • Amazon as Brand/Store in the buy box
    • Walmart as Brand/Store in the buy box

Fulfillment Channels

• Operational needs
  • Warehousing
  • Order fulfillment: pick/pack/ship
  • Logistics/Shipping
  • Returns
• Direct-to-consumer
  • Third-party logistics service
  • Self fulfillment
• First-party vendor
  • Retailer’s fulfillment operations
  • Drop ship for them using your own fulfillment operations
• Third-party marketplace seller
  • Marketplace’s fulfillment operations
    • Amazon FBA (Fulfilled by Amazon)
  • Own fulfillment operations (direct-to-consumer)

Product Listings

• Imagery
  • 5-7+ images
  • Enhanced secondary images
• Video
• Title
• Bullets
• Description
• Back-end keywords
• Enhanced content section
  • Amazon A+
• Variations
• Review Generation

Customer Service

• Question responses
• Negative review responses

Marketing Plan

• Advertising
• Price promotions
• Brand marketing

Profitability Plan

• Timeframe to profitability
• Cost of goods sold
• Other costs
  • Fulfillment & logistics
  • Website
  • Ads, etc.

Action Plan

• Monthly timeline
• Ongoing procedures