Online Marketing & Website Design Services
Are you planning on selling your products or services online?
Here are some important things needed to get your e-commerce website online and ready to start selling!
Many people have products or services they want to start selling online but might not fully understand how it works or what all is required to sell their products online. Each business can be ran different from others so in this article, our goal is to provide some general information to help you understand the main requirements needed to get your e-commerce website started.
Below are some things you will need to start a new e-commerce website:
Although it is possible to start a successful online store without a lot of research and planning, it’s unlikely and not worth the risk. Make sure you plan your business and research things in your industry to make sure you’re not overlooking anything that could prevent your online store from being successful. Make sure your business is registered legally in your location (city, county, state). You also want to make sure your business doesn’t require any additional requirements that might apply to your business industry (license, certificate, etc.). The cost of a consultation with a small business attorney might be well worth the cost to help prevent any possible legal issues in the future.
When selling your products or services online, the design and layout of your ecommerce website is one of the most important things to consider. You want to make sure your website is optimized to make things easy for everyone (customers, your staff, search engines). If there are problems with any of these, this can cause problems with your goals and prevent your website from being successful.
Here are a few recommendations for your e-commerce website design:
To accept payments online through your website, you will need to register with an online payment processor to handle all the payments for the orders from your customers. The payment processors handle the payment transactions and are also who sends the money to your bank account. Payment Processors are connected to the website by the website developer to handle all the transferring of sensitive data that is sent between the website and the payment processor (credit card information, order approval, receipt, etc.).
Some of the most popular payment processors for ecommerce websites are Square, Stripe or PayPal which are all trustworthy companies. There are many other payment processors too, so just make sure you understand what they charge as some will include monthly or hidden fees for things you don’t need. Your website design company should be able to recommend and help you with finding a payment processor for your website.
Make sure you have all the main business information setup so clients can contact you. A business address with a map so your clients can find your store (or a mailing address could be setup to receive things via mail if you don’t have an actual store for people to go to). A phone number for the business is important to have, as well as a business email. It is good practice to setup business email accounts with your company’s domain (info@jsmcorp.com) instead of a personal email (joe123@gmail.com). You can always have your business email get forward to your personal email if preferred.
Your website should have content that reads well and provides information about your business and your products or services. Make sure you’re talking to your customers when you write the content and try to provide information that they are looking for. Include relative content for all the website pages, products/services and any other areas on your website (blog posts, slider images, widget boxes, etc.). Make all the content relative for the specific page the user is visiting. Although it may be more time consuming, it is more beneficial to provide detailed information on each product/service item instead of just saying the same thing on each page.
Make sure to include quality media to make sure your product or service looks professional. Make sure any photos or videos displayed all show at a good quality. You may offer a great product but if it looks bad in the product image, it will likely make people think the product isn’t that good either. First impressions are important, so it’s well worth the time to make sure your products reflect the quality of your business. They don’t have to be perfect, but the more effort will provide a better outcome. Your website design company should have the expertise to help you with this.
If you sell products, you will need to have all the product information to setup each product online. If you sell products from a third party provider, you can usually get product lists from them (usually in a spreadsheet format) that can be imported into your store.
Some of the main information needed for your products include product name, description, category, product image and price but depending on your business, there may be other things to account for. If you sell different variations of the product (color, size, etc.), then all of this needs to be established and provided. Again, each business can be ran differently but these are things that need to be taken care of before your e-commerce website can start selling your products.
If your e-commerce store sells products then you will need to keep track of your inventory to make sure you know what you have in stock. You can setup your product inventory with your online store so it will show how many items are available to your customers. It can also be setup to show it’s out of stock and even let you know when you need to restock the product before you run out. In order to track your inventory with your ecommerce website, you will need to make sure you have the quantity of each product variation you sell so the inventory can be set in your online store to be managed as they get purchased.
If you will be selling products online that need to be shipped, you will need to make sure you have your shipping information setup. You will need to figure out what shipping carrier you will use, how much weight the products are, the size of the products, the packaging you will use for the products and also what shipping options you want to provide. All the shipping information can be configured in your e-commerce website so the shipping costs will automatically get added in the order.
If you’re shipping products to customers and you want a more precise shipping cost to be included in the customer’s order, you will need to include the size and weight of each product when setting them up. These types of things will need to be addressed before your website goes “live”.
Depending on the city, county and state your business is based in, you will need to make sure to include sales tax for your online store. Make sure you know the tax amount and ensure that it’s setup with your e-commerce website so the tax is included in the customer orders automatically.
There are definitely more things that can be done to improve the results of your e-commerce store (search engine optimization, paid ads, social media and other online/offline marketing), but the main things included in this article are needed to get your e-commerce website started. When in doubt, contact a web design company that builds e-commerce websites as they can guide you through this process and help make your online store successful.
Professional Website Design Services
"Greg and his team does excellent work. Everything was done in a timely manner and the cost was reasonable. I highly recommend Jump Start Marketing!"
"In today’s market environment a supplier’s reliability is crucial to the success of the business. Website Design under Greg’s leadership has been providing PRA with creative and efficient service. He is by far the best website service in the gulf region."
We were incorporated in the state of Florida in 2004 (view Sunbiz.org) and have been working in website development and search engine optimization since Google was wearing diapers. Our knowledge of web development has marinated our brains with expertise and creative ideas on how to use the web to benefit your company and give your website better results you deserve.
We provide online marketing and website design all over the U.S. and are based in Pensacola, Florida. We'll be glad to meet in person in the Northwest Florida and Southeast Alabama counties below.
