How To Set Up An E-Commerce Website
So you’ve decided to start selling products online, have you? Then you’re going to need and e-commerce website. How do you go about getting one of those then? This is a short guide to getting started with your first successful e-commerce website.
Domain Name or Web Address
The first thing you need to do is choose and register a suitable domain name or web address for your website. The web address should be short so that it is easy to remember but also reflect the products you are selling and, if possible, the unique benefit of the product.
Let’s say you’re selling teddy bears. It’s very unlikely the web address “teddybears.com” is available. But “cuddlyteddybears.com” might be, or perhaps “cuteteddybears.com”.
You’ll need to spend a bit of time researching what is available while at the same time thinking about what people might search for when looking for your type of product.
Once you’ve chosen your domain name you need to register it. There are plenty of websites you can do this through – GoDaddy.com or oneandone.co.uk are just two you could use.
Design & Structure
Now, of course, you need to have your e-commerce website designed and built. The best way to go about this is to choose an easy to use e-commerce platform. There are several options available, some of them free, like the Magento e-commerce platform, from which you can easily add products, photos, pricing and product information.
The advantage of building a Magento e-commerce website is that it comes with a set of features built in that you will need, including those mentioned above. It is also quite easy to design your website around it so that it looks the business and actually sells your products.
There are also Magento extensions and plug-ins freely available that can be added to your e-commerce website to increase the functionality and usability further for your customers.
Promotion
Once you’re happy with your e-commerce website in terms of design and you have your products uploaded, along with photos, prices and product information and your website is live you need to start promoting it.
The first step is to make sure your website is optimised for the search engines, so that when people search for products like yours in Google, Yahoo or Bing they find you first. This should be done both on-site during the construction of your site.
Secondly you can promote your site off site by creating links to your website from others. There are several ways of going about this, such as writing articles, blogging, creating a Twitter feed and Facebook page and using other forms of social media.
The key to creating a successful e-commerce business is getting your e-commerce website right in the first place, however, so your initial focus should be on that. Use a platform like the Magento e-commerce to get you started, make sure you’re happy with the design and layout, get friends and family to test the site to ensure it is easy to use and check that search engines can crawl your site with no problems.
Do all this before your site goes live and you’ll be well on your way to a successful e-commerce business.
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