Build An Online Store
How To Make A Website > Build An Online Store
In this section I'm going to cover some basics regarding
making an online store. You'll find that I've broken it down into a
group of sections that I feel are the most important aspects when
you want to make an online store.
Most of the sections actually require a dedicated
page so you'll find a link at the end of each area that
leads to a page with detailed information about that
specific topic. If you already have a grasp of what
you'd like to sell and understand the ins and out of
online stores you can visit our page on
shopping cart
software.
Having A Product To SellI'm going to assume that
you already have an idea of what you'd like to sell but for those
who don't I'm going to cover some of the basic details of finding a
product to sell. Determining what to sell is a very important part
of building an online store. When you're starting your first website
it's most likely that money is tight so you don't have the funds to
go out and buy a large inventory of goods to sell. A very good
solution to this is drop shipping, this allows you to sell other
people's products without having to carry inventory. If you're not
familiar with it I've created a page specifically for
drop shipping.One
thing to consider when you're choosing a product to sell you really
need to do your research on your competition. Making your first
website and trying to sell cell phones would be nearly impossible.
With that said you may find a niche within the cell phone market
that you could do very well in. This brings me to my next topic,
niche markets.
Niche MarketingNiche markets are going to allow you
to complete in competitive areas, or not so competitive areas, where
you normally wouldn't have a chance to compete. Sticking with the
cell phone market, it would be nearly impossible to compete with
Sprint and Verizon in the cell phone market but you may consider
focusing on a specific brand. Even better you may consider just
focusing on a specific accessory for cell phones such as cases or
another type of accessory.A great source for finding niche
markets and determining whether the market is worth the effort is a
tool called Wordtracker. I use
it almost daily when I research new products or even when I'm naming
the pages for a specific website.
Wordtracker works by providing search numbers on a specific
keyword into the software. Then based on those numbers you can
determine if there are enough people searching for a specific niche
product. You can see it for yourself for free by
clicking here.
Here's a great example of how I used Wordtracker to find a niche
market. I was searching for Christmas related domain name and ran
across the domain
ChristmasToiletPaper.com. I jumped into Wordtracker and typed in
the keywords 'Christmas toilet paper' and sure enough there was
quite a demand for it during the Christmas season. I registered the
domain name, found a wholesale provider and now I'm in the Christmas
toilet paper business.
The great thing is that I rank number 1 on majority of the search
engines including Google for the keywords 'Christmas toilet paper'
because it's a niche market and there is virtually no competition.
Heed these words, you can sell just about anything on the internet.
Shopping Cart SoftwareOnce you've found that great
product that you want to sell you'll need to determine what shopping
cart software you'll use. Shopping cart software is going to be the
way that visitors can view your products and descriptions,
ultimately completing a purchase once they've entered the billing
and shipping details.There are 100's of options in regards to
shopping cart software so please take the time to read through my
shopping cart software
page. You'll find that there are free options that come with your
basic web hosting account or licensed versions that have all the
capabilities you would ever need. Again, take a look at my
shopping cart software page
for detailed information.
Accepting Credit Cards OnlineAnother aspect of
building an online store is accepting payments. Since you're just
starting out you'll want an affordable option such as
Pay Pal. There is no monthly fee
associated with Pay Pal and you only pay if you make a sale. A true
merchant account that accepts credit cards have monthly fees
associated with them even if you don't sell a thing so this is
something that you'll probably want to consider once you've
established your website and are seeing a decent amount of sales.
My detailed page on
accepting credit cards online gets more in depth as to the
advantages and disadvantages of both Pay Pal and merchant accounts
so it's important that you take the time to read through it.
Pay Pal Merchant Account
An affordable way to start accepting payments online is via Pay Pal.
There is no fee to setup an account plus you don't pay a monthly
fee. The only time you are charged anything is when you make a sale.
Pay Pal can even allow you to accept credit cards online. Their per
charge fee is a bit higher than a traditional merchant account but
if you're sales are limited at the beginning it's definitely worth
not having to pay the monthly fees that come with a traditional
merchant account.
Read more on
Pay Pal merchant accounts.
Ecommerce Hosting SolutionsThe last thing that I'm going to
cover is going to be ecommerce hosting solutions. You're going to
need to use a hosting company that is capable of handling ecommerce.
These days I couldn't name a single hosting company that couldn't
but I'm sure that they are out there. The reason that I mention this
is because you'll need to have a dedicated IP address. A dedicated
IP address is used simply by your website and is required for an
SSL, secure certificate. An SSL certificate is required to accept
credit cards because it's what encrypts a customer's credit card
information so that a hacker can't intercept it and use it.The
other thing to consider since you're most likely on a shoestring
budget is that majority of the hosting companies out there offer a
free shopping cart with their hosting plans. The problem is that
they are limited with their capabilities but it's a shopping cart
all the same. Just so you have the information, probably the most
popular free shopping cart you'll find with an ecommerce hosting
solutions is osCommerce.
Webmaster Forum
I invite you to visit my
webmaster forum,
it's a great place to discuss websites and ask questions to fellow
webmasters regarding topics that you may still have questions on. |
