Software & Applications

Creating a Business Online: Starting your Website Storefront

Creating an online business can be a challenging but rewarding endeavor. Selling the products you provide and watching your sales grow can be an exciting experience. In creating your store on the web there is a lot to consider. Throughout this article we hope to make this process easier for you.

Whether you’re a small retailer with a few products looking for an all in one package, or have larger aspirations this article will look at the things you need to consider in setting up your store portal.

eCommerce portal

If at first you only plan to sell a few items or feel that managing your own store may be too much, paying for a managed portal may be the right option for you. With this type of service there is little to manage in terms of the product catalogue and billing to the customer. For the most part, it will be filling your catalogue with your product and watching the sales come in.

Solutions like Café Press and eBay Store Front provide you with the store infrastructure, they deal with the customer sales and in some cases also deal with the delivery of your product. In return a monthly fee is charged as well as a percentage commission on each item sold.

It is important to consider when choosing this solution whether they will provide you with a customized URL and, depending on that, how it will integrate with your current web page or online presence. Often times these storefronts are hosted as a page on the company’s site. Loss of profit on sales is also an important consideration as it may make the difference of you making money or just breaking even.

Choosing a Hosted Solution

While much more needs to be considered when developing an online store on your own, it can also be a more mentally and financially rewarding process. After setting up your web hosting and deciding your basic website template and layout, it is important that you make your store user-friendly and secure. Things like the eCommerce platform, merchant account, shipping gateways and SSL security are important aspects to consider.

eCommerce Platform

This will determine how your customers navigate through and purchase products from your site as well as form the backbone of how you track and manage your sales. Myhosting.com provides installers for three solid platforms with their basic, premium and professional hosting packages:

Zen Cart: Known for its ease of use, this open source platform is customizable to user needs and product segment. Included in this package are tools for newsletter management and sale options such as gift certificates and volume discounts.

CubeCart:  Easy to install and use, this solution is well known for recording sales and inventory data as well as localizing product purchases. With its inventory stock control and its tax/currency control options this solution simplifies the selling process. Another advantage is that it’s optimized to sell both digital and tangible products.

Magento Ecommerce : Much like CubeCart this platform allows for purchase localization and inventory controls but in addition comes with tools for optimized marketing and SEO efforts. Another strength of Magento is its analytics and reporting tools.

Merchant Account

A merchant account is essentially a business account that allows you to collect money through different payment options such as debit or credit cards. While your local bank may have different options there are also online vendors that provide more small business focused solutions.

PayPal is the most well known payment option. This solution handles customer payments and allows for use of all major credit cards as well as its own consumer PayPal accounts. PayPal offers a free basic account hosted through its website that charges a small transaction fee as well as a Pro account that is integrated directly into your site.

In addition to PayPal there are many other options including Authorize.Net and 2CO . Some considerations in choosing an account are its fee structure and what forms of payment it supports as it’s important to make the purchasing process as easy as possible for your customer.

Shipping Gateway

Once your customer purchases a product from you it will be important to get the product delivered. Shipping gateways from providers such as USPS , Canada Post and Royal Mail integrate into the purchase process and allow customers to get accurate postage pricing and product tracking information.

Site Security

For online stores, data security is an important consideration. Your customers want to feel secure in sharing their personal information with you.  SSL (Secure Socket Layer) is known as the standard in ecommerce website security. Protecting your consumer’s purchase information in 128 bit encryption ensures that prying eyes don’t have access to private information.

Important to your website is a SSL certificate which is placed on your site’s server. This ensures that all data transmitted through your website is secure. While you can obtain this certificate through self signing (obtaining the encryption software on your own) obtaining a SSL certificate through a qualified vendor ensures data security and piece of mind for your customers. As an added benefit to their hosting platform,  we offer a free Vanity SSL service, or you can get your own SSL Certificate as an additional feature ,that is well trusted and comes with up to $2500 protection for your customers.

What’s next?

After your online store has been set up and secured you are now ready to upload your product catalogue and begin building traffic to your site.  Through the use of SEO, AdWords and other traffic building strategies such as affiliate programs and social media, you will soon be in business collecting your well deserved profits.

Related posts:

1. Creating Your Website: The Top 5 Tools You Absolutely Need
2. Profiting as the Middleman: Creating Online Revenue with Affiliate Marketing
3. Take Me To Your Homepage: How to use online advertising to drive traffic to your website
4. Affiliate Marketing: Your Not-So-Silent Partner In Creating Online Revenue
5. Grow Your Business through Online Advertising

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