By Tricia Dickson
BTH webmaster message: Nowadays, it's so easy to setup your own online store. There are many sites that will have a store setup for you with a few clicks. But I would warn you that many many other people are doing the same thing, and this leads to unbelievable competition. So the hard part is not setting up an online store, it's marketing your store. I would advise, before you setup an online store, to do some learning in Web Marketing.
As the internet becomes a more and more integral part of our daily lives, the eCommerce sector is growing exponentially. Whether you already have a business that you want to take online, or you're looking to start up a new company, your store front will be one of the most important aspects of your business. Setting up a store might seem daunting at first, but if you follow the easy steps outlined in this article, your company will be online in no time.
Start with deciding 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.
Next you need to decide what kind of store you need. 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 3 main types of sites you can choose from, which are explained below:
A. If you're looking for something more low maintenance and don't want to deal with the hassle of supplying and shipping your own inventory there are numerous large websites that will let you set up a more specialized store selling their products for a commission.
B. If you want to supply your own inventory and you're willing to pay a monthly fee there are multiple options. Most have a ton of features and start at about $40 a month plus a set up fee of $50 and sometimes even transaction fees at around 1.5-3 percent. 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 of total price of the item, not your net profit.
C. 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 so a monthly program, you should look for a site that is 100 percent 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. If you do the legwork, you can find a free hosting service in which the standard store is already feature rich and very user friendly, thus providing a great entryway into eCommerce.
Once you have chosen your hosting service, you need to 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.
One of the most important aspects of this whole process is marketing your store. There are a lot of stores out there, so make sure to market, market, market. An online store is not like 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 backlinks (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 or Yahoo! or your search engine of choice and gauging the popularity of the keyword. If it gets millions of hits in .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, odds are 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 or 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.
Now that you have your store all set up and 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!
Tricia Dickson works at MiiDuu.com and has helped countless people with their own free online stores, which can be created in just minutes! MiiDuu.com offers customers 100 percent free online stores without requiring advanced internet knowledge. MiiDuu.com in in the business of providing to solutions for all of your eCommerce needs, and we take care of business so you can focus on yours. To get started in eCommerce visitMiiduu.com today!
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