Create your online store fast, easy and on a budget with these 12 steps

Life, marketing, and business have undergone several drastic changes in recent years. After the start of the confinements, many businesses began to transfer to the digital world. Thus, carrying out their activities from the internet. Because of this, in this blog, we are going to teach you how to easily create your online store in 12 fast steps, and on budget. Creation of an online store.

An online store is a type of digital commerce that uses transactions on a website. Some companies also use different platforms or applications that are connected to the internet. Besides, thanks to its easy access and usefulness, it has become one of the main tools of e-commerce. Thus, gaining popularity in recent years.

Advantages of creating your online store

Having an online site or portal to make the sales of your business can have several advantages. Here, we explain some of them:

• Total availability: access 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
• Global Market: the geographical difference is not an impediment.
• Interactivity: the company has access to detailed information on each client. This allows brands to get to know each client, including their motivations and desires. As a result, they can create personalized products and services.
• Cost savings: by having everything within digital reach, warehouse costs, physical stores, and taxes are saved.
• Flexibility: the company adapts much easier to new adjustments that come.
• Segmentation: according to the metrics, you can know your target customer and divide them according to their characteristics, wants, and needs.
• Improvement of the image of your brand: Having an online presence allows your target audience to trust your company more easily. Thus, improving its image.

Before starting

Before creating an online store you must understand that this isn’t an investment that should be taken lightly.

Digital marketing has different kinds of technologies for the conduction of market research and these are vital.

Besides, these rules allow you to know a lot more about new marketing trends in the world.

Now, we will explain certain elements and steps that you should take into consideration before starting to create your website.

Define your Digital Strategy

It’s important that in the first steps you establish what your digital strategy will be.

Most people think that you must first look into the technical aspects, thus ignoring that the strategy is what’s important.

Creation of an online store. This is your action plan for the activities you want to carry out, where you want to go, and the reason for your company.

Once you are more focused on what you want to do with your digital marketing strategy, it’s time to define the following elements:

Product and Price

The first thing is to know and determine what products you are going to sell and if they are made by you or by third parties.

Not only that, but you must know what price you are going to place them.

For this, get to know your competition to stand out from them, and understand what the market demand is.

Target audiences

Study very well who your target audience is and what the size of this market is.

Then do demographic research of the same audience or target you want to reach.

Positioning

Positioning is very important. Without it, you will not be able to walk in the minds of your customers or consumers.

In digital strategies, thanks to positioning, you will allow your users to identify you and look for you in the different search engines.

Set your goals

The ideal in any brand or company is to create a business plan in its entirety. However, you can start with the simplest points. For this, define what your short, medium and long term goals are.

One of the best ways to start defining your objectives is with the help of the SMART scheme. SMART objectives are specific, measurable, attainable, realistic objectives.

These are limited in time, but they are the best criteria to be able to develop effective objectives. Our recommendation with this is that you set two to three objectives, write them down in a document, and review them constantly.

What platforms should you use?

Depending on the industry your business belongs to, you will need different online platforms to implement your marketing strategy.

Some of the strategies favor the objectives of your company and others the business plan.

Some of the platforms that you should evaluate are:

• E-Commerce platforms.
• Payment gateways.
• Billing systems.
• Live chats.

Create your online store

Once you have done your market research, surveys to know your audience and have established each of your objectives, it’s time to move forward. From now on the following steps are done so that you can start easily creating your online store in just 12 fast steps, and on a budget:

1. Define the name and domain for your store

This is, for many, the most attractive and intimidating part of the entire project. It is ideal as a first step, especially if it is done with the support of the staff and their opinions are included in the decision making. Choosing a good domain is essential in an online store.

Both the name and the domain should be easy to remember and write. If possible, try to not make them very long.

In the case of the domain as such, it’s easier to position yourself in search engines by terms such as .com or .us if you will only sell in the US.

2. Hire a hosting service

This is where your online store will be installed.

The importance of choosing the correct hosting service is that it can be much more complicated to change it later.

Some considerations to take into account before choosing your hosting service:

• Review the rankings of the best hostings to see who their direct competition is.
• This is an investment. The designs and presentations must be on par with the money you invest in your page. Try to get the middle ground where both work for you and meet expectations.
• Support for your online site is necessary. Choose one that suits your language and work 24 hours a day

You must understand that this first investment in your website is all you will need for a while.

