Did you know that e-commerce sales have reached over $26.7 trillion last year?1 And now with advances in technology its never been easier for people at home to set up an online store. To start an e-commerce store from home and potentially add huge income to your life you can save a lot of time with an online search.
Selling Online Has Never Been Easier
For many years it seemed a daunting process for most people to create a website online. Most website stores were created by technically minded people but recent advances in technology has made it accessible to everyone. With platforms like Shopify it only takes a few minutes to set up an e-commerce website. It is easy to customize and with little or no technical know how there is no need for support. They have created templates that look professional and clean, easy to navigate.
The First Step Is Define Your Goals
Just like any new project in life it begins with defining what is your goals. What sort of business do you want to start online? What sort of products do you want to sell? We know this can be mind boggling in the beginning but lets break it down into even easier steps. In fact creating an e-commerce website first and then figuring out what to sell is a sneaky tip to get people started. Once you realise just how simple it is to put together a website online you will begin to ignite the creative juices.
Finding Products To Sell Online
Your Own Product – This is the simplest thing you can do. Just a small product that either you or someone else made. This can be from a theme, template, or product you have designed yourself. Lets brainstorm some ideas of things people have sold successfully online like olive oil soaps, homemade candles, golf umbrellas, collagen products, and many more.
Dropshipping Products – One of the easiest ways to get started selling online is to actually sell someone elses product but from your own store. There are multiple ways to gain access to a huge list of products you can sell directly from a warehouse. This type of sales is called dropshipping and allows you to leverage factories that have high product inventory with your creative sales skills. Such dropshipping services like Oberlo and Aliexpress are very simple ways to get your feet wet in the dropshipping world.
Purchase A Domain Name
This is an important step in creating your ecommerce site as it will be your sites identity. A domain name is simply your website name, once you choose a name you are going to want to purchase it. When purchasing a domain at the beginning it may be hard to come up with a name but brainstorming with a pen will help you identify some creative names. We recommend using companies like GoDaddy or Namecheap for great customer service and cheap domain names.
Choose A Store Platform
Now its time to choose which platform for your ecommerce site. There are many companies out there innovating this space and offer a broad range of themes and sites from free and paid forms. Here are some of the better platforms available right now.
BigCommerce – BigCommerce is free to start and lets you build your ecommerce website from scratch, create an online store from scratch. This is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms on the market and has tons of pre-made templates you can choose from. They are very easy to install and customize but they come with a cost of roughly $30 a month.
WooCommerce – With a free version available for download for developers it is one of the most preferred platforms for small business owners. With over 6 million consumers using WooCommerce today it is the most popular ecommerce platform online. There is a wide range of themes available, you can install them yourself or get them pre-installed on your store for a small fee. Here are some templates to start with like this one or this one.
Shopify – This is the preferred platform for many high end retailers and others who just want an easy to use ecommerce site where they can upload their own creative designs. This platform is easy to use with a simple and creative user interface, again this is an inexpensive website platform for small business owners. The great thing about Shopify is it automatically gives you a store, payment gateway, and e-commerce software with 3 easy steps.
Zyro – This is a small business ecommerce platform that is very easy to use and understands the needs of small business owners. This is a free ecommerce platform, but they are touting their product as having the 4 most important tools you need to run an online store. They also have their own hosting service and payment gateway so you don’t have to worry about that. You can also start working with them immediately with a free trial period.
How To Get People To Your Store?
To get traffic to your store, which is people visiting your site you will need to have a marketing plan. Using advertisements online using methods like social media sites including Facebook and Pinterest. Other fantastic opportunities for traffic creation to your website include Youtube, Snapchat, Tiktok, Google, Yahoo and Taboola.
Start Your E-commerce Store Today
As you can see it is quite simple to get started with an E-commerce site these days. Once you’ve brainstormed some ideas of what you might like to sell online you can create a site with a self made theme or pre made theme. To get started today on your site see these exclusive search terms.
Reference:
