How to Build an Online Store from Scratch? Have a product that you want to sell? A service idea that you would like to introduce to the world, however you are currently in no position to open a shop or store physically for the sale of your product or service.
This is where the concept of online store or eCommerce website comes into action. A comprehensive business approach wherein you have the opportunity to reach a wider audience as opposed to a physical shop or store.
Since it’s a recent concept, people are a little apprehensive and nervous about different aspects like the website setup process, security, payment gateways, shipping options and last but not the least they are more anxious about its success and how they can deal with it in case of any discrepancy.
Well, thanks to the modern and newly emerged tools and solutions, launching an eCommerce website is a piece of cake. No, you do not have to be an expert in coding to open the doors to your online store, but yes there are certain things that you have to decide about before starting your shop. Important points like what you are going to sell, shipping and payments handling and the marketing strategies that you are planning to use to boost sales in your online store.
Let’s scan each point step by step and find out what it takes to build the perfect structure for an online store or an eCommerce website.
Plan your position online and Decide what you want to sell
The first step that you have to take in order to build your online store is to literally mark your territory in and position yourself by picking the right and suitable niche in the market. Picking the right niche in the market is not some rocket science or something intimidating.
You just have to decide on three simple matters which are:
- What do you want to sell?
- Who are your target customers going to be?
- What is the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of your product or why should the customers choose to buy your product?
Identifying your ideal customer base and figuring out your product’s USP will clear the path and help you reach your target profits at a faster pace. Just ensure to start small and slow so that you can scale up gradually instead of penetrating into a broader market space with the hope that you will be able to sell more and acquire faster profits.
Focus on one niche that exhibits all the potential to catch up in the market and for that it’s always better to start in an area that you are passionate about, has supreme knowledge and firsthand experience. To operate in a new field always demands extra attention and effort.
Additionally, always do a research on your competitor’s strategies, their expertise and their path of work. Learn from that and make an effort to build upon other’s experiences and knowledge.
Dropshipping or a Traditional Store- Take your pick
A Traditional online store is one where you stock the products from a supplier and sell them to the customer or you create your own products and keep it for sale.
In the Dropshipping model, you list the products on your website and once the customer buys the product, the supplier sends the product directly to the customer. You basically act as an intermediary between the supplier and the customer. The prime benefit of the Dropshipping model is that you do not have to worry about stocking the products and setting up a warehouse for the same. This in turn reduces the cost extensively and it can be rest assured that everything you sell is pure profit and you only have to pay the supplier after you receive an order from the customer.
Dropshipping is one arrangement wherein you can do a test run if you are a newbie to the online business world. Here you get an opportunity to validate the products and also can measure the actual taste of the customers. This will definitely help you expand and you can begin offering your products going forward
In the traditional model, you have to spend a fair share of money to obtain the products from the supplier or get your products created. Also you should have the products maintained in good quantity and quality so that you can deliver them as soon as you receive the order from the customer.
Opt for the products that you can sell
The concept of Dropshipping takes you to a wide range of products that you can choose from in every possible niche. This is actually a golden opportunity for the newbies in the business as they do not have to go through any product development or product creation hassles. They just have to:
=> Scan the content sites on the internet and assess your target audience taste, preference and challenges.
=> Go to niche-related forum and find out more about your customer’s conversations and engagements.
=> Surf Google with keywords that are relevant to your niche.
=> Browse eCommerce websites such as Amazon and conduct an extensive study on what products sell well.
After a thorough research you can visit some of the most popular online markets to identify the specific products that you can sell effortlessly. It also allows you to build and establish relationships with different online merchants and offer their products as a dropshipper. Scan and browse through different products that the online merchants have to offer, choose the product that matches your customers demand and preference and is ideal enough for your customer base to enjoy and purchase.
It is always better to start off with about 10-50 products first so that your store looks complete and at the same time you do not feel burdened with the initial work with the store on a daily basis.
