Building Your Online Store
"I want to start an online store, but don't know where to start."
If this is what you're thinking, then you NEED this article! Let me show you how easy it is to get your new store up and running - from finding vendors, setting up your webstore and product page, setting up payment options and shipping methods right through to opening it for the first time. By the end of this article I'll have shown you how easy it is for anyone who has even a little bit of business experience to get their own ecommerce site designed, built, marketed and profiting from within a week or less.
This article is going to give you a look at how easy it is for even a non-technical person to set up an online store, how I did it myself and the decisions I made along the way. That way, by the end of reading this article, you will know exactly what's involved in setting up your own online store and you will be able to use what you learn here as a template for setting up an online store of your own.
I won't make it sound easy though - don't think that because I've written this article that it's somehow easy. If you are like me then you'll find out the hard way that setting up an online store can be a very stressful process. But if you read this article through thoroughly you'll at least be able to learn from my mistakes and shortcuts so that your own online store setup will be a breeze.
I've been running online stores for over 3 years now. More than that, I've also helped a lot of other people to set up their own successful online stores during that time. Over the years I've gradually simplified my system and built up my knowledge of how everything fits together so that now, with the right information in front of me, it takes me no more than 10 minutes to build out a brand new ecommerce site for any product and have it ready for marketing in the search engines within 24 hours.
I've written this article to provide you with everything you need to know so that in the end, when you go out into the world and start building your online store, you'll be able to make it as easy as possible on yourself. You'll be able to get a store up and running as quickly as possible, understand what's involved so that if something goes wrong you can fix it quickly without having to wonder what to do next. You'll be able to save a ton of time by learning from my mistakes without having to worry about whether I'm giving you all the information I know.
In this article I'm going to share with you some of the mistakes I made and what I did to fix them.
"Do you really know everything about building your own online store?"
Yes, I do. In fact, if you want to get started quickly with setting up an online store that looks professional and sells the products you want then all you need to do is read through this article. Follow my tips and you'll save yourself hours of time, frustration, stress and money.
"But I just don't know where to start"
That's actually a very common problem most people have when they're trying to set up an online store. Perhaps you've decided to set up an online store from scratch and you are intimidated by the amount of information that's out there on how to do it. Maybe you're just starting out in business and this is the first time you've tried to provide a product or service online. Or maybe you already have an existing offline business and want to expand by adding an online store onto your existing operations. In any case, the good news for anyone in this situation is that by reading this article carefully from start to finish, they'll save themselves a lot of time and money and get their site up faster than they would have done on their own.
"What kind of online store are we building here?"
Another very common question people ask me when they want me to build them a new ecommerce site is "What kind of site are you going to build for me?". They're worried that they've got the wrong idea in their heads about what they want and think some one like me won't be able to build just the right kind of site.
The problem is that there are so many variations of ecommerce stores out there it's impossible to know which one you need to build as your own. For example, if I'm working for someone else designing a store for them then my job is really easy - all I have to do is follow their instructions word-for-word and get everything done in time for their deadline. If they're happy with my work then I'm happy with my job and I can move on.
However, if you want to set up your own online store there's a lot more that needs to be done. If you are going start an online store from scratch then you will have to know how to research the products you want to sell online, how to design a layout for your site that looks good and is easy for customers to navigate through, how to find the right payment gateway provider that best suits your business and so on. Without this knowledge it would be extremely hard for me or anyone else working for you, not least because every company will have their own unique features which may not fit in with your business or website.
"What about search engine optimization and paid advertising?"
These are very important concepts to make sure you understand before you start building your own ecommerce site. They're also things that a lot of people complain about when they ask about how to build an online store, but they're actually quite simple to understand once you know what they are. I could relate an anecdote or two where I've had customers whingeing away at me about how horrible it is having to pay people money every month to have their store page indexed by the search engines, but in the end the solution they chose was saving them money by finding another site builder and just paying them a single lump sum up front.
Conclusion
Hopefully I've done a good job of explaining how I walked someone through the process of setting up an online store. The process for building ecommerce sites can be a frustrating one when you don't know all the information that goes into making it work. But if you take some time to read this article thoroughly and learn every one of my tips then you will be able to set up your own online store faster and easier than most people can do it by themselves without any knowledge at all.
If you find any mistakes or things I've missed out that might make this article better then please let me know in the comments below so I can improve it for everyone else who finds it useful.