How to Start Online Selling Business in Dubai (2022)
So, you’ve decided to start an online business in Dubai? You may have a great online business idea or start a side hustle to turn it into a profitable business.
You can discover everything from choosing a business niche, launching your website, attracting clients, making big money from Instagram, and selling online.
Here’s our step-by-step guide to help you start your online business setup in Dubai today.
How to find a gap in the Market
The first step in starting an online business in Dubai is possibly one of the most complex challenges you will have to face. Choosing a profitable, trendy product with good margins is tough. The product may be a single or comprehensive product line that fills a market niche.
Due to costs that include advertising, shipping, and labor, choosing products with at least 50% profit margins is essential. Finding a suitable product is essential to absorb the customer acquisition price.
Product Sourcing and Manufacturing your product
At this stage, you have a product in mind. Now you need to start thinking about where you will source it from.
You can start by researching online. Websites like Yellow Pages, Abraa, and Alibaba are excellent sources of information. Reaching out to your network of close friends and family to find local manufacturers and suppliers is a logical step when hunting for a vendor.
When you start a business online, the competition is fierce as every business wants to provide high-quality products and services to meet customers’ demands and standards. Product quality becomes vital for success these days as eCommerce becomes customer-centric. You must source products that encourage loyalty and positive brand associations when choosing products.
It’s good to have suppliers with solid infrastructure and convenient transit, as your quality product is useless if you can’t purchase it and bring it to the market.
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Choose a name for your online business
When deciding on a name for your online business in Dubai, there aren’t many limits to what you can call it. But there are a few rules to follow
- Your business name shouldn’t refute your company’s activity. We recommend choosing a business name that speaks of your company’s activities.
- Your company should not have been reserved or protected by a similar business in the UAE. It’s better if you use Google to search for your preferred name to make sure it does not belong to any other business.
- The name should not be offensive to anyone in particular or any group and should not contain offensive words.
- The name shouldn’t contain any names of a specific God or his divine attributes in Arabic or English, e.g. Al Qader, Al Aleem, Al Razzaq.
If you aren’t sure about whether or not your business name is legal, you can check with our expert business consultants at Fairway.
Get social media handles for the UAE Company
Believe it or not! But your online business presence is hugely influenced by your social media presence. So, the next step is to have a secure domain name and similar social media handles so that your customers can identify your business. A domain name is an address. This is where your e-commerce shop will reside. Social media handles are the names displayed on your social profiles. Having the domain name and a social tag is extremely beneficial. Sometimes the tags you want aren’t available, so you need to be creative and find something that works. In Dubai, the domain extensions are either .com or .ae.
Some of the most popular places to purchase a domain are:
- Name Cheap
- Domain.com
- Google Domains
- Go Daddy
- BlueHost
Get License to sell online in Dubai
Next, you must decide if you are required to get an eCommerce license in Dubai. You must obtain an eCommerce license if your business sells products online in the UAE.
But if you are a trainer or coach and offer your services to clients online, you don’t require an eCommerce license. If you sell digital products, you don’t require e-commerce licenses as no physical goods are being delivered to your customers. In this case, you will need a professional license that allows you to offer your professional services to your clients.
If you aren’t sure in which bracket your company falls, then the best thing to do is to contact a company formation specialist like Fairway to help guide you through the business setup process in Dubai.
How to choose an eCommerce Platform
Ecommerce platforms are the all-in-one solution to run an online business. It ensures good customer service to your potential customers. This platform handles both the vendor and customer sides of transactions.
What are the best e-commerce platforms?
E-commerce platforms exist to help create an online store that is simple, cost-effective, and quick to set up. Here is a list of the best e-commerce platforms you can use.
- Shopify
- Woo Commerce
- Magento
- Big Commerce
How to make a brand design
The key to success is having a design for your brand. Whether you are a large corporation or a small online business, brand design is essential. A great design helps your clientele remember you and your services. For example, you can instantly recognize Nike, McDonald’s, or KFC brands and know what services and products they offer.
Unless you are a graphic designer or have skills in this field, we recommend you not take shortcuts. In 2022, design is everything. It can make or break your brand reputation.
Your brand represents your business’s personality, values, and philosophy. It communicates to your ideal customers who you are and what you represent visually.
You get a brief period to create a good impression for your customers. Your brand design plays a considerable role in converting shoppers into customers.
Launch a Business website
An essential element of profitable businesses online is the presence of a professional website. The website design should reflect your brand and tone of voice. It should be consistent with all online platforms and social media handles. When designing a website, you’ll want to understand:
- Website Speed
- Mobile-optimisation
- Image-optimization
- User Flows
- Photography
- Copywriting
Digital Marketing
So now that you have your online business in Dubai, you want customers, right?
But how do you get some? The simple answer is Digital Marketing.
- Content Marketing
If you want to sell your products online, your content should be top-notch. It’s nearly impossible to drive traffic with poorly written content.
Think about your customer’s perspective. You need to understand the buyer’s journey and where exactly they are. You need to explain why they need to buy your product.
Good content is how we communicate the message and grow an online store. It attracts potential customers to the website and portrays your brand as the authority on the subject matter. It builds trust with your ideal customer. It helps the search engine better understand the website and the keywords you rank for.
- Web Content
It contains the following information
- Text
- Articles
- Images
- Infographics
- Videos
You must create original content and not copy from somewhere else. Spend some time making your content hugely valuable. Accurately describe your products. Elaborate on their benefits and take professional photos.
Surveys show that 97% of consumers are affected negatively by lousy content. This influences their trust with the brands. Building trust is essential. Without a physical presence, your brand only has content on your website to retain customers and lose them.
- SEO
SEO is Search engine optimization and is the collection of practices that help search engines to rank your website’s content higher or lower than your competitors. SEO can be mysterious and complex at times. In reality, it’s the art of making the best possible website that your customers want to use. E.g. If your website answers a customer’s question better than the rest of the websites and if you have a healthy codebase and site architecture, then you will do well in SEO.
Most companies today have expert SEO consultants. Your content covers various topics, so your website rank will rise on the search results page. As you gain more authority, your rankings do too.
Seo is one of the highest ROI operations you can undertake for your online business in Dubai.
Conclusion
Now that you have understood the steps to start your online business in Dubai. You can go one step further and learn how to conduct market research for your start-up business.
Starting your own business online has been designed with simplicity and ease. But you also need to have some knowledge about the customs and regulations in the UAE. That’s why it is crucial to hire business set-up professionals who can advise you every step and help you make decisions based on your needs and budget.
By using business set-up services from Fairway, you gain peace of mind and know that your license and visa application are free from errors and omissions. Without these, you don’t have to worry about delays and rejection.