The Basic Things You Need To Know About Setting Up An Online Commerce Website

If you are a budding entrepreneur, it is pretty normal to want to start somewhere where the playing field is evened out: the Internet. Now, you could go old school and set up a physical store, go through the usual stuff like doing a titles search to sift through properties, get the permits for construction, and so on. But if you do not have a lot of capital to begin with, that is going to hurt you more than it will help you.

This is why online stores are becoming more of a trend. It allows all business owners, from small start-ups to big companies, to share their products online. Everyone has the same chance to get noticed, so it is a matter of applying a bit more elbow grease to your online strategies. There are lots of places where you can have your products available for purchase like Amazon, Shopify, eBay, and so on. But you know, nothing beats having your own site exclusively hosting your products.

Here we will round-up a list of things you will need to start your very own eCommerce website.

Figure out what your business is going to be and then promptly prepare all the online tools

Just like for any other business out there, some of the first things you will need to figure out are the products or service you will provide, the company name, the prices you are going to sell your products or services at, and the business registration. Once you have done all of that, you can focus on the online aspect next.

Step one is locking down on a domain name. There are lots of domain name registrars out there where you can check whether the desired domain name is taken or not, then purchase it if it is available. The next would be web hosting — it is the one responsible for your website to be viewed on the Internet. It is recommended that you choose one that has offers cPanel with features that will allow you to install third party scripts for things like a shopping cart system.

Additionally, you will need to purchase a private SSL certificate to ensure that information that will be disclosed to you by the customer will remain protected. Take note that this will also require the purchase of a dedicated IP address, too. Last, but not least, you will need a shopping cart script. You can look for free scripts to install or research more about what other online stores prefer using.

Create the design and the content for your website

Once your domain name is pointed to your web host, the nest thing to do is to create its design and the content. The most important part of content is being able to provide all the information needed for your customers to learn about it without overloading them. This means a brief introduction on the homepage, a page dedicated to explaining each product or service in a very concise manner, and an about page so that they will get to know you more.

The design will have to depend on the colour scheme you have chosen for your company; however, a clean website is always preferable. By “clean”, it means the website is not cluttered, if you can do without all the fancy frills, it would be more visually appealing.

Make sure that your website is intuitive. We do not want our customers taking up a chunk of the time just figuring out how it works. Do not worry, though, because there are specialists who can help you set this up. But, is this not very easy to do? So go on and fix the business side of things so you can focus on your online website and digital marketing strategies.