Don’t be afraid to skimp a bit more to find a host that meets all your needs.

Take into account the speed of the online store as it is a key point among the positioning metrics.

If the page is too slow and heavy, users will not wait for you, they will simply leave the site.

But not only that, Google penalizes pages that take a long time to load. Their form of punishment is by sending them to the bottom of the search results.

This can cause problems in the future because you might need to pay a higher price for Ads much higher than the others.

Make sure that your hosting company guarantees you have a large space for visitors and that their browsing isn’t slow.

Take into account the availability of those in charge of the page service.

Look for it to be 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

3. Choose a warranty drop shipper, creation of an online store

Dropshipping consists of a method of buying and selling through the internet, in which you put an item for sale at a price that you set. Then, the customer buys it from you and once they pay for it, you pay it to your supplier so that they can send it to the customer.

The dropshipper wholesaler will ship the product without any company badge. This allows you to add your own invoice to the package if that is what you want. This way, the customer is satisfied and you, as a company, avoid investing in the stock of products. In addition to logistics, the dropshipping company will take care of everything.

This technique is ideal for those who are entering the world of e-commerce for the first time.  Although initially, they will not be as eager as when buying the products in advance, it is still perfect to understand the logistics of everything. With this, you can gradually build customers without having to invest a large amount in the products.

Choose a drop shipper company that has a guarantee and carries out preliminary tests before selling directly with the customer. Currently, there are different lists with many of these companies. Keep all lists close by in case you change your mind down the line.

4. Set up the online store

This is the moment when we begin to work on the last details before putting the page on the internet.

Here are some things to consider before doing so:

• Ask yourself how to organize your product catalogs. Also, think about each of the categories you go into.
• Think about the type of information or content that will accompany the product.
• Invest in a good design template.
• Will it be in a single language? Will it be multi-language?
• Configuration for each of the steps to place an order.

5. Use a good CMS for e-commerce

A CMS (Content Management System) is a software that helps you manage a website.

Since there are different CMSs you must choose the one that best suits your business.

Remember, an online business requires you to be aware of many functions and tasks.

Today, most CMS are free and very reliable.

Each of them is designed so that people with little knowledge of marketing can use it without problems.

These are open-source tools known to a large number of professionals.

Because of this, many companies and freelancers can tweak or expand those functionalities that you cannot do on your own.

Some CMS that we highly recommend are WordPress, Magento, Oscommerce, Virtuemart (Joomla), and Zencart.

And the simplest alternative would be a service like Shopify.

6. Customize your products, creation of an online store

Most wholesalers offer online stores a simple product catalog that can be uploaded to the page immediately.

This allows the brand to show new products in a short time. So, to begin, you can customize the texts of the store and modify them over time.

This way, the products will position themselves in the market. Besides, users will appreciate seeing something different. Expand the information with product details, photos, methods of use among others. It’s important to use creativity and imagination to describe the products that you will offer in your online store.

7. Add all possible payment methods

Your store must adapt to the needs of all customers.

Thus, you must be ready with their demands on payment methods to make it a pleasant experience.

You must also know the preferred means of payment for your online users or your target audience are.

After you do this, make sure to offer as many options as possible. Some of the most current and modern means of payment are:

Debit or Credit Card

Debit or credit cards are the most used by many people.

This means of payment is a tool within our e-commerce that we must take into account.

Ask your bank for a virtual POS and follow the instructions they indicate to integrate it into your e-commerce.

Paypal

PayPal is a virtual wallet that you can use to make your payments over the internet without having to enter your bank details on each platform.

Other means of payment

Although many prefer to stick with the aforementioned methods, some buyers maintain traditions with these platforms and we should not leave these clients out.

Transfer, creation of an online store

This is a common payment method.

The user places the order and the store shares with the customer the data of the order bank account and the amount to make the transfer.

Once the user makes the transfer, he sends a receipt to the company email.

The owner must be very aware of this since once the receipt is ready, the order is placed.

Cash on delivery, creation of an online store

This is the sale of goods by mail, where payment the client pays once they get the product rather than in advance.

