{"id":5968,"date":"2022-03-16T10:49:26","date_gmt":"2022-03-16T15:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/?p=5968"},"modified":"2022-03-16T10:49:29","modified_gmt":"2022-03-16T15:49:29","slug":"what-do-you-need-in-order-to-start-an-online-store","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/what-do-you-need-in-order-to-start-an-online-store\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do You Need In Order To Start An Online Store?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Pixabay (CC0 Licence)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Running a business online can be as easy or as hard as you want to make it – there are business ideas that more or less only require you to have a webcam and a Zoom login, while others require you to have a great deal of programming and coding knowledge. Somewhere in the middle of the pack is where you will find eCommerce and online stores – it\u2019s not purely simple to run an eCommerce business, but it is getting easier as time passes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve ever considered running an online store, then you may be wondering whether it is time to \u201cgo for it\u201d, and in that spirit, be looking into what it takes to start an online store. So, here, let\u2019s go through the essentials for your own project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A product to sell<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Obvious, yes, but it\u2019s essential to cover this – because what you\u2019re selling will have implications for everything else, including what you name the store, and which domain you choose. Don\u2019t pick too broad a range of items; it\u2019s better to specialize initially and then expand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get your site going<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once you have product lines figured out, there\u2019s no better time to start working on getting your site up and running. You\u2019ll need to start creating pages and uploading items on Shopify and arrange hosting for your domain. It\u2019s common sense to get managed hosting from the likes of nestify.io\/wordpress-hosting\/<\/a>, so that the technical side of things is in capable hands while you focus on all the rest – because you\u2019re not even nearly done!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make the site <\/strong>yours<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You want your eCommerce store to stand out from what can be a very crowded pack, so now is the time to figure out what your store will look like. There\u2019s a good guide to creating your own theme from scratch at https:\/\/dinarys.com\/blog\/custom-shopify-theme-tutorial<\/a>, or you can get someone to build one for you. You also need to be creating content – product descriptions, page introductions, a \u201cWho we are page\u201d and a bunch of other doorway pages which will help the customer find their way around, and help the site rank, too,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Figure out where you\u2019ll ship to<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Modern eCommerce software makes it simple to set up arrangements for shipping, payment and even different storefronts for customers<\/a> in different countries. You need to consider whether you\u2019ll ship anywhere and everywhere, only within your home country or somewhere in between – check out shipping costs and regulations to potential markets before you start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Get a payment gateway in place<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019re setting up a store, then it stands to reason that you\u2019ll want to be able to take payments. Most eCommerce software systems allow you to add a Paypal account, which you should absolutely do, and you\u2019ll also presumably want people to be able to pay by card. There is no shortage of guides online to help add a payment gateway, and this too will usually be enabled by the ecommerce SaaS you\u2019re using.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decide your pricing plan and launch<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fortunately, eCommerce software makes it easy to set prices for your items and to add costs for postage and shipping. It also allows you to create special offers – having added your products, you can include some set items in a group where, for example, if the customer buys three linked items they\u2019ll only pay for the two highest-value. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s a good idea to have some specific offers for your launch day (or week), because once all of the steps above are in place, you\u2019ll be ready to launch your store! Good luck!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pixabay (CC0 Licence) Running a business online can be as easy or as hard as you want to make it – there are business ideas that more or less only require you to have a webcam and a Zoom login, while others require you to have a great deal of programming and coding knowledge. Somewhere […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1,970],"tags":[12,975],"class_list":["post-5968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-contributed-posts","tag-blog-2","tag-contributed"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JMKA-1yg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5968"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5968\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5969,"href":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5968\/revisions\/5969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlouisdad.com\/s\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}