Week 2: Market Segmentation, Securing Your Domain & Setting Up Your Online Store

Welcome back! In Week 1, we discussed the importance of the online market for bespoke curtains, draperies, and blinds, and introduced our experiment. This week, we’re taking a step back to emphasise a crucial but often overlooked step: segmenting your market. Once that’s done, we’ll focus on securing a domain and setting up your store.

Step 1: Start with Market Segmentation

Before diving into store creation, it’s essential to segment your market. Why? Because a clear understanding of your target audience ensures your store, products, and marketing strategies align with customer needs. Rushing into store setup without defining your audience can lead to wasted resources and missed opportunities.

What is Market Segmentation?

Market segmentation involves breaking your potential audience into distinct groups based on geography, demographics, behaviour, or preferences. This helps you focus on the regions or customer types most likely to buy from you.

Defining Primary and Secondary Markets

• Primary Market: This is your main focus—where most of your customers will come from. For example:
  • If you’re targeting the UK, England might be your primary market due to its larger population and demand.
  • If you’re targeting Europe, countries like France or Germany with high purchasing power could be your primary market.
• Secondary Market: These are supplementary markets that show potential but may require more effort, such as localisation, regional pricing, or different marketing strategies.

Why Segmentation Matters

• Helps tailor your product offerings to customer needs.
• Focuses your marketing efforts on regions with the highest ROI.
• Allows better allocation of resources, especially for bespoke products like curtains and blinds.

In InterioApp we are using Spreadsheet documents to organise the process of the store creation. This allows you to never miss a thing and be always in the process. And since we are developing stores for our clients, it's easy to share a file to follow the steps and update your clinets with the process. 

The Online Store Roadmap

You can observe in the roadmap how we organize the steps into weeks or days. This strategy ensures that we never miss a task and can easily identify what’s working and what needs improvement. Additionally, it’s simple to share the roadmap with our clients, keeping them informed and better understanding the progress we’re making.

Marketing Content Strategy

This is an excellent approach to developing the marketing strategy for your online store. The content will be utilized by your clients in every social media post or email campaign. It’s also prominently featured on the online store itself. To experience the online store in action, visit our client’s online store for bespoke wave curtains - Modern Curtains (link to the store: Modern Curtains)

Identifying the Ideal Customer Persona (ICP)

Identifying your ideal customer persona is the cornerstone of creating an effective online store. After determining your target audience, create a visual representation of your ideal customer and identify relevant keywords they use when searching for products or services. For instance, consider a vegan individual who drives an electric car, has a pet from a shelter, and values eco-friendly environments. By creating a comprehensive profile of this persona, you can effectively target them with the appropriate keywords and showcase your eco-friendly curtains made from recycled plastic bottles, as well as other products and services that align with their interests. 

Step 2: Securing Your Domain

Your domain name is your business’s online address. Choosing the right one is critical, as changing it later can disrupt your SEO and brand identity. Here’s how to select the perfect domain:

Key Qualities of a Good Domain Name

• Simple and Memorable: Ensure it’s easy to recall and type.
• Relevant to Your Business: Reflect your niche so customers know what you offer.
• SEO-Friendly: Include keywords like "curtains" or "blinds" to improve search engine visibility.

How We Selected Our Domain Name

In our experiment, we brainstormed as a team to define our business goals. Since we plan to sell curtains and blinds online, we wanted our domain name to convey ease, simplicity, and speed. We chose:

1. oneclickcurtains.com
2. oneclickblinds.com

Step 3: Setting Up Your Online Store

Once you’ve segmented your market and secured your domain, it’s time to set up your store. For bespoke products like curtains and blinds, having the right tools is crucial. Here’s our process:

1. Signed up for Shopify to build the store.
2. Connected our domain to the Shopify store.
3. Installed our calculator plugin to enable bespoke product pricing.
4. Uploaded basic branding materials (logo, colours, etc.).

Real Success Stories

Here’s how some of our clients have succeeded using our tools:

• Impuls Imports (New Zealand): "InterioApp has revolutionised how we handle orders and customer inquiries. The team provided exceptional support."
• Faber (Denmark): "This app has been a fantastic addition! We had our first sale within a week, and now sales are happening daily."
• Home Design Hub (Canada): "The plugin works perfectly for our store, and Darius and his team provided exceptional support. It’s the best solution we’ve used."

FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions