The Ecommerce Setup Process

I have one rule for you while you read this ecommerce setup guide. This single rule states that you should read this guide in its entirety. I am going to give you the truth about converting your business from a brick and mortar company to having an online presence to help increase your revenue. In the process, I will touch on some of the obstacles you may encounter. This is not to scare you, but I want you to realize that they are normal. I will offer solutions to these problems as well. If you leave in the middle of the guide, it may leave you with a bad taste in your mouth of whether you truly want to jump into online business.

Let’s get started. I am going to assume that you have an offline business and are just now starting the beginning phases of having an online presence for your company. I am also going to assume that you are well aware that some items and services are great online sellers, others are not. In this process you should have already thought of this and know that you do have a product that is going to sell well online.

The Development of Your Website

This is the first phase to making the transition to online business. You will need a place for people to buy your products or services. While this seems like it would be the most important part of an online business, it really is not. Do not get me wrong, it is important, but having a beautiful website is only the beginning of the process.

You likely have a good understanding of what your capabilities are. If you have absolutely no clue about how websites work, you may want to hire someone who can handle the whole development process for you. However, if you want to give it a shot, there are actually three common steps to building a website.

1: Purchase a Domain Name

The domain name is what people remember you by. Internet users will type in domainname.com into their web browsers to access your website. It is very important you find something relative to what your business is about. For example, pinkpolkadots.com says very little about who you are if you are selling motorcycles.

2: Begin the Web Design Process

The web design process is not something you will want to tackle on your own if you have never designed a website before. You can always hire someone to specifically do the web design for you. Generally, they will want to know what features you want on the website. You should always give them this whether they ask for it or not. This way you stand a better chance of getting exactly what you want.

3: Begin the Web Development Process

This is probably the most costly and time consuming part of building a website. While the design is the graphics and the way the website appears, the backend programming is what will make the website work the way it is intended to work. Having separate pages, making it easy to update (frequently called a content management system), and processing payments are some of the things that you will almost always find on an ecommerce website. The web developer should also be familiar with what features you would like on the website and what they are expected to do before they get started. This may keep you from having to pay an unexpected amount of money. After this stage, you should have a fully functional website.

Keep in mind that most websites will cost less than $1000.00. Considerably less if you work with freelancers rather than an actual business for developing your website. If you are asked to pay more than this, you might consider getting other estimates on pricing.

Grow your online business with software web designers love: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.

How to Sell Online

Step 1: Find what you want to sell

The first thing you want to do is find out what you will be selling. Until you do this, you probably can not do anything else. As well, this may seem like a small step to some, but this is probably the biggest decision you can make when getting into ecommerce business. There are a wide variety of products that will not sell online for various reasons. Perhaps the market is too crowded, perhaps it would be too expensive to ship to online customers so they can get far better pricing at local retailers, or maybe it is not a product that people are going to look for. This is just a few things that could keep a product for selling. You need to be realistic with yourself and determine whether your product that you have in mind is a product that you would consider buying.

Step 2: Become a legal entity
This could really be something you do before step one or simultaneously, but I placed it here because most people will drop the idea of selling online before they ever complete their product research. So to save you money, I would encourage you to take your time with the research and really evaluate whether you want to sell online or not before making the leap to invest in becoming a legal entity. Generally, this can be done by simply retrieving a DBA from your state. If you are unsure of exactly where to go or how to do it, you might use a service such as legalzoom.com to obtain a sales tax ID. This sales tax ID is what allows you to work with real wholesalers for wholesale pricing. If they are not asking for a sales tax ID, then they probably are not truly a wholesaler. This is a good way to sort the bad ones from the good ones.

Step 3: Begin the development of your website

There are numerous ways to go about this, but below I have some smaller individual steps that might help you if you are unsure the route to go.

1. Obtain a domain name (example: something.com)

2. Evaluate other websites you like so you know what direction you want to go

3. Either find shopping cart software that you like, or find a developer to develop what you have in mind.

4. Ensure that your website is easy to manage before you have your website go live.
The presence and clarity of your website is going to be very important. You are a small business, but the great thing about being online is that you certainly do not have to portray yourself as such. Some of the most successful online websites today started out as one or maybe two people and grew, many still are that way. You would not know it because their website looks professional and it is easy to use. I would encourage you to read more about what makes a good website, or rely on a professional to give you advice. A good way to find out what you are looking for is to look at other websites and determine what you do and do not like about them. Make sure the developer(s) are aware of these to ensure you get exactly what you want.

Step 4: Market your website
This is going to be a key on whether you succeed or not. The life of internet websites is not a “build it and they will come” model. When your website is released, no one knows who you are. Even the search engines will be skeptical about sending traffic your way at first. You probably will not be at the top of Google if someone searches for the product you are selling. Marketing is the only way to change this and there are several avenues you can take. You can advertise on other websites that are related to yours. For example, if you are selling telephones for people who are hard of hearing, you might advertise your telephones on a website that deals with a loss of hearing in someway or another.

If you are marketing your website properly, you should be well on your way to several sales online and a successful business. Good luck!

Grow your online business with software web designers love: ecommerce shopping cart software, content management system software, and email marketing software by Interspire.