Selling your product online helps you to reach a wider target market which will in turn increase your sales. However, before you embark into this avenue, there are a few important things that you need to consider doing.

Let’s not go into crafting a business plan. You should have already done so. If you haven’t, it’s time to crack your brain. A business plan will tell you whether what you have in mind is possible or not, really. Like really really.

1. Nice… Unique Domain Name

Like girls used to say about good looking guys – either they are taken, or they are gay. Most domain names that are obvious and nice, are mostly already bought by someone.

Think of something unique and catchy. Something your prospective customers or visitors can remember. You wouldn’t want someone who have browsed your website once and the next day go “what was the website name again?”.

Once you have selected a name, what would like to have? .com, .net, .biz? If you can afford it, buy them all. Really. Like really really. Say you do bought them all, if a visitor type yourdomain.net instead of yourdomain.com, they will be redirected to yourdomain.com via the 301 redirect.

It’s really okay if you can’t afford it at the start of your business. No harm.

2. No Cart, No Shopping!

Yeah okay, no money, no shopping either. My recent article, I showed the various open source shopping cart or ecommerce platform that you can download for free. However, unless you don’t mind having the default template design, you can have your web store developed by web professionals.

Alternatively, you can subscribe to hosted shopping cart, such as Shopify, or an eCommerce Web Hosting software which gives you a turnkey solution.

The reason why you need a shopping cart or ecommerce system is pretty obvious. Firstly, you can display and describe your product. Put a price on it, appeal your customer through promotions and discounts, and sell it. Someone comes by, likes it, buys it and pays for it. Okay, displaying and describing of products, a simple website will do. But really? 

Think about this when someone buy a product from your web store using a system:

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Customer registers and personal details are stored in your database, the next time they access your web store, all they need to do is login and all set to shop.

You can use their email address to email them on the news updates, latest product, etc. But only with their permission.

When they buy a product, they can transact payment online by credit card via a payment gateway. Approved transaction will then be banked into your merchant account.

When transaction has been completed, you’ll be notified of a purchase and they will receive a confirmation email on invoice number and all other relevant details.

You get then get the products ready, wrap it up and send for delivery. You can change the status of the order accordingly from your admin panel too.

At the end of the month, you can view how many sales and gains you have made, identify the popular product, who bought it, where they are from and strategise, like throwing discounts or free delivery for purchase above certain value or purchase from certain countries, etc.

[/list_ordered] I don’t think an ordinary website, like mine, can do that. With Shopify, yeah, maybe I can… embed and that’s it.

3. Where The Heck Will The Money Go To?

I’d love to see it in my bank account. Just kidding. You need a merchant account or a business account. Merchant account allows your customer to pay for their purchase by using their credit card.

You also need a payment gateway. It allows credit card transaction to be processed and debited in your merchant account. It is important when you are choosing a shopping cart, make sure that the system or platform supports your merchant account.

For my clients, I would usually encourage them to sign up for a PayPal account and use it to accept payment. It accepts credit card payment or transfer payment from their PayPal acount, process it and have it debited in you PayPal account. As and when you wish, you can transfer the dollars in your PayPal account to your bank account.

But what if you just want to sell online but transact payment offline? No problemo! You can provide instructions like mailing address for cheque or bank account number for bank transfer payment. Once they have done so, you can ask your customer to email you the details such as transaction number.

4. Secure Your Web Store

You need to secure your web store to ensure that your customers personal details are safe from the net vultures. Especially so if credit card payment is involved. If you like, when choosing a shopping card, consider only those that are Payment Card Industry (CPI) compliance.

You can also purchase a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Certificate to increase the security of your website. If you purchase SSL certificate, it increases the security in the checkout process. You will see a padlock icon at the bottom of your browser and the url would change from http to https. There are other security measures that you may want to consider such as Hacker Safe, etc.

For your own website security? Let your customer know about your store policies such as refund and cancellation policy.

The trick is communication and confidence. Communicate with you customer on the restrictions and give them the confidence that it is safe to shop in your web store. This would project your web store as a place that is trusted and reliable, not some online scam store.

5. You Gotta Look Good, Baby

Would you buy from store that looks like Microsoft Words? I mean, poorly designed, big fonts, small fonts, black and white, clipart logo, and whatever not. It’s bad. Really bad. Like really really. It’s like meeting your client in your pyjamas.

You web store represent your business and yourself. Design your website in which it looks pleasant, easy to use, instructions and contents well placed. Remember, in the internet, you communicate with your customers through your content.

When designing a website, you got to strategise too. You want to make sure your product stands out among others. Your logo and your company name must be prominent. Also, make sure they can see where the important links, such as login, checkout, etc. Don’t hide them. Your customers are there to browse and buy, not solve puzzles.

Consistency in layout, fonts, colours play a big part in your design. So make sure you engage someone who is good in this area not just anybody will do as long it is cheap. Pay if you need to and pay them good. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys. Really.

6. Give It A Ride

Test your web store. Even better, ask you friends to test it. Get their comments and improve on it if you agree. Fix all the broken links, spelling and grammatical errors, search functions, and go through a checkout process till its complete. Test the admin panel too.

Check that it is compatible with all web browsers, IE 6, IE 7, IE 8, Firefox, Chrome, etc. Make sure it appears the way it should. If it’s not, fix it.

7. They Don’t Know You Yet

Promote your products and web store. You got to call them out and hopefully they will call the others, if they like what they see. For a start, submit your website to as many search engine as possible.

To end up high in a search results, make sure that your content contains keywords that would be probably used by your prospective customers. Keywords is very important in optimising search engine results.

If you have extra moolahs, invest on some marketing tools such as Google Adwords and be placed in the sponsored links sections. It does help.

You can also consider on giving discounts for referring a friend, start an affiliate program, etc. There are many ways to promote your products and web store.

8. Ready, Set, Go..

All these done, you are set to get your web store online. However, never go stagnant. It’s not just about your products, others can always sell what you are selling. But what you are providing in your web store is a service and that can always make a difference.

Wrap up!

So that is it. Consider the 8 points that I’ve listed. It might help you plan out what are the required components for your online store that would benefit you. You may need to invest some of your start-up funds but it’s worth it.