Pay attention to the following details when you frame together the list of products:
- Ensure that the product is available for shipping in locations where your target audience is. Also reduce the shipping cost for better sales
- Check the shipping time and make sure that they don’t exceed what you consider acceptable.
- Avoid branded products unless you are confident of selling the original branded products and not the counterfeits. Plus you are likely to get into legal troubles if the companies find out that you have been selling counterfeits of their products.
- Focus on the products that are half the price compared to what you want to sell them for.
Name your Business and Register a Domain Name
Giving your Business a suitable name is the most challenging as well as the fun part. There are lots of things to be considered while naming your business as it can have an everlasting effect on your future success. A Business name should be well aligned with the marketing strategies as well and here are the things to keep in mind when deciding on a business name.
A Pronounceable Name
How would it look if you have to spell out the business name each time you have a conversation with someone? This clearly proposes that the business name is complex and difficult to pronounce. Hence always ensure to give your business a name that is easy and simple to pronounce so that the customers can relate to it in the first go.
A Memorizable Name
In addition to being pronounceable, your business name should also have the capacity to etch itself in the customer’s memory. Always choose a short and a completely made up name or you can put a simple name that defines your business venture. For eg: Face Book is one such name that is short and identifies with the business.
A Brandable Name
Add originality to your name and make it sound like a unique brand in the market. Make sure the customer does not get mixed up with a different brand when he comes across your brand name.
A Short Name
Ensure that your name is made of not more than 2-3 words as longer names are going to be hard to remember and is considered less brandable.
Avoid Special Characters or Numbers
Do not infuse any kind of special characters like dots, underscores,dashes or any kind of numbers into your business name.
Choose a Name that is available as a .com Domain
Since .com is the most popular and an important domain extension, it is always better to go for something that has a .com domain available.
Start the online store all by yourself
You absolutely do not need any professional help or assistance and you do not have to worry about the final result to start an online store. Just trust your instincts and go with the flow and Voila!- You are all set to start your shop online. Rest assured your store will look as good and functional as if it was built by a pro. Follow the below steps and open the door to your online store.
1. Visit Bluehost and sign up for a Web Hosting account
Bluehost have been around for years and are considered pioneers in the Web Hosting arena. You can avail over the top services at a highly affordable rate of $2.75 monthly. To get started go to Bluehost.com and click on the main button.
Select the most affordable and suitable plan from Bluehost
Next, enter the domain name that you want to register for your store.
You will get this domain name for free for the first year.
2. Install WordPress
WordPress is one of the most preferred operating systems for websites. A user friendly, powerful and an open-source system that can be used as a foundation for your online store website.
To Install WordPress
Input few basic information like the name you want to set for your website and a tagline. Next select the domain name from the list- Bluehost posts this question just to confirm the address you want to use on the site.
Click on Next and the WordPress is successfully installed.
You will be able to log into your WordPress admin panel after you see a confirmation screen in a couple of seconds.
3. Install WooCommerce
WooCommerce is the WordPress plugin that gives you the eCommerce facility and essentially enables you to open an online store. It is an open-source eCommerce platform that is built on WordPress. You can get secure payments, configurable shipping options and much more for free with WooCommerce.
You can follow the below steps to install WooCommerce
1. Log into WordPress admin panel and go to Plugins- Add New (from the sidebar menu).
2. Type in “WooCommerce” into the search field, and install and activate the plugin
3. WooCommerce will direct you to the initial setup that is required to get your store up and running.
4. Add your Products
In this stage add your first products to the store’s catalog. Follow these steps to add your products to the website
Go to the Add Product in the Products section and you will get the following screen. In the beginning of the screen you can input product name, description and also other details like the price and shipping information.
For dropshipping purpose you need to install an extra plugin which will let you retrieve products from the suppliers. Dropshippers can make use of this facility in Dropship.me website. Initially you can subscribe for the free plan and then can opt for an upgrade as per your requirement. Dropship.me will give you access to more than 50,000 dropshipping products from markets like AliExpress.
