How to Create an Online Store
An online store has serious advantages over a physical retail outlet. You don’t have to pay rent and you have the opportunity to connect with millions of customers from the comfort of your home. But to have the best chance of success, opening an online store should be considered as carefully as any business. You’ll need high-quality products, a functional website, and a solid marketing plan. And all this needs to be taken care of in advance.
Start Small
Opening a store, even a virtual one, requires significant costs. It always involves financial risk. Therefore, before you start, “test the waters” by selling products on existing sites and on a small scale.
Before opening a traditional store, you can try to sell in other ways that do not require much effort (at fairs, exhibitions, etc.). And only then, if successful, open your own commercial enterprise. The same applies to online sales.
Try to offer products separately – for example, on Marketplace or on social networks. This is not only a source of income, but also an opportunity to gain valuable information about future customers of your online store.
Decide What and How to Sell
If you intend to open an online store, you need an idea for a sought-after product to sell. You have the opportunity to sell products all over the world using your website. But remember that some are easy to sell online, while others are hard to sell if you can’t see them in person.
You need to have an idea of the real value of the product you are offering, otherwise it will be difficult to connect with customers. There are a number of questions that you will definitely have to ask yourself.
Do you intend to offer physical products that need to be shipped, or digital products that are sent over the Internet?
Will your assortment be wide, or do you intend to specialize, selling, for example, exclusively denim clothing from a certain brand?
Do you produce the product yourself? If so, you’ll want to make sure you can keep up with demand. Establish relationships with reliable material suppliers. If you do not intend to make the product yourself, find a good manufacturer. Consider different businesses to choose the one that best suits your business.
How to make a commercial enterprise recognizable? Think about advertising an online store and the products it offers.
By opening an online store, you will be very closely connected with your product. To effectively inform consumers and stay on top of current trends, you will need to frequently communicate with people in relevant industries. Make sure that your products will remain relevant and in demand in the future.
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Make the Purchasing Process More Comfortable Than Your Competitors
Even if the product you offer is no different from other products on the Internet, you can increase the popularity of your store by making the shopping experience fun and enjoyable. Make sure your site is easy to navigate and pleasant to navigate. Be proactive and offer extra customer service where competitors don’t.
Develop a Business Plan
Before you open your online store, take the time to develop a step-by-step business plan, whether you expect to receive outside investment or not. Planning will help you figure out the steps you need to take to make your business successful. The business plan should include an estimate of operating costs and a detailed description of the marketing strategy.
At a minimum, the following main factors must be taken into account:
costs of production and/or acquisition of goods;
delivery costs;
tax payments;
employee salaries if you need to hire them;
domain name and web hosting costs.
Register Your Business
Of course, there is a chance to remain “in the shadows” by engaging in illegal trade. But if you do get caught, the consequences can be so severe that your business will never recover from it. Even if you are lucky and the tax and law enforcement authorities do not notice you at first, rapid growth in sales and further development of online trading is out of the question. As soon as your business “grows up” a little, government services will immediately become interested in you.
Therefore, it is worth registering your business in full compliance with current legislation. Once you’re ready, you’ll need to come up with a business name and provide the necessary legal and tax documentation.
Register Your Domain Name
It is advisable to make a choice in favor of a short, easy to remember name. It needs to be unique, so finding one is quite difficult since the best domain names are usually taken. Find an online domain registrar and try different names until you find one you like.
If the name you like has already been taken, try changing it slightly. The registration service usually offers several close alternatives if the option you need is used by someone else.
Choose a Web Host
It is necessary to select a functional service that ensures the operation of your online store. When a website performs poorly, sales suffer. Hosting is free, but if your business needs additional features, you will need to pay for the service. We recommend Timeweb hosting, although they didn’t pay us for it, you can also purchase a domain on it.
Create Your Own Website
You can design a website yourself or use the expertise of a professional web designer to design it for you. Your priorities should be to clearly demonstrate your product and make the purchasing process as easy as possible for your customers.
Don’t get carried away with too many colors, too many different fonts and special effects. This makes the site too cumbersome. Placing an order should take a maximum of two clicks, and the acceptable loading time for a commercial website does not exceed 3 seconds.
Don’t forget to enable the feature that collects email addresses to send you advertisements and special offers.
As you can see, opening an online store is a doable, but quite difficult task. Therefore, a completely reasonable question arises: is it worth it?
Ultimately, if you have no desire to develop your own website from scratch, there are a large number of services that offer platforms for an online store. Any of these platforms can be set up in a matter of hours for a small fee. This eliminates the need to learn to code or pay a web designer. You immediately have a tool ready for online trading. For many, this is a completely acceptable option, but it is not without its drawbacks.
Check out the different offers before choosing one. And if you don’t find a platform that suits your business model, still think about how to open an online store yourself.
