3 Keys to Successful E-Commerce Entrepreneurship—And No, Coding Isn’t One of Them

By Tracey Wallace

Going after your dreams -- the dream of starting an e-commerce business or any business -- is never easy. Sure, there are enough inspirational quotes on Pinterest to make even the most “glass-half-empty” of us believe otherwise, but the truth is this: if it were easy, more people would do it.

The bravery that accompanies those who start anew and build out their dreams, rather than piggybacking on the dreams of others, is what truly sets entrepreneurs apart. The undeterred drive for success. The resiliency of their independence. The bootstrapping and the late nights and the never off the clock mentality. These are the characteristics for which entrepreneurs are most revered.

Look up to whom you will, but the Steve Jobs of the world all have the three Ds in common: determination, drive, and the ability to deliver.

For those considering starting their own e-commerce business, or for those that already have, these three Ds often make or break a business. They are the deciding factors in your success, whether you are just starting up, looking to scale, or already seriously killing it and raking in more than you ever thought possible.

But, Can You Code Your E-commerce Site?

You know what isn’t a key determining factor in your entrepreneurial online dreams, though? Your ability, or lack thereof, to code.

Launching an e-commerce business is hard enough, and while having expertise in HTML, CSS and the like is always a helpful skill anytime you’re dealing with the internet, it isn’t a must-have. Entrepreneurs the world over have long looked to partners for expertise in areas not their own. Because, after all, an entrepreneur’s true expertise is in their products and services, and the passion found therein.

Take Whipped for example, a line of natural hair-care products created by Lauren Wiley. For those unfamiliar with the natural hair-care space, the demand for quality products with proven results is extremely high. For most in that community, product ingredients are of the utmost importance and shouldn’t ever include silicones, sulfates, or chemical treatment of any kind. Wiley found a gold mine when her products passed the natural hair community’s strict quality measures, and in the 2012 holiday season, her site was experiencing higher volumes of traffic than expected.

Unfortunately, her chosen outside e-commerce platform, couldn’t handle the load.

Wiley explained to The New York Times that after the site's back end lost a few orders and failed to notify customers of order confirmations, making for a subpar customer experience, she decided to drop the platform and build her own. To do so, she needed to learn to code.

“[It] felt like learning Korean, from Mars,” she said, and the site rebuild took over a year to complete. Luckily, by the 2013 holiday season, all was set and ready to go, high traffic volume capacity included.

“Our business doubled from the prior year, which was crazy unexpected, but at least this time we were able to manage it,” she told The Times.

Determination, Drive, and the Ability to Deliver

For Wiley and her Whipped customers, the decision to move from an established e-commerce platform to a custom-built one paid off. An e-commerce solution needs to be able to grow with a business, rather than actively hinder its growth. For Wiley, that lesson was a tough one to learn, but it doesn’t have to be.

Determination, drive, and the ability to deliver are what make entrepreneurs successful, and they're what make the entrepreneurs' chosen partners and platforms successful as well. In other words, always partner with platforms and people who will grow with you, rather than with whom you will outgrow.

Don’t take Wiley’s lesson in vain. Listen, learn, and let her experience serve as the foundation for your future success.