Creating your own online store is relatively easy and may take from one to several days (to actually create the store, get acquainted with the software and prepare for the launch). This period will depend on the number of your products and whether you are planning to develop unique design for the storefront. Well, what does it actually take to create an online store?
You are supposed to have decided on the range of products to be sold and have at least a general idea of what an online store is (e.g. if you ever shopped online). This tutorial describes the technical part of creating and running an online store.
1. Get a domain name.
If you have no web site yet where you could open a store, then you need to find and register an appropriate domain name for it - something of the kind www.your_domain.com.
2. Create your online store.
The most “noticeable” step is to actually the launch of your online store.
An online store is a web site containing information on certain products that can be purchased.
In order to create a store it is necessary to decide on the software (choose the “engine”) your store would be powered by.
There are quite a few software solutions that can be used to create an online store; all of them, however, can be classified into two major classes:
- Server scripts: a piece of software that can be installed on a remote server (e.g. web hosting). The advantage of using scripts is that, once installed, the online store would be running on the hardware (server), completely controlled by you. The drawback is that this option is more complex: in order to launch a store, you need to purchase web hosting and install the scripts on the server. Examples of such solutions are X-Cart, Interspire, WebAsyst Shop-Script.
- Online service: all the necessary software is pre-installed, all you need to start selling online is to sign up. It is as simple as creating an LJ blog or a Gmail mailbox. The main advantage in this case is that after signup you already have a running online store and are saved the hassle of installing any software. A drawback of this option is lack of full administrative access to the server (it is really not much of a disadvantage as you trust the server management to the online service provider just as you trust your data to the web hosting company if you install the scripts). Examples of such solutions are Shopify, Volusion, WebAsyst Shop-Script.
To make the correct decision, it is advisable to learn the functionality offered by the shopping cart solutions currently available on the marketplace. You may even become interested in starting with a free solution such as osCommerce or MagentoCommerce.
If you never sold anything online before, we would recommend you to try an online service to create your first online store. This will allow you to get started very quickly with minimum initial expenses. The sooner you start the sooner you can begin to think about other important things: sales organization, advertisement etc.
If you decide to use WebAsyst Shop-Script to create an online store, note that it is available in both of the above mentioned options: both as server scripts and as an online service. Feel free to sign up for a WebAsyst online account to just try it out. It is free and an account can be abandoned at any time should you find it useless for your purposes.
3. Add products.
Add the products to the store which you are planning to sell. Special attention should be paid to product images because, if well designed, they will greatly contribute to successful sales. Informational video on product description pages would be a good advantage, too.
With WebAsyst Shop-Script, products can be added through a web browser one by one or in imported in bulk from an Excel price list file.
4. Customize storefront design.
Many online merchants strive to be extraordinary when ordering design for their online stores which sometimes costs them large amounts of money. If your primary goal is to get your customer excited about your storefront design, do make it really original. If earning money is what you are creating an online store for, put the unique web design aside for a while.
The most important things for a web store are a good page layout, well readable product titles and descriptions, clear product images, user-friendly navigation tools. That’s all.
5. Set up shipping and payment options.
Think over the entire logistics chain of your store. Add appropriate shipping and payment options for your customers.
The convenience of setting up shipping and payment modules greatly depends on the software your are using. Therefore in step 2 “Create your online store” above much attention must be paid to the fact whether the solution allows to quickly configure payments through payment gateways or can automatically generate invoices for corporate customers and is able to calculate real-time shipping quotes provided by USPS or allow custom courier shipping setup. Make up a list of the shipping and payment options that you need (or might need in the future!) before you make the final decision.
If this kind of setup is automated in your store (meaning that you will not need extra programming to get them to work), it would save you a lot of time when you launch your store and start processing orders. Otherwise you may spend too much time and money later on when it comes to dealing with real orders and customers: manually controlling each payment would be a hard task.
6. Tell everyone about yourself.
Note it well, because this rule is often neglected: publish a detailed description of your online business.
A visitor of your online store should be confident that he or she would be able to contact the store administrator, if it becomes necessary. Aside to the email address, provide other contact information: phone number (a cellphone would do), specify your postal address (if you also run a physical store), your ICQ/MSN/Skype ID etc. You may post a photo of your office or also your store personnel (even a single colleague).
Posting extended contact details would not result in a rapid increase of customer requests. It is rather a matter of trust and confidence for the customer that he or she is dealing with real people who can be contacted if necessary.
7. Profit!
That is all, your online store is ready for operation! As you can see, from the technical point of view, it is not that difficult to create a store. What requires more time and efforts is its further maintenance and optimization, shipping arrangement, advertisement, processing of orders and customer feedback.
What you would badly need is enthusiasm and patience. Earning money on the Internet requires hard work. If it were very easy, anyone would be selling something online. Be prepared to the fact that most probably you would not receive bunches of orders right after the start, that it would take some time for the online store to get indexed by search engines, that some customers will be displeased, that arranging the shipping of products would not be as easy as it seemed and so on. All those issues are, however, purely workflow related and will be settled with time. Start with little and keep a good pace.
Full article text: http://www.shop-script.com/overview/how-to-create-an-online-store.html
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