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In the age of the internet, e-commerce is attracting more and more customers. An online store is becoming a crucial element to any business plan, but starting one can be a monumental task. This article will give you some simple steps to get your store up and running in no time.
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Step 1
Decide what you're selling. You should consider narrowing your scope to capture a niche market, however, not so narrow that it's hard to find customers. For example, if you are thinking of selling books, selling vintage books might be a better option. On the other hand, only selling 17th century Mongolian ghost stories probably won't take you very far. If you are serious about your online store, you will probably spend a lot of time constructing and tweaking your website and especially marketing it, so choose something you have some interest in.
Step 2
Select a shopping cart. The shopping cart software allows you to set up your products and services for sale on the internet. There are many commercially available shopping carts available to choose from. You will want to select the cart that offers the functionality you are looking for.
You will want to look for a cart that offers merchant tools, supports many payment options, offers configuration for shipping and taxes, offers real-time statistics and reporting, and has the appropriate security.
You will also want to select a shopping cart that is compatible with your payment gateway. This will illuminate the cost associated with integrating your shopping cart and merchant account.
Step 3
Choose your e-commerce platform. There are a ton of options out there, so before you choose you should sit down, and decide exactly what features you do and do not want in an online store. There are some main types of sites you can choose from.
●If you're looking for something which requires low maintenance and don't want to deal with the hassle of supplying and shipping your own inventory, there are numerous large websites (such as Amazon.com) that will let you set up a more specialized store selling their products for a commission.
●If you want to supply your own inventory and you're willing to pay a monthly fee, Yahoo! Merchant Solutions is the most popular route. It has a ton of features and starts at about $40 a month plus a set up fee of $50 and transaction fees at around 1.5%.
●If you are going to pay a monthly fee, make sure to do a lot of research first. Make sure the site is easy to use and organize, because if you decide you want to switch sites later, you'll have wasted that money. Also, when choosing a site with a transaction fee, consider your profit margins, as they are based on total price of the item, not your net profit.
●If you want to supply your own inventory and don't want to pay a monthly fee, or you want to get your feet wet before committing a monthly program, you should look for a site that 100% free (no monthly fees, transactions fees or hidden charges), and has an upgrade option.
This way, you can get your store up and running, earn some profits, and get used to the site before deciding if you want to pay for extra features. It's win-win because if you decide you never want to pay for it, you don't have to, and if you decide you need the extra features, you don't have to go through the giant headache of moving stores.
An example of this kind of site is MiiDuu.com, which is completely free for a standard store and about $30 a month for a pro store. The standard store is already feature rich and very user friendly, so it's a great entryway into e-commerce.
Step 4
Set up your store. This is where the work comes in. You'll need to get all of your details together and sit down and fill out all of the necessary information. All of the above mentioned sites are easy to use and don't require much tech savvy.
Enter all your products, payment options, shipping options, applicable taxes, etc. first. Check and double check them; it doesn't matter how good your site looks if the customers can't use it. That being said, it is extremely important how your site looks. Obviously, you need to make sure it is professional and aesthetically pleasing, however, you also want to make sure it is easy to navigate and find products.
You should organize all of your products into intuitive categories and sub categories. If your hosting site has “featured products” or “best selling products” options, you should set those up as well. You should visit your store front often and try to navigate yourself frequently during the set up process.
Having friends and family test it out can also be quite helpful in figuring out any problems with your layout or checkout process.
Step 5
Set up your payment gateway. The payment gateway is the application that connects your website shopping cart to your merchant account. The job of the payment gateway is to collect the credit card information from the customer, encrypt it and send it to the merchant account for processing.
When selecting a payment gateway you should select one that is compatible with your shopping cart, offers good pricing and has the ability to facilitate all payment functions (payments, voids, refunds, etc.). It should offer robust fraud protection, be PCI compliant and have an interface for you to run reports on your sales.
Step 6
Select a merchant account. The merchant account's job is to authorize the card that is being used for payment and then deposit those authorized transactions into your bank account. It's important to choose a merchant account that offers good rates on processing, has 24 hour turn around on settled transactions, offers live customer support, has high approval rates and low merchant attrition. You want a processor that stands behind your account and consults you as to the very best way to set up your e-commerce website.
Step 7
Market your store. There are a lot of stores out there, so make sure to market, market, market. An online store is not like a physical store where people will just pass by on their way to other things even if you aren't advertising.
You will need to make sure to use a lot of keywords in your store text and create many back links (links to your store from other sites) in order to drum up traffic and move your way up the search engine results.
First you should research keywords by searching for them in Google, Yahoo! or your search engine of choice and gauging the popularity of the keyword. If it gets millions of hits in 0.25 seconds, it's going to be very hard to climb up the results and get your store seen. At the same time, if it gets 4 hits, the odds are that you aren't going to drum up much business that way either, so be sure to choose a happy medium.
Once you choose your keywords, be sure to use them! Blogging is a great way to do this, especially if you are posting relevant, interesting posts and not just advertisements. For example, if you have a vintage book store, you might have a blog where you discuss interesting passages, tidbits or articles about vintage books with links back to your store.
Make sure to use your target keywords in your blog frequently. You'll also want to get as many subscribers as possible and try to get as many people as possible to link back to you.
Step 8
Maintain your site. Now that you have your store all set up and have a steady stream of customers, make sure to keep it maintained! You want your customers to keep coming back, so update your inventory and featured products regularly. You'll also want to update your keywords to make them more effective.
To do this, sign up for a service such as Google Analytics so you can see what people searched to get to your site. From there you can see which keywords are working and which ones aren't and tweak your keywords accordingly!