On the other hand, if the client doesn’t pay for the products, they will return to the retailer.

Although many do not use it, some keep it in mind. This is because they don’t trust to give their bank details online and prefer cash on delivery.

8. Include Legal Aspects

Online stores are tied to various legal elements. Some of them are:

• General Data Protection Regulation of the country in which you are.
• Cookies Law.
• Electronic Commerce Laws.

It’s important that you get legal advice from experts and not from a friend.

You can find relevant information on different platforms, but it’s better if you send it to someone with a lot of experience in the field.

In most cases, the creation of an LC is recommended due to the issue of civil liability.

An LC or a Limited Company is a process that is good to leave in the hands of an agency. Remember to also have all your papers in order. Invest by hiring insurance and comply with the laws in force before starting. A fine or financial penalty for trying to cheat the law can cost you your entire business.

By creating your online store you open the doors of your business to everyone. It’s for this reason that it’s extremely important to understand the legal aspects that you must cover.

9. Prepare logistics for shipments

If you are going to sell physical products, choose a strategic point to sell your products. This will ultimately be of great influence on the profitability of your business and the satisfaction of your customers. From now on we have to think about what we will do with our products in stock.

These are some of the factors most valued by online buyers when deciding to buy in an online store:

• Cheap or free shipping costs.
• Fast or express shipments, 24 hours maximum.
• Ease of making returns.
• The shipping company is your logistics partner. Working hand in hand with them will achieve the best benefits for everyone.

10. Create a blog to accompany the store, creation of an online store

The creation of attractive and relevant content that fits with the style of the store is perfect to attract more traffic to it.

Because of this, we always recommend creating a blog that talks about our sector and everything that surrounds it.

Besides, with this blog, you can promote your products in some way, directly or indirectly.

11. Create online advertising campaigns

Thanks to online advertising, we can economically publicize our online store, but, above all, in a scaled way. By correctly using the free analysis tools that the Internet makes available to us, we will be able to know exactly which advertising campaigns give us benefits and which ones don’t work. Thus, being able to rectify quickly and avoid unnecessary losses.

This way, we can obtain benefits in a short time, and reduce the investment to “what we are earning each month”. As a result, minus the small initial investment, the rest of the advertising could pay for itself. Thus, everyone’s ability to expand those benefits can make a difference in the future.

To start advertising on the internet, it is advisable to use advertising in Google search results using Adwords.

12. Analyze the performance of your online store

Reviewing the metrics or statistics of your website are essential tasks for everyone who starts their website.

On the other hand, these can sometimes be scary if numbers aren’t your thing.

However, the data on a website can be very easy to read with some practice.

Creation of an online store. We can measure this according to:

• Website speed (PageSpeed ​​Insights).
• Website authority.
• Online presence.
• SEO and keywords.

Don’t forget!

You must remember that every successful website is due to the perseverance and hard work invested in it. Thus, besides a clear vision of what they have to do and where to allocate resources, these are very important elements to take into account. Starting an online business is not an easy task as it is very demanding.

You can not only see this in the creation of websites but also any other digital platform. From social media, YouTube channels, or even the best blogs. Each platform is heavily loaded with content. Creation of an online store. These contents are bombarded to the consumer to get their attention and captivate them. For this reason, you must constantly work both on the creative aspect and on not giving up.

From this point, you stop choosing your work schedule, since you don’t stop doing it. If you are ready to venture into the world of e-commerce and are ready to work twice as hard, welcome to the club!

BluCactus, your ally in Digital marketing

BluCactus international marketing agency serves clients all over the world.

Our specialty? The creation of web designs and SEO positioning in online searches.

Besides, our group of experts is dedicated to helping businesses and brands succeed in one of the most competitive sectors in the market, the digital world.

BluCactus will accompany you every step that your brand takes. Creation of an online store. This goes from the creation of the branding of your business to the creation of content.

Our focus is on supporting you with the development of your website or the administration of your accounts on social media.

This online marketing agency, based in Dallas, TX, seeks to strengthen your image as a brand and take it to the next level.

Don’t wait any longer to have the help of the best specialists in digital marketing and contact us through our social media or website.

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