How to Start an Online Store
5 Steps to Starting an Online StoreStep1
Choose a niche or product genre that you are passionate about and begin to develop a knowledge set around this niche. Your passion and enthusiasm for a particular niche topic will give you a competitive advantage over larger sellers that are forced to be more broad in their product coverage. By choosing a category that you are passionate about, you will have a greater chance of enjoying the journey of creating and managing an online store, which will require patience and the ability to overcome adversity. In a way, opening an online store around one of your hobbies or interests allows you to reallocate time productively that you would have spent on your hobby anyways.
Step 2
Select a service to provide the online infrastructure for your web store. The best type of service for your store depends on whether (a) you already have products to sell (or if you plan to source and fulfill your own inventory)or (b) you do not have products to sell, but would be interested in selling products from another provider like Amazon.com or Buy.com.
Vendio recently came out with a free service for starting an online store that is fully functional and professional, with all the features needed to operate a commerical web store. This service is replete with inventory, shopping cart, checkout (featuring multiple payment options like Google Checkout, Paypal, or credit cards)and too many other features to go into in this article. I will point out, however, that Vendio allows products to be sold through multiple channels - your Vendio store front, eBay, Amazon, and Google. Vendio is a venture-backed startup that is well-known for its eBay seller services. While starting a Vendio store will take several hours of dedication (given all the features), the overall package is a surprisingly powerful value proposition for a free online store service. Here is the link to a Vendio store.
Another way to get started quickly is to open a Yahoo store front. A Yahoo store allows you to build and sell your own physical inventory of products much like a Vendio Store. Yahoo has been providing a reliable online store service with inventory and checkout services for many years. Yahoo stores charge a monthly fee ranging from $40 to $300 per month, plus transaction fees and setup fees. Like Yahoo, FlyingCart allows you to start an online store and carry and fulfill your own physical inventory but at a lower price point and with some interesting social networking features. We are looking forward to reacquainting ourselves with FlyingCart to update you on their feature set in more detail.
One fast way to start a free store is to open a Zlio store. Zlio stores allow you to resell products carried by Buy.com and other merchants by writing reviews of products and focusing on a theme that makes consumers lives easier. Zlio stores allow you to get in the game fast, but do not allow you to carry your own physical inventory.
Amazon.com has started a service that is similar to Zlio -- the Amazon.com aStore program allows users to build their own free online store front that sells products from Amazon in exchange for a commission, but the look and feel of the store is rudimentary.
Step 3
Build-out your product inventory by adding products to your web store. Try to be thoughtful about your product categories, and in particular, product placement. Studies have shown that consumers are drawn to products featured at the top of the page, so be careful to put the most likely sellers at the top. Put yourself in the customer's shoes with a relentless passion. Remember, people can buy from anyone; why should they buy from you? You need to make their life easier or provide some other kind of value.
Step 4
Promote your store, as this is a critical step. Do you remember Field of Dreams? "if you build it they will come" will not apply to your new store! You must drive interest in your own site; no one cares about your online store except you. The first way to promote your store is to get relevant; submit your site to Google to be indexed. Consider adding content to your site like product reviews, subject matter articles, humor, anything to give people a reason to come to your site other than just to buy products. Content will increase your probability of becoming relevant.
Step 5
Manage and track your web store. Now that you've got your online store up and running, don't you want to see how much traffic you are generating and where it is coming from? Sign up for free Google analytics