5. Select a Suitable Theme
The final step is to select a suitable and a favourable theme for your website and fortunately WordPress is one platform that showcases innumerable themes for an online store throughout the web. The three main themes that you can use from WordPress are:
Storefront- This theme is considered as the official theme of WooCommerce and comes up with all the fundamental features. It is highly user friendly and gives you a basic design to get you started.
Neve- Neve is a unique looking theme that works in an extraordinary way. Neve projects a design optimized to work on an eCommerce store.
Astra- Astra is a highly vibrant theme that exhibits loads of starter sites and settings for you to delve into. If you are the experimental type, then this is the right theme for your online store.
800+ WooCommerce Themes to choose from
6. Setting Up Payment Methods
A transparent payment gateway structure to accept payments from your customer is the final touch to starting an online store.
WooCommerce has already taken care of your Payment system during the initial WooCommerce setup and allows you to accept payments via PayPal. It is not a mandate to stick to one payment method and you have all the liberty to integrate your online store with multiple payment methods.
The reason why you should opt for multiple payment methods are because there will be customers who will prefer specific payment method over others. The two most popular payment gateway systems for WooCommerce are Stripe and Square. These payment methods allow you to accept credit cards as well.
Integrating your online store with a new payment method does not involve any rocket science techniques. The payment systems are all readily given to you as WordPress plugins so that you can install them the same way you installed WooCommerce. Simply sign up for an account and verify your details to complete a payment system installation procedure.
7. Marketing your Online Store
Now that your online store is open, the next step is to get the word around about your store. And here are few methods you can adopt to spread the word around.
Influencer Marketing
The Influencer Marketing is one of the newest form of marketing strategy that you can follow to promote your store.
Most of the Influencer Marketing is done on Instagram and this is how it works:
1) Identify the people who are well-accepted or popular in your niche for whatever reason there is.
2) Get in touch with them and enquire about their rates for promoting products similar to yours. Conduct a small research on the size of their following and ask about the engagements they receive under similar posts.
3) Get into an agreement with them to run two or three promotional posts and send them your products.
Paid Ads
If there is one marketing strategy that never fails, then it is the Paid Ads. You can always assure yourself to boost your sales if you opt for Paid Ads marketing strategy. Google AdWords is one of the most popular Paid Ads platforms who comes up with their own set of guidelines to help you initiate the process.
Social Media Marketing
It is a known fact that you want to get in touch with the world, then show yourself on the Social Media network. It is true to the last word as it is important for you to be present in all the places where you customers are likely to hang out.
Just being present in all the social media sites is not enough, you also have to project your messages in a unique way to reach to a wider audience. To start off, conduct a low key research on the tactics and strategies adopted by your competitors and see how you can infuse them into your marketing strategy. Pay attention to:
- The message formats that they post
- The posting frequency
- The timeline followed by them for product promotion
- The basic feel of their messages and the voice behind these messages.
Once that is done, focus on your own aspirations and determine what you want to achieve through the social media. Your marketing goals should mainly circle around brand awareness among customers along with product and sales promotion.
The final step is arranging for a publication calendar and preparing few social media posts in advance. Later which you can publish those posts with the help of tools like Buffer.
Content Marketing and SEO
Content Marketing is one of the in things in todays marketing world. Giving an insight into the different aspects of your business and thereby generating interest among the customers is what content marketing is all about.
Describing about a particular product and giving that extra information about various other things related to the product is ideally the best way to fulfill your customers demand. Once the customer gains extra information about the product that they are looking for, they definitely will focus on your product catalog and will pay attention to your product details to make their final purchase decision. Use this principle for any market or niche, find out what people want to know and eventually create content that delivers the right information to them.
Make sure to optimize your content so that Google identifies them easily as Google is responsible for 94% of total organic traffic on the web.
Final Thoughts
Starting an online store is no uphill task as long as you are familiar with the modern tools like WordPress and WooCommerce. Once the right tools are in place, you just have to come up with a meticulous step by step plan and you are all good to go.
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