Having an internet store or online store or it can be also referred to as an e-commerce is a great way to sell your products to a wider target market. It allows you to develop your product line without the overheads of a retail shop: staff, utility bills, insurance, etc.
First you have to decide what you’re going to sell, then have your web-site built or build it yourself. There are a lot of companies that offer to develop your store with you, they offer advice and support on how to develop it. They also have the design tools to allow you to adapt your store to your own colors, design and preferences. This also means you don’t have to pay for the software yourself, saving you money.
What to Know Before You Set-Up a Store
When you are setting up your own website you need to ensure that the server host has an SSL certificate. This means that you will be a secure site for money/credit card transactions. Making sure that your finished site and shop will have an SSL certificate will save you time and possibly the need to move your site to a host with an SSL certificate.
You need to have researched the host server to ascertain that they will have the bandwidth available to you to ensure speedy upload/download of product pictures and the ease of financial transactions. No customer will stay on your site if it takes too long to load regardless of how good the site design or the product you are selling.
Setting up Your Online Store
There are plenty of companies to choose from so do your research well. Joomla, Drupal, WordPress, DotNetNuke, Artisteer and Blogger are the main design sites that you will come across. They all allow you develop your site your way with no need to learn any programming languages or extra computer skills. They take care of all the Photoshop, CSS, XHTML and other computer skills that you would otherwise need to learn.
With the design of the site and store taken care of you will now need to consider the “how” of running your store. There are again a lot of companies to choose from, again good research is vital. Flyingcart, Createastore and freewebstore are three that you will come across. These companies will help design the actual shop and virtual shopping cart that you will need.
Flyingcart
Membership here costs from $14.99/month to $59.99/month depending upon the package that you go for. Their site allows you to upload and edit images, descriptions and prices of your product. This enables your customers to pay via Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express, or PayPal into your own PayPal Business account and/or a Google Checkout seller’s account. They for a small fee will set-up a PayPal Business account and/or a Google Checkout seller’s account for you.
Creatastore
This is a great choice if your shop or product line is small, if it is below 50 items it is a free service. For a larger product line it is from $10 to $50 a month. They also offer a great flexibility on the design of your online store, an inventory set-up online and the calculation of taxes based rate in the area you are based in. They also offer remote store management and notification of orders via email.
Freewebstore
This company offers to assist in the design of your store if don’t already have one. They give you complete control of the management of the site by remote, upload/download of images of product, editing of the site and they also provide secure payment methods via PayPal, Google Checkout, WorldPay and Nochex.
They offer several packages; under 15 items it is free and has no email support, 50 items is $10 a month with email support, 150 items is $20 a month with email support, 300 items is $27 a month with email support and domain name, unlimited items is $46 a month with email support and domain name.