Building An Online Store

In this section you will learn some basics regarding making an online store. We have broken down into groups the most important aspects when you want to make an online store.

We have provided you a link in each section with detailed information about that specific topic. If you already have a grasp of what you'd like to sell and understand the concept of online stores you can visit our page on shopping cart software.

Having A Product To Sell

Lets assume that you already have an idea of what you would like to sell. For those who don't we are going to cover some of the basic details of finding a product to sell. Determining what to sell is a very important part of building an online store. When starting your first website it's likely that money is tight and you don't have the funds to go out and buy a large inventory of goods to sell. A very good solution to this is drop shipping. This allows you to sell other vendors products without having to carry inventory.

Click here for additional information on drop shipping.

One thing to consider when you're choosing a product to sell you really need to do your research on your competition. Making your first website and trying to sell cell phones would be nearly impossible. With that said you may find a niche within the cell phone market that you could do very well in. This brings me to my next topic, niche markets.

Niche Marketing

Niche markets are going to allow you to complete in competitive areas, or not so competitive areas, where you normally wouldn't have a chance to compete. Sticking with the cell phone market, it would be nearly impossible to compete with Sprint and Verizon in the cell phone market but you may consider focusing on a specific brand. Even better you may consider just focusing on a specific accessory for cell phones such as cases or another type of accessory.

A great source for finding niche markets and determining whether the market is worth the effort is a tool called Wordtracker. Wordtracker works by providing search numbers on a specific keyword into the software. Then based on those numbers you can determine if there are enough people searching for a specific niche product.

Shopping Cart Software

Once you have found great product(s) that you want to sell, you will need to determine what shopping cart software you'll use. Shopping cart software allows your visitors to view your products and descriptions and ultimately complete the purchase once they have entered their billing and shipping details.

There are 100's of options in regards to shopping cart software so please take the time to read through our shopping cart software section. You'll find that there are free options that come with your basic web hosting account or licensed versions that have all the capabilities you would ever need.

Accepting Credit Cards Online

Another aspect of building an online store is accepting payments. Since you're just starting out you will want an affordable option such as Pay Pal. There is no monthly fee associated with Pay Pal and you only pay if you make a sale. A true merchant account that accepts credit cards have monthly fees associated with them even if you don't sell a product. This is a option that you should only consider once you've established your website and see a significant amount of sales.

We provide more in depth the advantages and disadvantages accepting credit cards online for PayPal and merchant accounts providers in the link below.

Read more on credit card acceptance. Click Here

Ecommerce Hosting Solutions

Last, we are going to cover ecommerce hosting solutions. You're going to need to use a hosting company that is capable of handling ecommerce. These days we couldn't name a single hosting company that couldn't but were sure that they are out there. The reason that we mention this is because you'll need to have a dedicated IP address. A dedicated IP address is used simply by your website and is required for an SSL, secure certificate. An SSL certificate is required to accept credit cards because it's what encrypts a customer's credit card information so that a hacker can't intercept it and use it.

Also consider since you are wanting to stay on budget that most hosting companies offer a free shopping cart with their hosting plans. The problem is that they are limited with their capabilities.