Online business is booming and there are many ways to enter this lucrative market. One of the easiest, but most important ways that beginning entrepreneurs should consider is starting an online store. This allows for a number of benefits, such as competing against fewer companies and having more sales in a shorter amount of time.
However, before you decide to start your own e-store, it’s helpful to understand the process involved with building one from scratch. Below we cover five effective steps that will help make the process less daunting and easier for you to execute.
5 ways to start an Online Store
To make your task easy, we have listed the top tips to start an online store in easy ways.
1. Create Your Theme
When it comes to building your online store, your theme is the design that will appear on every page and should match the layout of your products. You don’t need to have previous website design experience, there are professional designers that can help you with this process.
Once you’ve selected a theme or one that has been provided for you, you’ll want to review every page on your store’s front end and make sure everything is consistent. For example, you’ll want to make sure the look of each field is similar to the others.
2. Organize Your Metadata
After you’ve chosen your store’s theme and can view it in its entirety, it’s time to organize your metadata. This is the information that will appear near every page on your website, including things like contact and working hours as well as details regarding shipping and payment methods.
3. Get a domain name:
Go to GoDaddy.com or any other domain registration site and find a good name for your online store. It should be an easily remembered name that can provide good brand recall. Once you are done with the domain registration, you will have to point the domain in your hosting account so that it can be accessed by all browsers on the web.
4. Find a host:
Next, you will have to find a decent web host for your online store. You can search for good deals in web hosting services on sites like Hostgator, Hostmonster or any other hosting site recommended by your internet friends. Most web hosts these days offer shared hosting packages that are enough to run an online store of moderate traffic and loads.
5. Create a store page:
Now that you have set up a hosting account and pointed to the domain in your account, you can create a store page for your online store. I recommend for best results to use themes from WordPress or Drupal.
WordPress is free but makes it easy to add extra features to your site such as user registration, e-commerce and more. You can find good free themes for WordPress by surfing the web or by downloading the free themes from themes websites like WordPress.com .
The Best Place For Online Store: WordPress
The easiest and most effective way to quickly begin an online store is by using WordPress. This open-source website software is simple, user friendly and affordable.
Once you’ve installed the software on your web hosting company’s server, you’ll want to select a theme that best matches your products and services. Next, it’s a good idea to do some designing around your store’s layout that will make it look appealing but also consistent.