5 things to know when setting up an online shop

In the world of the internet these days everyone needs a website. But if you are selling a product than eshops are best friends for small businesses. These shops are a good way to set up an online store for your products with very little cost and kick off your business in just a few days time. If you have a physical store, on the other hand, having an online shop can extend your reach worldwide. And with a potential to get more audiences and customers.

But if your main concern is handling online payments keep in mind that there are multiple accounting and invoice tools and software that will help you deal with this part of your business.

But what are the key points you need to pay attention to when launching an eshop?

 

Start with the basics

 

If you don’t have a website, create a simple one that will have: a list of your products with photos, descriptions and price, a shopping cart where customers can create their orders, an option to process payments via Payoneer, PayPal or credit card, feature to protect important data, like credit card numbers and customer information, different discounts promotions or gift cards options.

 

Third party platforms to begin with:

 

Using a third-party platform like Amazon or eBay. This way all you need to do is set up a seller account and you will ship the products directly to the customers. Setting up an online shop using a third-party platform is easy, but in most cases, you can’t really play with branding.

 

E-commerce provider as a next step

 

If you are not willing to start from scratch and build your own store, you can host your online store using platforms like: Shopify, or BigCommerce. There you can choose different themes and you can control what you want to show in your online store. Some of them will even show your product in their own stores.

All of these platforms are paid and the subscription cost covers hosting, payment processing with your designated merchant providers, and security.

 

Doing it on your own

 

If you decide to do it on your own and host your own online shop – the best choice for you is use a content management system like WordPress. WordPress gives you the variety of themes, layouts, and designs that can fit you vision about the online shop. For hosting provider, you can choose either Bluehost and WPEngine, for a shopping cart, such as Magento or WooCommerce, for security and protection Akismet or similar, a merchant provider to process payments, such as PayPal, Stripe, Payoneer or Authorize.net and of course you will SSL certificates and secure backup solutions for additional security on your online shop.

 

 

To start selling you will need to

 

Give your merchant provider or third-party platform provides your business ID, banking information and sales tax information. For merchant provider, you can choose Payoneer, PayPal or Stripe (all of them work with credit-card payments). The most important part is to verify test deposit transactions for banking and merchant processing – when you do that you are good to go.

 

Don’t forget the details

 

Setup shipping and payment information somewhere on your website. Keep in mind to give your customers Free shipping, Next Day Delivery or Free Delivery options to build more customer loyalty. Use marketing campaigns like email marketing to inform your customers about Sales or Discounts and even New Items Arrival, keep them engaged with Remarketing and Retargeting options and make them love your store.

 

The e-commerce business can be filling business or an excellent addition to your physical store, that will make you accessible to a wider audience and of course in trend with the tech. All you need to do is start following the first steps and ask us for additional questions.

ecommerce, envoicein, invoice, online shop, tips